When reading articles in the American press about problems in America, such as high prices for homes, inequality, low wages, low test scores, and so forth, it’s always fun to hit CTRL-F (or Command-F on a Mac) to see if the text string “migra” is included anywhere in the article. Normally, in articles about troubles in America, there’s no mention of the role of “immigration,” “immigrants,” “migration,” or whatever.

When reading American articles about conditions in Japan, such as increasing housing space per Japanese person, it’s interesting to try the same thing. You’ll often see that “immigration” is mentioned in the article, although not as a problem, of course. Instead, it is always The Solution for whatever is said to ail Japan.

By JONATHAN SOBLE AUG. 23, 2015

YOKOSUKA, Japan — Ever since her elderly neighbor moved a decade ago, Yoriko Haneda has done what she can to keep the empty house she left behind from becoming an eyesore. Ms. Haneda regularly trims its shrubs and clips its narrow strip of grass, maintaining its perfect view of the sea. …

“There are empty houses everywhere, places where nobody’s lived for 20 years, and more are cropping up all the time,” said Ms. Haneda, 77, complaining that thieves had broken into her neighbor’s house twice and that a typhoon had damaged the roof of the one next to it.

Despite a deeply rooted national aversion to waste, discarded homes are spreading across Japan like a blight in a garden. Long-term vacancy rates have climbed significantly higher than in the United States or Europe, and some eight million dwellings are now unoccupied, according to a government count. Nearly half of them have been forsaken completely — neither for sale nor for rent, they simply sit there, in varying states of disrepair.

These ghost homes are the most visible sign of human retreat in a country where the population peaked a half-decade ago and is forecast to fall by a third over the next 50 years. The demographic pressure has weighed on the Japanese economy, as a smaller work force struggles to support a growing proportion of the old, and has prompted intense debate over long-term proposals to boost immigration or encourage women to have more children. …

Eventually, the article reveals that the Japanese having to tear down tiny, decaying shacks that nobody wants to live in anymore isn’t really a problem.

Hidetaka Yoneyama, a housing specialist at the Fujitsu Research Institute, a think tank, said that until recently, homes in Japan were built to last only about 30 years, when they were then expected to be torn down and rebuilt. Building quality is improving, but the market for secondhand homes remains tiny. Developers are still building more than 800,000 new homes and condominiums a year, despite the glut of vacancies.

Because they are small, falling-apart dumps, and modern Japanese people would rather live in nice new houses.

But don’t you feel sorry for the poor lonely old shacks who have nobody to live in t

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read full article at source: http://www.unz.com/isteve/due-to-a-lack-of-mass-immigration-japan-is-plagued-by-a-rising-standard-of-living/