In recent years, Japan’s identity as the renowned land of manga art and high tech has taken a backseat to a pressing concern: the country’s declining birth rate. Various reasons have been attributed to this demographic challenge, such as economic concerns, changing societal norms, and the high cost of child-rearing.
However, a recent online survey on Twitter with tens of thousands of participants has shed light on a significant yet often overlooked reason: the negative portrayal of family life in Japanese society. The survey actually materializes what were mere conjectural concerns that we highlighted in a previous commentary.
It revealed a real apprehension, that the prevailing narrative of divorce and complaints about partners has discouraged many Japanese individuals from starting families. This in fact came as the second reason why people chose not to have a family, the first being a lack of self-confidence in “making one’s partner happy.”
The societal perception of family life plays indeed a crucial role in shaping individual decisions and desires regarding whether to start a family.
In Japan, the portrayal of family dynamics in media, especially news stories concerning famous showbiz personalities, but also the general online experience on Instagram, Facebook, etc. often focuses on negative aspects such as divorce, conflicts and dissatisfaction within relationships.
These are often seemingly harmless posts, or short videos that ridicule the choice of being a parent. Like a famous condom ad featuring a young man at a stage in life when he could be considering marriage. In this scenario, he finds himself in a situation where he encounters a loud and unruly child in a supermarket; he just stares at him thinking how grateful he is to have used a condom in his previous sexual encounters.
By presenting this relatable scene, the ad effectively conveys the message that contraception is not a means like it would have been in traditional advertising, of warding off venereal diseases, but is there to empower individuals to only think about the adverse consequences of being a parent.