Originally Posted by pbrower2a

In fact there's better.


That others give a d@mn for one matters even more than do little rocks of ultra-hard carbon.

Amen to that. Though the 3T characters mentioned below will never understand it unless they go through what I've come to call the Nomad Midlife Crisis: settle down, get married, and have children. Which, BTW, is happening. Far later in life than the Silent ventures into domesticity - in fact, at about the same age when the Silent started asking "Is that all there is?", buying red sports cars, and taking off for California to Find Themselves.

I might add that I have a granddaughter, aged 6, two grandsons going on 3 (cousins) and possibly another grandson on the way. His mother complains of being drowned in testosterone. <G>

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Amen to that. Though the 3T characters mentioned below will never understand it unless they go through what I've come to call the Nomad Midlife Crisis: settle down, get married, and have children. Which, BTW, is happening. Far later in life than the Silent ventures into domesticity - in fact, at about the same age when the Silent started asking "Is that all there is?", buying red sports cars, and taking off for California to Find Themselves.

I might add that I have a granddaughter, aged 6, two grandsons going on 3 (cousins) and possibly another grandson on the way. His mother complains of being drowned in testosterone. <G>

Speaking of midlife crises, I have a theory. Tell me what you think:

Prophets have "nostalgic" midlife crises in the Unraveling when they realize they are never going back to their revolutionary youth. They (not just the women, the men too) tend to react by pushing the age clock as far as they can. And when they finally realize there's no going back, they tell themselves they are the "coolest" midlifers ever, but that isn't really possible since they're so damn judgmental.

Nomads have "serious" midlife crises in the Crisis when they realize the fun and games are over, and it's time to stop being "bad" and start being logical. Once they have made the leap, they never go back. They embrace midlife more easily than Artists or Prophets, as they decide to be grounded, pragmatic, and tough parents. No frills.

Heroes have "conformist" midlife crises in the Recovery. This is the mildest midlife crisis because Heroes have already been so traumatized in youth. So when they enter midlife, they collectively agree to age gracefully and calmly. Aging vanity is much less common. Because Heroes are so relieved to have the Crisis over, they are fine to live "pleasantly" for a while.

Artists have by far the worst midlife crisis, the "self-discovery" midlife crisis in the Awakening. Since their youth experience was so cautious and stifled compared to the other generations, they break free at 40 instead of 21. Midlife vanity peaks as Artists insist on reliving their youth in a freer way. This midlife crisis can include motorcycles, casual sex, heavy drinking, marijuana, and anything else that should have been done 20 years earlier.

Originally Posted by 1990

Speaking of midlife crises, I have a theory. Tell me what you think:

Prophets have "nostalgic" midlife crises in the Unraveling when they realize they are never going back to their revolutionary youth. They (not just the women, the men too) tend to react by pushing the age clock as far as they can. And when they finally realize there's no going back, they tell themselves they are the "coolest" midlifers ever, but that isn't really possible since they're so damn judgmental.

Nomads have "serious" midlife crises in the Crisis when they realize the fun and games are over, and it's time to stop being "bad" and start being logical. Once they have made the leap, they never go back. They embrace midlife more easily than Artists or Prophets, as they decide to be grounded, pragmatic, and tough parents. No frills.

Heroes have "conformist" midlife crises in the Recovery. This is the mildest midlife crisis because Heroes have already been so traumatized in youth. So when they enter midlife, they collectively agree to age gracefully and calmly. Aging vanity is much less common. Because Heroes are so relieved to have the Crisis over, they are fine to live "pleasantly" for a while.

Artists have by far the worst midlife crisis, the "self-discovery" midlife crisis in the Awakening. Since their youth experience was so cautious and stifled compared to the other generations, they break free at 40 instead of 21. Midlife vanity peaks as Artists insist on reliving their youth in a freer way. This midlife crisis can include motorcycles, casual sex, heavy drinking, marijuana, and anything else that should have been done 20 years earlier.

That makes very good sense.

BTW, when I was re-reading a novel based on the Matter of Britain (forget which one) it suddenly came to me: Merlin was born old and aged backwards.
Therefore he HAD to have been Artist Gen.

The Grey Badger, aging into childhood at a high rate of speed.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

That makes very good sense.

BTW, when I was re-reading a novel based on the Matter of Britain (forget which one) it suddenly came to me: Merlin was born old and aged backwards.
Therefore he HAD to have been Artist Gen.

The Grey Badger, aging into childhood at a high rate of speed.

LOL. So I guess I got it right. The generation after mine is going to get a lot wilder at 45 than we ever would have been at 20.

Originally Posted by 1990

Speaking of midlife crises, I have a theory. Tell me what you think:

Prophets have "nostalgic" midlife crises in the Unraveling when they realize they are never going back to their revolutionary youth. They (not just the women, the men too) tend to react by pushing the age clock as far as they can. And when they finally realize there's no going back, they tell themselves they are the "coolest" midlifers ever, but that isn't really possible since they're so damn judgmental.

Nomads have "serious" midlife crises in the Crisis when they realize the fun and games are over, and it's time to stop being "bad" and start being logical. Once they have made the leap, they never go back. They embrace midlife more easily than Artists or Prophets, as they decide to be grounded, pragmatic, and tough parents. No frills.

Heroes have "conformist" midlife crises in the Recovery. This is the mildest midlife crisis because Heroes have already been so traumatized in youth. So when they enter midlife, they collectively agree to age gracefully and calmly. Aging vanity is much less common. Because Heroes are so relieved to have the Crisis over, they are fine to live "pleasantly" for a while.

Artists have by far the worst midlife crisis, the "self-discovery" midlife crisis in the Awakening. Since their youth experience was so cautious and stifled compared to the other generations, they break free at 40 instead of 21. Midlife vanity peaks as Artists insist on reliving their youth in a freer way. This midlife crisis can include motorcycles, casual sex, heavy drinking, marijuana, and anything else that should have been done 20 years earlier.

Having seen everything other than the Heroes' non-Crisis in midlife, largely because the Heroes' non-Crisis is so slight that it made one forget that it existed, I can state that such is so.

Because the Artists' "midlife crisis" was so new and obvious, the Silent mid-life crisis got attention as none had since their Progressive predecessors. They break from the norms that they once endorsed as society loosens. They try to live as if they are still young, adopting and partially imitating younger adults as if there were something to learn. There is -- that Prophet behavior in young adults is catastrophic to children. They make partial amends, but not enough.

Prophets indeed seem to live as if their youth is the model for all to emulate... never mind that their early adulthood created a mess for almost everyone younger. They would like to stop moving the pages of the calendar because they recognize that the world can never get better than it was when they were 20 or so. To be sure, some Prophets act as if 50 is still young -- I have said "but it's a young 50". It can be -- if Prophets haven't wrecked their lives with drugs, heavy drinking, or obesity.

We are beginning to see Nomads (Thirteeners) entering midlife, a generation that got the most harm and least good out of the Awakening. They indulged more in the pathologies of the Awakening and could never get the culture. It's a pity... so they try to imitate their juniors in a return to the rational and classical to the extent that such is possible. Of course more of them were druggies and heavy drinkers, so what they find necessary is often impossible. I think that Nomads age faster than any of the other generational types... and not with more grace. We have seen accounts of the Lost crack-up, which wasn't pretty. As Hemingway said of his peers, "The old aren't wiser. They are just more cautious" applies well to those who did everything too hard and with too little thought in childhood but whose biology dictates that they do otherwise.. I have found that wild youth become the crustiest of conservatives, and that docile youth become more daring with age...is there any surprise?

I am old enough to remember GIs in Midlife (think of Archie Bunker's realization that he was 50 as an unwelcome milestone), and for them midlife was no big deal. They know well that they can no longer fight The Big One, but they can remember it and insist that everyone else remember it.

Originally Posted by Tristan

This is a very late reply, however your quotes are interesting about the Taisho period in Japan. I have read a little bit about the era myself, the period did seem very much like an awakening period. With the awakening ending around 1925, The Pacific War period has a lot of hallmarks of the unravelling, for example most people in 1930's Japan were more focused on celebrity murder trails like that Abe Sada than on the war on China.

From what I know about Militarist ideology, there is a very mystical, spiritual component, which dominated it, around the divinity of the emperor and Japan's manifest destiny. I have a feeling the Militarists were a bunch of reactionary Propherts (at least with the leadership which was Middle Aged during the 1930's).

If this 4T turns out to be mainly economic in emphasis (S & H mentioned that concept), then I suspect that the Millenials will have a lifecycle similar to the War & Recovery generation. Presumably the next Awakening would resemble Japan's recent one, that is, more like the Missionary Awakening than the Boom Awakening.

Originally Posted by Tristan

I fully agree with you Odin about developments in Japan. Japan and maybe Korea are one of the few areas of the globe not on our saeculum or very near to it. The Middle East and maybe Latin America is another.

The developments in Japanese society during the last 2 decades is indicate of a 2T. Nowhere near as much upheval in society as last 2T was for us, more like what happened during the Missionary Awakening or the The Great Awakening. But some big changes have happended in Japanese society.

Has this latest Awakening been of the Apollo/Dontrinal/Man-Centered type? Because of its similarity to the Boom Awakening, I have wondered if Taisho might have been of the Dyonysus/Moral/God-centered type.

So the party that rules Japan since 1955 is thrown out. A Fourth Turning event?

I think it is interesting that the Japanese threw out the Aso who was their prime minister.

Looks like I was wrong with Japan's saeculum, Japan is clearly 4T now. The Lib-Dems got crushed!

Originally Posted by Odin

Looks like I was wrong with Japan's saeculum, Japan is clearly 4T now. The Lib-Dems got crushed!

Because Japan's 1T began at roughly the same time as ours began, any suggestion that Japan can escape this 4T requires some sort of national exceptionalism. In the absence of cause, one must presume that Japan's generational timetable is with ours.

Our GOP started to reel politically in 2005, and I can only figure that the LDP started having some problems at nearly the same time.

Foreign Affairs, Sept./Oct. 2009 issue

Japan's Holy War: The Ideology of Radical Shinto Ultranationalism by Walter A. Skya

"Skya argues, controversially, that the wave of political assassinations and ideological crackdowns that led to Japanese militarism were not just about power struggles and nationalism; instead, they grew out of a fundamentalist Shinto movement promoted by certain writers whose influence has been largely overlooked. Shinto fundamentalists believed that the emperor's rule was sacred, absolute, and direct; that the divine oneness of the Japanese nation was an attribute not shared by any other people...and that the emperor's rule should be worldwide even though no other ethnic group could stand on an equal cosmic plane with the Japanese. Skya finds numerous arallels with contemporary Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. The study may help illuminate some otherwise indecipherable currents of thinking that exist in Japan even today."

Hi, this is my first time posting here and am hoping to contribute more across the forum. Being the first time putting any of this down it may be a bit disjointed.

As a resident in Japan I hope I can give a first-hand perspective in this. Much of this is simply the best estimate I have as of now so feel free to correct me where you see fit.

I've come to conclude with a fair degree of certainty that Japan is at early-mid 2T at the earliest, and just breaking into 3T at the latest. Definitely not 4T as the generational archetypes and the national mood simply do not match up.

Generations

The easiest generation to fit are the Artists, who roughly make up somewhere between those in their mid-30s to late 50s. Very unassertive, high on etiquette and low on pragmatic thinking, they came into the workforce during the job-for-life period in the seventies-eighties bubble much as those in the American High of the fifties, and generally fill the role of subservient company-people. In middle-age they don't seem to be filling the executive roles very quickly (though I don't have any stats at hand to confirm) and company presidents seem almost exclusively of the 60+ generation, the hubristic "Hero" generation that pulled Japan out of the post-war crisis and up to now have invested heavily in endless (and often aimless) public works projects at the expense of a huge national debt and decreasing opportunities for young workers, and now embroiled in corruption.

On the political front this is also reflected - from Morihiro Hosokawa in 1993 to Taro Aso in 2009 the hero generation dominated the Prime Minister's role with almost all being born between the years 1936-1942. Only the Socialist party's Tomiichi Murayama (elder Nomad) in the mid-90s and Shinzo Abe broke the mold. Abe became the first Artist prime minister but was weak and largely subservient to the elder Heros (typical of other-oriented Artists). He quit before a year was up as his health was failing in the role.

Yukio Hatoyama now is the first Artist prime minister and his agenda caters far more towards the young Prophet generation than the elder Heros, a sign of the Awakening shift. Don't mistake his election for a 4T event. It is not. His platform was one of values, assistance for the young, increased child care assistance, overhaul of the many outdated laws, regulations and practices in Japan. Basically his election is related to an imminent/ongoing values revolution and not any kind of systemic overhaul typical of a 4T.

The Prophet generation are actually very hard to identify but there are enough examples to make a rough estimate. The first high-profile example may have been Takafumi Horie (born 1972) - the Livedoor entrepreneur who dared go against the established grain and was later indicted for securities fraud. As Wiki states:

"The veracity of the suspicions aside, many smelled conspiracy given the timing of the action. It was seen as a political move by defenders of the status quo to punish Horie for daring to challenge them, and to discredit him and the business practices he had come to represent, which Horie's opponents considered distasteful and "un-Japanese."

It would be interesting to see how a similar situation would be handled now, with the Artist alignment now seemingly swinging to the younger Prophets over the elder Heros.

Meanwhile the those of the Hero generation are now increasingly complaining about how young workers aren't following established social and work practices, appear completely self-absorbed, lack manners and don't respective their elders as they 'should'. The Prophets on the other hand see the dwindling job opportunities, unappealing working conditions and lack of support, and refuse to go with the grain.

The child generation are also exemplary of Prophet/Nomad. Violent acts in schools set a new record this year, child suicides are increasing. High school kids are visibly bigger, stronger and tougher than those that went before them.

Turnings

I'll quickly close off with where I estimate the turnings to have occured.

4T - 1946 to 1970
1T - 1971 to 1994
2T - 1995 to present

These dates are huge approximations and are just rough markers until I do some proper research, but I'll go into some of the reasoning another time. As people have mentioned Japan is a very difficult one to figure out and often trends and behaviour go against what would be expected at any point on the cycle. I have a theory that this is partly due to the misalignment with most of the rest of the world, and the influence of the 'world' cycle on Japan. Or maybe Japan's just weird ;-)

Mochy

PS Odin, I quickly read your blog and really enjoyed it. Please keep posting. I will comment soon.

Hi,


Thought I would write a few things that I believe have to happen for Japan to come out a shiny happy country again:

1) Respect for elders must be toned down...just a hair. If you notice, the ruling elite of Japan are mostly fifty or older. In part this has to do with birth trends, but the other half has to do with a deeply rooted East Asian belief in honoring one's elders. Perhaps if it is proven to the younger generation that there is a difference between respecting your elders and following them blindly because they are your elders, an explosive change shall occur. Perhaps it is a good thing that the younger generation is more hotheaded.

2) Women are no longer entitled to just a looking glass when they marry. They are entitled to much more. The amount of women getting married is way, way, WAY down, and the average age of marriage is up for the ladies. Culturally, a Japanese woman is expected to quit her job the minute she gets a positive pregnancy test. She is also, traditionally, expected to look after not only her children, but also the grandparents. Over the past 30 years, a lot of women have had to suffer the slings and arrows of being married to a salaryman: this often meant her husband had to go out drinking with the boss or couldn't leave work until the boss did. (Consequently, he wasn't home much.) When her husband was home, she was expected to pour his tea, make his dinner, and defer to him on all financial matters (and the courts favor men in divorce proceedings.) At work, the glass ceiling as we call it in America and Europe becomes one made of steel: a female employee has little chance of advancement in a company. It is a rough life. It is not a wonder that there is a baby strike in Japan at this moment and that elder generations are at a loss at how to correct it, as the lives of women in Japan c. 1957 were even more restrictive.

3) Gaijin: a term that must die an horrific death. The myth of the perpetual foreigner is one that has been nursed in Japan for many years, even going back before the Meiji era. In the last big blowup for Japan, it went hand in hand with ultra-nationalism and the taking of large swaths of East Asia during WWII. The stoking of nationalism in Japan today, thus, could be dangerous for non-Japanese living in Japan if we want to be accurate with history. The current administration must tread carefully.

If we want to gaze at current events, to be a gaijin in Japan is not always a good thing. The law may say one thing, but the enforcement is another (look at the case of Debito Arudo for reference, or the nightmare over a Japanese mother taking her son away from his American father...and he cannot appeal.) Foreigners in Japan are many times as likely to be arrested for a violent crime as a native. As the marriage and birthrates plummet in Japan the importation of brides from poorer Asian nations climbs, and because of the lax enforcement/acknowledgment of domestic violence, a lot of Vietnamese and Thai brides find their wedding to be a dream, but their life to be a nightmare. In academic circles, non-Japanese professors rarely get tenure and in corporate circles they rarely get hired at all.

Japan's most serious threat, as I have illustrated, is that its birthrate is one of the lowest on earth. It is a nation that has defined itself by blood purity for eons: but this might not be able to continue. It is a nation that has been known to be biased towards males: this might not be able to continue and there is a passive-aggressive rebellion against it.

The biggest and worst case scenario I can think of is that China, with its millions of ultra-nationalist and information deprived public, starts making claims on pieces of Asia that typically have not been actually under Chinese control for many years but the Chinese claim as "culturally part of" China. If America loses too much influence in the Pacific and after it has a few other areas under its belt, it will go after Japan, partly because it wants revenge for WWII and the century of humiliation at the hands of foreigners, Japan included (albeit, I might add, that nobody has ever told the average young Chinese that China stopped growing culturally and scientifically in the 1500s, ergo by 1800 they were sitting ducks for the rest of the world.) Japan has nukes, yes, but it also has the big problem that it isn't having children anymore: nobody to fill the army ranks in its defense. Japan has long since identified with blood purity as a measure of Japaneseness: this might not work out to their advantage if they don't relax attitudes towards citizens where a parent is not Japanese.

Originally Posted by Mary Kate 1982

(fantastic stuff)

Mary Kate, I have no idea when you'll see this response to your old post, which is an excellent one!

I agree wholeheartedly on the nationalism stuff. Politicians like Tokyo mayor Shintaro Ishihara are frightening in how they can get away with racist, nativist attitudes that would have most Western politicians booted from office.

Where I'm going to have to disagree with you is on any kind of pro-male bias in society, or at least any bias in favor of the average man that outweighs the price he has to pay in life.

Indeed, a woman is still expected to quit work when she gets married. But at the same time, her husband is expected to provide for her for the rest of their lives, even if -- and I'm about to go into taboo territory here -- she refuses to pay any attention to him or to have sex with him entirely. She's expected to quit work to devote herself to children. Emphasis on "children" -- she can ignore hubby utterly once the first kid is born.

While the glass ceiling remains, the man is still expected to work his life away for the company. Overwork-related deaths and suicides are still over 95% male, and it would be an insult to these hard-working men and fathers to demand that women take half of the high-paying and executive-level jobs while this hideous number remains unchanged.

Life for a Japanese man has never been easy, and I think one thing that stokes male disillusionment and depression is that today, the typical female role (child-rearing), while no cakewalk, brings with it a lot of inner satisfaction as you see your own flesh and blood grow into an adult, whereas life as an overworked corporate slave doesn't do much for the mental health of those forced into it.

Contrast this with the 1960s - the salarymen of that era could see Japan becoming a visibly richer and more affluent nation with each passing year. Those long hours on the job brought about a feeling of "Japan Inc." community as old luxuries became affordable and regular folks could have cars, refrigerators, TVs -- so both gender roles, rigid though they were, brought satisfaction if you accepted them. This started to unravel as the '80s bubble burst and job security vanished but the long hours and the stress didn't go anywhere.

So what we've got today is a society in which neither sex wants to get married -- the intelligent, capable women don't want to retreat into the kitchen, and the men, seeing what their fathers endured, aren't very keen on throwing their lives away in slavery.

Which brings us to the demographic crisis which is already predestined: birthrates fell off so significantly in the 1990s that there aren't gonig to be enough workers to take care of the massive (and massively self-entitled) Boom elderly. The government doesn't want immigrants -- there are a million little slights that affect even people from less-disliked Western countries -- and a frightening majority of the people seem to prefer seeing Japan sink into second-class status rather than open up.

Japan's High came in the decades leading up to the 1980s with the famous "bubble" economy. Was the 1990s an Awakening? I'm not sure, but I think the Unraveling is right now, and is just getting started. The Baby Boomers, having taken political power, seem determined to wring all the wealth out of all the younger generations (doubling the consumption tax and devoting it all to old-agepensions!? Thanks, new PM! ) and live it up while the nation goes out with a whimper.

"So what we've got today is a society in which neither sex wants to get married -- the intelligent, capable women don't want to retreat into the kitchen, and the men, seeing what their fathers endured, aren't very keen on throwing their lives away in slavery."

That sounds exactly like America at the cusp of the Awakening! "The Feminine Mystique" spoke to women's discontent and "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", to men's. And yet, isn't Japan somewhere around it's 4T?

That is a great analysis, Mary Kate! So You think Japan is late Awakening? That actually makes a lot of sense given what I know about Japanese pop culture.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

"So what we've got today is a society in which neither sex wants to get married -- the intelligent, capable women don't want to retreat into the kitchen, and the men, seeing what their fathers endured, aren't very keen on throwing their lives away in slavery."

That sounds exactly like America at the cusp of the Awakening! "The Feminine Mystique" spoke to women's discontent and "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", to men's. And yet, isn't Japan somewhere around it's 4T?

I sense something analogous happening here. I do get the strong impression that many Xers and even early Millennials are loath to get married only to undergo bitter divorce a few years later... like their parents, or their friends' parents, did.

Doesn't mean we, or the Japanese, aren't in a Crisis, though. This is still fallout from the last Awakening and early Unravelling... which hopefully will be resolved during the 4T.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

That sounds exactly like America at the cusp of the Awakening! "The Feminine Mystique" spoke to women's discontent and "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", to men's. And yet, isn't Japan somewhere around it's 4T?

Not if the social mood is the way it is described. People constantly make the mistake of making wars the markers for what is a social cycle. It is entirely possible that WWII was, for Japan, not a 4T-war. What would tell the turning is how the society related to itself then (or now). If people in Japan are behaving in a 2T manner, it would be because it is the 2T there.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Not if the social mood is the way it is described. People constantly make the mistake of making wars the markers for what is a social cycle. It is entirely possible that WWII was, for Japan, not a 4T-war. What would tell the turning is how the society related to itself then (or now). If people in Japan are behaving in a 2T manner, it would be because it is the 2T there.

To really get a handle on that, we'd have to look at what was going on, socially speaking, in Japan back in the 1930s and '40s. Do you, or does anyone else here, know? For example, were there anti-war protests in Japan over the invasion of Manchuria, along the lines of hippies standing up against Vietnam?

All I know about Japan was that it was almost in a permanent Unraveling between 1639 and 1854. The American threat to Japanese sovereignty was a catalyst for a 4T that was about 30 years long where Japan was completely transformed when it came to industrialization, political structure, public works etc
That would make 1885-1910 their 1T which makes sense because that was when they won major wars against China and Russia and gained quite a bit of territory.

Going from that, 1910 to 1945 could easily be one really really long 2T...

EDIT: However, if Japan was indeed in a 2T during WWII, then what was their Crisis?

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

To really get a handle on that, we'd have to look at what was going on, socially speaking, in Japan back in the 1930s and '40s. Do you, or does anyone else here, know? For example, were there anti-war protests in Japan over the invasion of Manchuria, along the lines of hippies standing up against Vietnam?

Not that I ever heard of. Rather, there were the Japanese equivalent of suicide bombers; and holdouts on remote Pacific Islands for decades to come. And a total change of their political culture and focus afterwards. I have absolutely no doubt that WWII was a 4T for Japan.

Originally Posted by Rose1992

Going from that, 1910 to 1945 could easily be one really really long 2T...

EDIT: However, if Japan was indeed in a 2T during WWII, then what was their Crisis?

Rose, I'm still an amateur with saeculum theory, but let me offer up the idea that the immediate postwar period was the Crisis, or was the culmination of a Crisis period which contains the 15-year-long Pacific War and then its immediate aftermath.

Elderly Japanese I've met have told me about their surprise and relief at how magnanimous the US was after defeating Japan. The Japanese military certainly didn't behave that way after their Pacific conquests!

And it was the democracy movement after the war that changed so much of society -- the military was almost completely disbanded; an article in the new constitution premanently renounced war; the nation devoted itself to rebuilding, and underwent an economic miracle much like the one in Germany.

A lot of the prewar elements managed to sneak back into society -- prewar politicians found seats in government; the police forces were re-centralized at the national level just two years after the Occupation ended (though the infamous Kempeitai military police were gone) -- but in general life was much better, and continued to get better all the time.

We were talking about fertility rates; here's a graph comparing mother's ages when giving birth, since 1970:



(The only Japanese you'll need in roder to read this is to know that the first line on the right is "14 and under" and the last one is "45 and over".)

Notice the big dropoff in under-24 mothers after 1975, and the twin corssings around 2003, when mothers aged 35-39 surpassed those 20-24, and the emergence of the 30-34 group as the largest. Today mothers over 30 vastly outnumber those in their 20s.

What isn't shown here is the raw number of births, or the number of births per couple. That number slipped below 2.00 in 1974 and shows no signs of coming back:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%...ate,_Japan.svg

Maybe you could say that the "postwar" period ended with the Tokyo Olympic Games of 1964. The kids born in the decade or so surrounding this were called the shinjin-rui or "New Breed" -- people who rejected their parents' values, embraced bubble-fueled hedonism as they got high-paying jobs in the mid/late '80s. Is this period a High? 1T?

Today a lot of these people cling emotionally to that Bubble and can't understand when the following generations praise some of the good parts of today's less booming economy -- reasonably-priced real estate, no inflation, less extravagant spending by the moneyed, less ostentatious displays of wealth, etc.

People born around 1971-74 are called "junior baby boomers", having been borne by baby boomers who married and gave birth earlier than their American counterparts did.

Next comes the "Lost Generation" or "Ice Agers" (so called because employment prospects, and people's spirits, entered an "ice age" as the 1980s bubble burst; they endured the tough competition to get into college and make the grade only to find that there were fewer job slots waiting for them); this group comprises births from roughly 1974-1987. They saw their predecessors get rich, and then when their turn was coming up, the goalposts weren't just moved -- the entire finish line was taken down and the people handing out finisher's medals vanished!

If you're born after 1987-1990 or so, that means you started school after the early 1990s, and thus know only the "yutori" education system, in which much of the infamous rigor was taken out of schooling; Saturday classes eliminated; massive vacancies in colleges meant the end of "examination hell". The word "yutori" means roughly "leisure" and was an initiative to make school less stressful and more fun. Predictably, the "yutori" kids are considered to have been coddled and to show a distinct aversion to things like effort. On the other hand, some of these kids, betrayed (in a sense) by dumbed-down schooling, will really emerge once they get to college and really put their brains to work. (I go to grad school in Tokyo, and these undergrads a decade my junior are really interesting once you get past their horrible cell-phone manners and the occasional lacuna in their knowledge of the world! )

So those are the post 1970 generations as seen by Japanese.

1930-mid '60s = long Crisis/4T?
late '60s - 1990 = High/1T
1990-present = Awakening/2T?

This means turnings of over 30 years whereas "generations" (or at least are-based groupings of people) are often seen as being 10-15 years each.

And I have no idea how they fit into the Nomad/Reactive/etc. setup -- you guys decide!

Dunan. It's really awesome to have your perspective from Japan. Thanks for the post.

Charles Hugh Smith -- one of my favorite bloggers -- has this to say about younger Japanese people in their 20s and 30s and their alienation from society:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/ca...uths/19580780/

Much of it echoes what we've been saying about the Lost/"Ice Age" Generation here.

Dunan, you're on the scene, but your data looks consistent to me with Japan being only about 5 years behind us, maybe a little more, on the cycle, which is also what I've always thought about western Europe.

The birth data is mind-boggling. A recent New York Times article argued that the experience of various industrial nations over the last 50 years shows that if you don't make it easy for women to combine work and motherhood, they will choose work. The more traditional nations like Japan and Italy who refused to make their lives easier have seen their birth rates fall off a cliff. The Scandinavians, France and the US even have done much better.