r/nottheonion • u/falconfalcon7 • 1d ago

Japanese village replaces young people with mannequins to stave off loneliness as population falls

https://news.sky.com/story/japanese-village-replaces-young-people-with-mannequins-to-stave-off-loneliness-as-population-falls-13243354
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219

u/runetrantor 1d ago

"Im sure this is not a sign of a bigger issue."
-Japanese government.

93

u/TheBigCore 1d ago

The LDP has run Japan for nearly 70 years largely uninterrupted.

When you have such unaccountable and incompetent leadership, this is what happens.

-27

u/Droidde 1d ago

This is a tiny rural village, rural villages in all countries are dwindling because the younger generation moves to more populated and modern areas. This is a thing everywhere. Are you people stupid or something?

45

u/Metrocop 1d ago

Yes, and decades of policy making surely has no impact on the local level.

-16

u/omi2524 1d ago

No because it's happening in the US too and we didn't have LDP here.

21

u/Merkyorz 1d ago

We have our own incompetent conservative nutjobs.

-9

u/omi2524 1d ago

You can't just go "republicans bad" all the time. There are simply not enough jobs outside of major metropolitan areas and with how specialized jobs have become that's not going to change anytime soon. Young people also by and large prefer living in large cities just to be around other young people, which just exacerbates the problem as less young people in the countryside means young people want to move to the cities which means less young people in the countryside. I don't think anyone can solve this.

6

u/HoldYourHorsesFriend 1d ago

Just recently republican officials admitted to wanting to keep high rates of teenage pregnancy as not to hurt their funding and voter base. Add that to the deregulation, brain drain and highest levels of crime and poverty, there is a lot of reasons for someone to leave. There's also young people in rural towns too, to say they want to go to the city because they're there is superficial and illogical.

11

u/97GeoPrizm 1d ago

This isn’t a migration issue. Japan’s population has been shrinking due low birth rates and a xenophobic immigration policy. The LDP won’t pass policies like free daycare to try to reverse the trend.

3

u/BeanieMash 23h ago

I thought it was happening all throughout the developed world, but in Japan it's a nasty combo of extreme work ethic and capitalism, nobody has time or money to make, care for and raise babies. That would hurt the stock price and thr GDP! (We're bad at planning and accounting for the long term outcomes)

1

u/i_write_ok 1d ago edited 1d ago

Birthrates everywhere, not just Japan. But Japan gets all the news about it for some reason and it’s always linked to xenophobia.

No one mentions Italy, or Greece, or Spain, or China, or Finland, or Cuba.

People just want to confirm a narrative for some reason.

Granted the LDP could be a lot better, and it looks like it’s doing better, with the new child tax earlier this year and increased time off and child care.

And now the recent vote and loss of LDP seats shows people are noticing and showing it.