【华盛顿邮报 20141022】日本人冷淡的性欲威胁到全球经济

满仓

【中文标题】日本人冷淡的性欲威胁到全球经济
【原文标题】Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy
【登载媒体】华盛顿邮报
【原文作者】Max Fisher
【原文链接】http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/22/japans-sexual-apathy-is-endangering-the-global-economy/?tid=pm_world_pop



东京购物街上的日本女人。

《卫报》的一篇文章提到日本人的结婚率、生育率，甚至性生活频率持续低靡。日本人对恋爱关系普遍持厌恶的态度，这个国家的媒体甚至给这种现象起了一个名字“sekkusu shinai shokogun”，也就是“独身综合症”。

但这不仅仅是日本及其怪异文化的问题，而是关乎全球经济的问题。日本是世界第三大经济体，与全球贸易有千丝万缕的联系，是每一个人经济福祉的重要因素。它持有的美国外债几乎与中国一样多，它是美国、中国和其它一些国家的首要贸易伙伴。日本经济目前遭遇的严重问题足以让全球经济倒退。这其中，最主要的因素来自人口结构方面：日本已经没有足够的儿童来维持一个健康的经济模式。其首要原因是他们对约会和结婚不感兴趣，而这主要是因为他们对性持冷待的态度。

这里有一些统计数据，部分来自《卫报》的报道，部分来自2011年日本人口研究中心的报告。

• 很多日本人对性不感兴趣。16岁到24岁的人群中，45％的女人和25％的男人“对性接触不感兴趣，或者鄙视”。
  

• 超过一半的日本人是单身。在18岁到34岁的人群中，有49％的女人和61％的男人单身，他们从未体验过爱情。
  

• 在所有年龄层的人中，从未体验过爱情的日本人比例从90年代开始一直呈上升趋势。
  

• 大约四分之一的日本人不想体验爱情。23％的女人和27％的男人说他们对任何方式的爱情经历不感兴趣。
  

• 超过三分之一的育龄日本人从未有过性体验——18岁到34岁的人群中，39％的女人和36％的男人。这个数字在过去十年没有发生大的变化，但绝对值非常高。
  

• 日本人口研究机构预测，20岁出头的女性有25％没有结婚，40％没有孩子。
  

这样的趋势并非新闻。早在2006年，日本女人就曾经抱怨“soshoku danshi”，也就是“食草男”现象，意思是说男人对异性缺乏兴趣。日本有一个完整的产业链来帮助男人躲避爱情，应对孤独，包括社交类型的网络游戏和度假圣地。Chico Harlan在2010年曾经有一篇文章讨论过这个现象。

日本女人逃避恋爱关系，主要是因为日本的法律和道德观念往往让女人无法同时拥有家庭和事业。日本是个极为特殊的国家，它的人民受教育程度很高，也极为富有，但同时拥有世界上最不平等的性别歧视制度，也就是说欧洲类型的经济与南亚类型的家族观念并存。职业女性因此进退维谷。原因并不仅仅是缺少托儿所这么简单。怀孕，甚至刚刚结婚的女人被普遍认为应当辞掉工作，他们面临着巨大的社会压力，而且通常会发现职业晋升基本化为泡影。有一个词来形容已婚的职业女性，“oniyome”，也就是“鬼嫁”。

由于面临无法回避的选择，大部分女人在家庭和工作之间都选择了后者。这种对婚姻的悲观情绪似乎同时造成了对爱情和性的冷淡态度。下图显示了25岁到34岁之间的日本男女保持单身的原因分布，每个柱状图表示从1987年到2011年的调查结果。





这些因素对经济有着直接和间接的灾难性影响。因为日本人不再生育——他们对性和性关系的冷漠态度是直接原因，所以人口数量在持续下降，而且下降得非常非常快。日本人口数量在去年下降了21.2万人，是有记录以来的最大降幅。婴儿出生率也在下降，去年仅有103万活体婴儿出生，与前一年的121万婴儿相比，是有史以来的最大降幅。

下面两张图描绘了日本人口萎缩的现状。第一张图显示各年度（包括未来预测）的人口数量，第二张图显示变化率，可以看到正在进入负数期间。





这其中的负面影响不仅仅是日本经济体会有越来越少的工人和越来越低的生产力，而且这是一颗即将爆炸的经济定时炸弹。日本人普遍长寿，日本老年人的看护费用极高，因为他们退休年龄段很长，而且习惯了高品质的生活和医疗服务。任何一个健康的经济体都需要有足够的纳税人来供养退休群体。但是日本人口的萎缩和老龄化趋势同时出现，也就是说老年人数量猛增，纳税人数量减少。

下面这张著名的图表描绘出日本在1950年、2007年和预测的2050年的人口年龄分布。1950年的表格显示出婴儿潮，很多的年轻人。2007年的表格是一个健康的经济体，很多退休者，也有很多的年轻人。最右边的表格是一个噩梦，几乎一个年轻人就要供养一位退休者，这不是可持续的模式。



到目前为止，这些问题看起来会让日本的经济的日本人民焦躁不安，但是并不会对我们美国人和全球经济有什么影响。但是影响的确存在：日本是世界上最大的债务政府之一，目前其外债占GDP总量的200％，比希腊还要高。如果日本继续保持增长，那么一切还好说。但是如果它的人口炸弹爆炸，未来无论如何都是个悲剧。

去年，经济学家Peter Boone和Simon Johnson在《大西洋月刊》上撰文称，日本“即将面临一波破产浪潮，并引发投资信心下降”，其造成的经济危害甚至比欧洲更加严重。投资者会看到这个国家的老龄化趋势和萎缩的税收基础，并认为日本国债并不是一个安全的投资方案，这必然会引发信心流失和破产。日本持有1.1万亿美元的美国国债，日本经济崩溃足够引起我们的担忧了。或许最糟糕的是，中国已经初露苗头的经济减速将受到进一步的威胁。中国是日本的最大贸易伙伴，两个经济体密不可分。

日本官方深刻了解到这个国家的低生育率所造成的危害，国家层面上已经采取了一些措施来鼓励年轻男女结婚，政客们经常争论如何生育更多的孩子。一位著名的立法委员野田圣子，在1993年履职之后就一直致力于解决这个问题。2月，野田提议日本立法禁止堕胎来提升生育率。这个提议未免有点像开玩笑，但是这种不顾后果的选择或许恰恰是必需的。



原文：

Japanese women walk down a Tokyo shopping street.

People in Japan are so averse to romantic relationships that the country's media even has a name for it: sekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome," according to a widely circulated Guardian story on the country's low rates of marriage, childbearing and even sex.

But this is more than a story about Japan and its cultural quirks: It's a story about the global economy. Japan is the world's third-largest economy, a crucial link in global trade and a significant factor everyone else's economic well-being. It owns almost as much U.S. debt as does China. It's a top trading partner of the U.S., China and lots of other countries. The Japanese economy is in serious enough trouble that it could set the rest of us back. And the biggest source of that trouble is demographic: Japanese people aren't having enough kids to sustain a healthy economy. One big reason they're having fewer kids is that they're not as interested in dating or marrying one another, in part because they're less interested in sex.

Here are a few of the statistics, some from the Guardian story and others from a 2011 report by Japan's population center:

• Extremely high numbers of Japanese do not find sex appealing. 45 percent of women and 25 percent of men, ages 16 to 24, are "not interested in or despised sexual contact."

• More than half of Japanese are single. 49 percent of unmarried women and 61 of unmarried men, ages 18 to 34, are not in any kind of romantic relationship.

• In every age group, the percentage of Japanese men and women who are not in a romantic relationship has been increasing steadily since the 1990s.

• About a quarter of Japanese don't want a romantic relationship. 23 percent of women and 27 percent of men say they are not interested in any kind of romantic relationship.

• More than a third of childbearing-age Japanese have never had sex: 39 percent of women and 36 percent of men, ages 18 to 34. That number hasn't actually changed much over the last decade, but it is unusually high.

• The Japanese population institute projects that women in their early 20s have a 25 percent chance of never marrying and a 40 percent chance of never having kids.

These trends are not new. Since 2006, Japanese women have complained of soshoku danshi or "herbivore men," so called for their lack of interest in the opposite sex. There's an entire industry in Japan that helps men who eschew romantic lives cope with loneliness through relationship-simulating video games and even holiday retreats. See Chico Harlan's great 2010 piece on this.

Japanese women, for their part, often avoid romantic relationships because Japanese laws and social norms can make it extremely difficult for women to have both a family and a career. Japan is extremely unusual in that it is highly educated and wealthy but still has some of the worst systemic gender inequality in the world; it has a European-style economy but South Asian social family mores. Professional women are stuck in the middle of that contradiction. It's not just that day-care programs are scarce: Women who become pregnant or even just marry are so expected to quit work that they can come under enormous social pressure to do so and often find that career advancement becomes impossible. There's a word for married working women: oniyome, or "devil wives."

Because they're forced to choose, inevitably lots of women who might otherwise have a family and a job are only seeking the latter. That sense of pessimism about marriage appears to be partially driving the lack of interest in romantic relationships, and thus in sex. This chart shows common reasons expressed for staying single, by Japanese men and women ages 25 to 34. The shaded bars represent the subsequent national surveys, from 1987 through 2011:

Reasons Japanese women give for staying single.

Reasons Japanese man give for staying single.

This all has major and potentially catastrophic implications for the economy. Because Japanese people aren't having kids – which is both partially a product of, and perhaps driven by some of the same factors as, their relative disinterest in sex or sexual relationships – the population is shrinking. It's shrinking very, very fast. The Japanese population dropped by 212,000 people last year, the largest decrease on record. The birth rate is still falling, with only 1.03 million live births last year, a record low and dramatic decrease from 1.21 million the year before.

Here are two charts showing Japan's shrinking population. The first shows you the projected population over time and the second shows you the rate of change, which is just getting into negative territory:

This isn't just bad because it means the Japanese economy will have fewer workers and thus be less productive. It's setting up an economic time bomb that will go off before long. People in Japan tend to live a long time; elderly Japanese are expensive to care for because they spend so many years in retirement and because they're accustomed to a high standard of living and medical care. For any economy to stay healthy, there need to be enough taxpayers to support all the retirees. But Japan's population is shrinking and aging simultaneously, which means that the number of old people is skyrocketing just as the base of taxpayers shrinks.

Here's a famous chart showing the age distribution of Japan's population in 1950, 2007 and projected for 2050. The 1950 chart shows a baby boom, lots of young people. The 2007 chart shows a healthy-ish economy, with lots of retirees but also lots of working-age people to support it. The right-most chart is a catastrophe. With almost one retiree for every working-age person, that's hardly sustainable.

Japan's population distribution by age.

So far, this all might look like a big problem for the Japanese economy and for regular Japanese people, but not a story with major implications for those of us in the United States or elsewhere in the global economy. But here's the big problem: Japan is one of the most indebted governments in the world. Right now, Japanese public debt is 200 percent of its GDP – more even than Greece. Japan will be okay as long as it can keep growing but, with its demographic time-bomb, it's hard to see how that's possible in the long term.

Last year, economists Peter Boone and Simon Johnson warned in The Atlantic that Japan "could face a wave of insolvencies, triggering a broader loss of confidence" and setting off a financial crisis greater than even the Euro's. Investors could one day look at the country's aging and shrinking tax base and decide that Japan's public debt might not actually be such a safe investment, triggering a loss of confidence and possible insolvency. Given that Japan owns $1.1 trillion in United States debt, a Japanese financial collapse could be very scary for us as well. Perhaps worst of all, that could endanger China's already tenuous economic slow-down; China is Japan's largest trading partner and the two economies are closely linked.

Officials in Japan are keenly aware of how endangered they are by the country's low birth rate. National programs encourage young men and women to get together and politicians often debate how to create more Japanese babies. One prominent legislator, Seiko Noda, has worked on the issue since soon after taking office in 1993. In February, Noda proposed that Japan lift the birth rate by simply banning abortion. The proposal may have been facetious, but it was certainly desperate – and maybe appropriately.

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野兽民族奢侈谈什么性爱，它们只知道交配。