Actual Japanese here, even within the dark humor context, I wholeheartedly agree with Yusuke Narita.

It's precisely the gerontocracy in Japan why the nation is heading extremely far right. The aging oppressive population needs to retire, vacate, and leave the younger generation capable of making their choices. We are the lowest GDP first nation because of elders oppressing.

I'm glad Yusukeさん is in the 🇺🇲, but I’m afraid he’ll be deathcamped soon.

I'm thankful 28 folks read the article correctly. Fuck oppression.

Why the fuck does this publication abbreviate assisted suicide as "ass suicide"

Oh yes! Anything but immigration!

But seriously, I feel like this is the broad sentiment of Japanese and the non-Japanese alike. Anti- immigration right applaud Japan for "keeping their country theirs" (as if ethnic Japanese aren't the ones who came later and displaced the local Ainus already living there), and not going on supposed national suicide, unlike the West. Not having enough babies is tantamount to suicide anyway. The narrative then becomes: either allow immigration and go on national and cultural suicide; or don't allow immigration and not have enough babies, which is still considered national suicide. Either way is committing national suicide.

I am not naive to think that immigration has no baggage; but at the same time, if countries want to increase birth rate, then increase the wages and standard of living for young people and families to encourage more people to marry and raise families. However, the elites aren't going to do the former because they don't want to disappoint their shareholders. If they don't want to do that, then allow more immigration, which they also don't want to do.

He might have to talk about this with his universities ethics commission...

If you've ever seen Thank You for Smoking and appreciated the dark political satire, check out Boomsday from Christopher Buckley by the same author, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomsday_(novel)

Cassandra Devine, "a morally superior twenty-nine-year-old PR chick" and moonlit angry blogger, incites generational warfare when she proposes that the financially nonviable Baby Boomers be given incentives (free Botox, no estate tax) to kill themselves at 70. The proposal, meant only as a catalyst for debate on the issue, catches the approval of millions of citizens, chief among them an ambitious presidential candidate, Senator Randolph Jepperson.

It's been a decade or more since I last read it, but I remember it being pretty funny and insightful.

Counterpoint: Everyone who ever attended yale should commit mass suicide

Dr Narita has now told The New York Times his comments were “taken out of context”, and the paper reported that he added “they related to demands for older people in leadership positions to make way for the younger generation”.

Pro-life website. The article is probably not worth reading lmao.

The article is from 2023 and the source is a anti abortion site. The big red flag for me was the tweet from Pierre Pollievre saying how Conservatives are there to help people.

From what I've seen when Japanese people saw the footage and context of the conversation they do believe it was more about older generation moving on.

Dr Narita has now told The New York Times his comments were “taken out of context”, and the paper reported that he added “they related to demands for older people in leadership positions to make way for the younger generation”.

Oh hey, I've read that Vonnegut story.

Does he see the same solution for old people everywhere, or just Japan? Seems like anyone can become a professor nowadays. There used to be standards, dammit!

Just asking out of curiosity, but if that occurred, would that actually solve the problem of population decline?

To be clear I’m not advocating for this, I’m just trying to understand the what’s going on.

Aha. Before committing mass suicide, they might want to use the next 75 years to invent robot caregivers. That'd be another option to deal with old people.

What an incredibly heartless comment to make.

Old people in Japan should commit mass suicide says random asshole idiot

Just because he's something something from Yale doesn't mean he's right or even an authority on the subject. With the statement he made it's fairly obvious that he's an idiot and likely a psychopath soooooo why is the press giving this any attention?

Heck, I could argue that by giving this attention, some people might be tempted to implement this idea, this article it just plain stupid.

I think old people in the US should do this too. I actually think it would have a net positive impact.

I was kinda hoping I'd read the article and it would be a modern day "a modest proposal" but it doesn't seem to be and now I'm sad.

That did he write his thesis on, The Giver?

I do wish there was a way to check out early without endangering your insurance, though.

I'm not confident that courting the suggestion of suicide by bringing public attention to it is the ethical move for a journalist.

And he's not even a professor of medicine or pathology, this talking authoritatively about things outside your field is really getting out of hand /s

What a radical thing to say.