As It Shrinks, Japan's Rising Generation Searches for Stability. NewsWire

NewsWire: 1/28/22

• Japan recently marked its annual Coming of Age Day with a record low number of the people the holiday celebrates: 20-year-olds. The optimistic mood is gone from the holiday as well, with few young Japanese looking forward to adulthood. (Financial Times)
• NH: January 10 marked Japan’s Coming of Age Day: an annual holiday marked by ceremonies meant to welcome 20-year-olds into adulthood. The holiday has been celebrated since 1948, but in recent years the mood hasn’t been all that celebratory.
• For one thing, Japan’s persistently low birthrates mean that the number of 20-year-olds has been steadily shrinking. This year, there were 1.2M, down 40,000 from 2020 and the lowest figure since the government began keeping track in 1968. The number of 20-year-old Japanese peaked all the way back in 1976 at 2.76M.
• For another, Japan’s Millennials aren’t very enthused about what adulthood holds for them. Growing older used to mean independence, the start of a good career, and the promise of a comfortable pension--but now it’s more likely to mean an uncertain job market and working well into your retirement years. And when housing is expensive and there’s little pressure to move out, staying with Mom and Dad indefinitely seems like the smarter choice. 
• One 20-year-old told the FT: “I’m not sure if I can really be too excited about becoming an adult. Japan seems to have a lot of problems that never get solved and I guess they are my problems now.” This sentiment was echoed by another young woman in The Guardian who said, “I am definitely more worried than excited about the future.”
• In a global survey we covered in a recent NewsWire (see “Rich Countries Have Lost Faith in Upward Mobility”), Japanese youth were the most pessimistic of the 21 countries surveyed. Fully 70% thought that children today would be worse off than their parents. Several interviewed by the FT in 2020 stated that their central ambition in life is to find a stable job at a company and avoid risk. The shares of young people interested in traveling abroad and learning foreign languages have been falling.
• Forget big dreams. Japanese youth are trying their best not to rock the boat as they tiptoe into the future. And they're not alone. While Japan is one of the more extreme examples, declining age aspiration is also the reality among Millennials and Homelanders in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere in Asia. Faced with a future filled with challenges, it's no wonder that more young people aren't eager to grow up.