sc94597 said:
Japan is an isolated island with tons of resouces relative to its population. Actually today the problem seems to be more about space than resources, which is rare. How else do you think they industrialized a few decades before almost every other East Asian country? I doubt anybody would say Japan's history of poverty is anywhere near that of China. Tons and Tons of people starved to death, and still starve to day. You rarely hear about that about Japan or anything about that in their history. The most you probably hear or read about is the poverty after the Pacific War, but it seems about right that any country after a war would be impoverished. Now I'm not saying poverty was non-existant, no of course not, every civilization in existance had impoverished people. Also imo, economic history rarely affects anybody today compared to that of what is happening in the economy as of present. With extensive global trade, the economy of a country could change in months, and that means the average person is always changing their spending habits to fit this. This is unlike in earlier times, when economies were the same for hundreds of years, and there were strict classes. If the japanese were as cheap as you say, I doubt the average person would buy a new cell phone every month just cause they want the latest thing. I doubt expensive luxuries like video games would be prevelant. I doubt they would try to go for the latest technologies like they have been. Instead it seems very common to see things that are high tech, but trivial there such as vending machines for just about anything you could have. So like I said, stereotyping is rarely true. |
I'm only going to list a few things, because you are typing too much information that are not needed since you clearly don't understand Japanese society, in the spam of the JP history until recently, no chairs, some benchs, chopsticks, no spoons, a ton of yellow bean products, some rice, some wheat, almost no land meat, sometimes random mountain herbs, some seafoods, cold ass weather that can't grow a lot of things, and tatami, that's it man, for the whole country, for thousands of years. oh and civil wars. saving is imbued into the society just by looking at their general living style too, and for good reasons, they haven't had the spending power for years now either. in fact they just admitted that the country is in deep deep trouble last month, the reason why you don't know this is because, 1.) they didn't release such information before and 2.) you haven't spent enough time there and simply don't know how they live.
for years now, the electronic business and gaming industry has been shrinking in Japan, that's because people simply have no money and they have to save to get by, those are not needed products and the cost of living is simply way too high, cell phone sales have been going down as well, and not just cell phones, everything. and those vending machines and public showers you have to put money in, those? good for the homeless, convient if it's downstairs, but at least they don't always need an address to get a job unlike in the states.
and don't even get me started with the Chinese side of things(or southern Asia in general,) the history is 10 times shittier. trust me, we are cheap asses in general, for good reasons.
