A tweet by Elon Musk saying Japan would “eventually cease to exist” without a higher birthrate yesterday set off a flood of sarcasm and anger — but much of angst was aimed at a Japanese government many said has done little to address the issue.
Musk, the head of electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc, on Saturday wrote on Twitter: “At risk of stating the obvious, unless something changes to cause the birth rate to exceed the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist. This would be a great loss for the world.”
The comment hit a nerve among Japan watchers and in Japan, whose population peaked in 2008 and has declined since due to its low birthrate to about 125 million as of last year, despite government warnings and sporadic attempts to grapple with the issue.
Photo: Reuters
However, Japan remains the world’s third-largest economy, host to global heavyweights ranging from auto manufacturers to games developers, and is a key link in global semiconductor supply chains.
“What is even the point of tweeting this?” wrote Tobias Harris, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
“The anxieties surrounding Japan’s demographic future is not that ‘Japan will eventually cease to exist,’ but rather the profound social dislocations that are occurring as a result of the decline to a lower population level,” he wrote.
Others said sluggish birthrates plague many nations besides Japan, including Germany, where Tesla has just opened a new factory, and that Japan was simply being hit first.
However, many Japanese commentators said the situation was not surprising and slammed their government for not doing enough to fight it, such as by providing more daycare centers and making it easier for women to return to work after having children.
“They keep saying the birthrate’s falling, but given that the government isn’t taking thorough steps to deal with it, what can we say? Everything they say and do is contradictory,” Twitter user SROFF wrote. “In this environment, who’s going to say: ‘Okay, let’s have a child’? I despair for Japan.”
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
RSS