Name: 日本人は絶滅の危機に瀕しているのか？ (Are the Japanese risking extinction?)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:01:59.000Z
Duration: 16 min 30 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

過去形

It's 7am in the mountain village of Nanmoku, announced with typical Japanese eccentricity

7-year-old Yosuke Iwai and his brother and sister are off to school.

Nanmoku Elementry School dwarfs the houses around it. There used to be over 1200 students

Yosuke Iwai is in first grade. He has been top of his class all year. But there's a simple

If I write the wrong answer, I'll be in trouble.

I enjoy being the best, sometimes I feel sad, I feel lonely. My teacher is kind. It is lonely

The good side is that we can teach thoroughly as there is only one pupil.

Headmaster, Masuda Mitsunobu, concedes that Yosuke Iwai's

isolated lessons aren't without challenges.

The bad side is that, because teaching is done one-to-one, there can be over-teaching

and a group program is not possible. It is difficult to arrange group learning or sport

It's only at recess and lunch that Yosuke Iwai gets to play with his friends, for how

much longer is unclear. With the entire population of the town slipping away, the future of the

What is the reason for that big decrease?

One reason, as far as Nanmoku is concerned,

is a lack of employment. Because they can't find a job here, parents leave Nanmoku and

settle elsewhere. As a result we have less and less children.

As long as there is at least one child, Nanmoku village has a school.

But if there is no child in the village and there is no need for a school,

Every year, fewer babies are being born and more and more young people are leaving.

Hundreds of homes and businesses are boarded up or abandoned.

Left behind, are the elderly. More than half of

That we have few schoolchildren is a problem for this village, but Nanmoku is a small example

of the whole of Japan and I think what is happening here will happen

For almost 40 years, Tomio Ichikawa worked in Nanmoku's once thriving timber industry.

My orders these days are small renovations, small changes in parts of the house. You know,

improvements... they are very small jobs - there are no more orders for new houses in this

village, so small builders working alone like me can't get work anymore.

If the population keeps diminishing the way it is, are you worried that the village is

we know that the population here is definitely shrinking by almost 100 per year. Our population

of 2000 will be gone in 20 years. I can only continue my business while there are people,

Tomio invites me to meet his family. He only married four years ago and says he and his

wife are too old to have children of their own. The couple care for

I used to prepare food for children's lunches at school, school lunches... that was my job,

to cook lunches for school children. Just in this village there used to be about 1400

children. It's a problem -- it's lonely. It's lonely when the young people are gone...

In bustling Tokyo, there's little sense of the impending crisis. But some experts warn,

that within a millennium the Japanese people themselves could be extinct.

It's about money, the supporting social systems are weak but the money issues are perhaps

the most important. Also, you lose your free time once you have a baby.

I am worried, without young people, we won't be able to create a future.

Today, more than half of Japanese women are still single by the time they're 30. Kaoru

Arai is a professional harpist. She epitomises the country's new breed of successful and

financially independent women, who are putting career first and postponing marriage and motherhood.

Did you always think that marriage and children was a certainty?

Yes, I've always thought that I would be a mum, you know, and I would have a family,

I don't know. All of a sudden, I'm 32. And just it hasn't happened yet.

She says that she worries that a potential husband won't earn as much as she does and

won't accept her work schedule that includes evenings and weekends.

I'm picky, yes, I want it all. I've waited this long, I want the right person.

In a desperate move to pull the birth rate back from the brink, the Japanese government

is offering cash incentives to encourage singles like Kaoru to partner up and procreate.

Do you worry Japan may not be around in 1,000 years?

Yeah, not even in a thousand years, I think I read somewhere that we're going down in

around a 100, you know, we'll be extinct.

Exactly, nobody is having babies. And I've heard, I don't know if you've heard the term

- but there's a new word called social cookie. The men aren't as hungry for success or for

relationships, yeah, as they were before.

Japanese men aren't interested in having sex?

So it's not just down to women - it's men have got to do their bit too?

Definitely. They need to be, you know, more confident. They need to stop shaping their

eyebrows, you know. They have to start looking more like men.

Akihiro and Yuka Arima are having a rare night out together. The couple have been married

for two years, but are hesitant to start a family.

It's not easy for women to, you know, raise children and working at the same time.

Yuka is 27 and working for an electronics company.

I don't want to give up my job. I want to keep working at the same place but if I come

back it my workplace after I took maternity leave, I may not have the same position, same

Yuka also fears that in a culture that encourages excessive work hours, her husband's long days

as a warehouse manager, will leave her holding the baby.

Japanese men work so hard. So my husband comes back home around 11:00pm every day.

Yes. So if I have a child, I have to, you know, take care of my children by myself.

Do you think that the government needs to do more to address this problem?

We need more government support. Many Japanese don't think it is a serious situation.