Karoshi & declining birth-rate in Japan
Paul •
Whilst anime production continues at full pelt, there’s been a few stories pop up recently that suggest Japanese society is going through a hard time that only promises to get harder.
First up is an article from the BBC that discusses “karoshi” (which is a specific Japanese word for death by over-work) and how young people are particularly vulnerable to this right now. One office in Tokyo has even “[…] resorted to turning the office lights off at 7pm in an effort to force people to go home.”
The other article is from The New York Times and reports that Japan’s declining birth-rate has dropped below 1 million for the first time since records began – over 100 years ago.
After Japan’s population hit a peak of 128 million at the start of the current decade, it shrank by close to a million in the five years through 2015, according to census data. Demographers expect it to plunge by a third by 2060, to as few as 80 million people — a net loss of a million a year, on average.
