During the Tang Dynasty in China, It had great respect for China and sent a large number of Envoys to China to study advanced systems and cultures.
Then he built himself into a "small Tang Dynasty" style, whether it is from architecture, canon, industrial and agricultural production technology, or culture and art, it is simply a miniature version of the Tang Dynasty.
Later, after the Song Dynasty, because the Song Dynasty was destroyed by the Mongols, Japan no longer studied China.
During the Meiji Restoration, Japan began to study Western countries such as Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, ranging from political systems to economic systems, as well as military, legal, cultural, architectural, and so on.
After the Meiji Restoration, Japan became the first country in Asia to complete industrialization.
After World War II, Japan fell into the arms of the United States, becoming the world's second largest economy in the 1980s, and is now surpassed by China, but it is also the third largest economy in the world.
Such a nation that constantly learns from other countries seems to be unbreakable, impregnable, and I will learn whoever is strong, and recently successfully held the Tokyo Olympic Games, which has attracted the world's attention.
But its future socio-economic environment does not seem to be optimistic, And Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, who made predictions for Japan a few years ago, said: "I am very pessimistic about Japan's future, and Japan is doomed to mediocrity." ”
So why did Lee Kuan Yew, the national leader and political strongman of Singapore, a developed country in Asia, say so? Is he right?
First of all, let's take a look at Lee Kuan Yew's own experience, Lee Kuan Yew was born in 1923, a Chinese Singaporean, whose ancestral home is Meizhou, Guangdong.
He was both a good student and was forced to interrupt his studies when he was studying at Raffles College High School, one of Singapore's top British schools, due to the Japanese invasion of Singapore.
The damage done to him by Japan did not stop there, in 1942, when he was 19 years old, he met a Japanese soldier on the street one day.
At that time, Japan had a rule in Singapore that all locals who saw Japanese soldiers must bend down and bow ninety degrees, but Lee Kuan Yew did not know this rule, so he was beaten by Japanese soldiers without bowing and forced to kneel.
Lee Kuan Yew was later arrested by the Japanese as rebellious youth, and one day, the Japanese wanted to transport a group of young Singaporeans to the seashore, and then let them dig a pit for themselves, waiting to be shot and then fall into the pit themselves.
Lee Kuan Yew was also one of these young men to be killed, but before he got on the bus, he made up a reason to go back to the barracks, just when the Japanese army changed guards and forgot about him, so he hid.
From Lee Kuan Yew's experience, it is not difficult to see that he has a prejudice against the Japanese.
There are reasons for his pessimistic view of Japan's future, but the deeper reason is that there is a problem with Japan itself, and that is aging.
According to the latest data, Japan's total population is 126 million, while there are 36.17 million 65-year-olds, accounting for a staggering 28%, the most aging country among the world's major developed economies.
Of the 36.17 million people over the age of 65, nearly 8.92 million are still on the job, and they are exerting their residual heat in all walks of life, and some are even more capable than young people.
In China, the elderly in cities over 60 years old basically receive pensions, bring children at home, dance square dances, and the career of this life is basically over.
In Japan, it is different, the eighty-year-old man does the construction work and smashes the wall decoration, and the eighty-year-old grandmother serves plates in the restaurant and bows to the guests to thank them.
So how did Japan's aging ageing come about? What are the consequences?
The first is that the average life expectancy of Japanese people has been greatly improved, and the rapid development of modern medical technology and the healthy living and eating habits of Japanese people have created this long-lived country.
In 2000, the average life expectancy of Japanese men was 77.72 years, and the average life expectancy of women was 84.6 years.
By 2020, the average age of Japanese men has reached 81.64 years old, and women have reached 87.74 years old, which is one of the reasons for the increase in the number of elderly people in Japan and the deep aging.
Another important reason for aging is that Japan has become a low-desire society.
Since the bursting of the Japanese economic bubble in 1991, Japan has entered a lost 30 years, and in these 30 years, the Japanese economy has been in a slump and a long-term downturn.
However, in order to survive, enterprises can only increase the labor intensity of employees, so the work pressure of Japanese office workers is very large.
As a result, young office workers still have the energy to get married and have children, which has led to a decline in Japan's fertility rate year after year.
To this end, the Japanese government has lowered the legal age of marriage to 18 years old, and even this will not help, a society that is overwhelmed by people, everywhere is lifeless, and office workers are in a hurry every day and are silent.
Can't find a job at home, watch manga and play games to survive, according to statistics, there are as many as 1 million young adults in Japan who do not work at home, so can the non-dynamic society not enter the deep aging?
According to experts, Japan's aging degree will continue to deepen, and by 2040, the proportion of 65-year-olds in Japan will reach one-third of the total population, and the situation is quite grim.
So what exactly will an aging society bring?
The first is that the burden of government finance has increased, and the cost of social security pensions and the establishment of a huge pension service system has increased significantly.
As a result, the expenditure that should have been used for economic construction has shrunk, and the government has to postpone the retirement age to maintain the normal payment of pensions.
In addition, the body of the elderly is gradually weakened, the expenditure of the medical insurance system has increased significantly, and with the reduction of young people, the medical insurance income has not increased, or even decreased, so it poses a serious threat to whether medical insurance can operate normally.
Not only at the level of social security, aging also poses a major threat to socio-economic development, first and foremost affecting the once glorious Japanese real estate industry.
In some small towns and rural areas of Japan, there have even been cases of free houses.
The reason is that the population of these places is mainly elderly, and young people either go to work in big cities such as Tokyo, or they are reluctant to have children, and there is no new force, resulting in a large number of vacant houses.
The second is the serious shortage of labor, whether it is manufacturing or service industry, which needs a large number of labor to support.
When no one comes to produce or provide services, factories close and restaurants close, which is why many of Japan's densely populated industries can see the elderly working.
Another important impact on the economy is the downturn in consumption.
Japan was suppressed by the United States in the 1980s, and the yen appreciated sharply, resulting in exports being blocked, and then the excess capacity was not absorbed by domestic demand, and it was impossible to establish a large cycle of domestic consumption.
The main reason for this is aging, and the consumption power of the elderly is itself weak.
The increasing proportion of the elderly group has led to a sluggish domestic consumption in Japan and a loss of 30 years for the Japanese economy, which is one of the main reasons.
The Japanese government has also taken some measures in the face of the aging crisis, such as the establishment of laws and regulations to improve parenting and education policies, improve the employment environment and career stability of young people, and promote the employment of the elderly and women.
Strengthen the development of modern scientific and technological fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and the Internet of Things to solve the problem of serious labor shortage.
However, these policies have not yet achieved the expected effect on solving the problem of aging, and cannot fundamentally solve the problem of aging.
So Japan decided to relax labor visas two years ago, and in the past Japan had very strict requirements for labor visas in terms of occupation and technology, but now it can only relax the standards in order to cope with aging.
Experts predict that by 2030, Japan's immigrants will reach one-tenth of the Japanese population.
If this is the case, then Japan's aging crisis may indeed be gradually resolved, but can Japan really become a country of immigrants? I think there is a lot of resistance to this.
Most Japanese are more xenophobic, with the majority of Japanese opposed to accepting too many immigrants, according to polls.
A great feature of the Japanese nation is that I don't cause you trouble, but you can't disturb my life, they are full of vigilance against immigrants, worried that immigrants will disturb their lives.
In the United States, for example, the increase in immigration has indeed led to an increase in crime rates, and the Japanese people's fears are justified. Therefore, in the future, whether Japan can rely on immigrants to solve the problem of aging is still very variable.
It can be seen that Lee Kuan Yew's predictions for Japan's future are likely to come true, but there is another deeper reason why Lee Kuan Yew said this about Japan.
That is, Singapore and Japan are also facing the problem of aging, and Lee Kuan Yew wants to use Japan as an example to tell Singaporeans about it, so as to effectively promote immigration policy in Singapore and reduce the corresponding resistance.
In fact, whether it is Japan or Singapore, if the immigration policy can be relaxed, then these two developed countries will attract a large number of immigrants from developing countries.
But the key lies in the acceptance of the people, which requires the two governments to change people's inherent ideology.
In the current era of scientific and technological and economic globalization, the concept of geography between countries is getting weaker and weaker, and in the period of agricultural civilization and industrial civilization, the state regards land as the most important, so it will break out in World War I and World War II.
Now that the global exchange of talent and technology has become more and more common, the future of various countries will only be more closely connected after the epidemic, not retrogressive.
Whoever can grasp this and open up to themselves will gain a foothold in the future era of technology.
If, like the Japanese people, continue to be xenophobic, then Japan may indeed go to mediocrity in the future, as Lee Kuan Yew said.