An effective and secure society would protect its own people first and foremost and see to their welfare as a primary concern. I cannot speak for Japan but the evidence in the west is to have politicians who are so desperate to virtue-signal they happily consign their own people to a lower status than those who have no roots, and no sympathy, with the society they have joined. I would imagine Japan doesn’t do that so much, but only those who have been there will know for certain.

Civilization must be renewed every generation. The forms and appearances continue on while the underpinnings are gutted, if traditions are not passed on and made living practices.

Japan seems to have avoided the colonization and Americanization that has infected the world, and turned Europe into a museum. Or have they?

Japan is, for the moment, a successful country. However, comma… There’s a lot of stuff going on with it that clearly indicates that there’s a huge price to be paid for a lot of it. The below-replacement birth rate issue is only the tip of the iceberg, and a symptom that there’s something fairly wrong with some significant things. The suicide rate? The whole Hikikomari phenomenon? These are not signs of a healthy country, despite all those other lovely things about Japan.

There’s more to the issue than the various Japanophiles see or grasp. You look at a lot of Japanese cultural features, and you really have to wonder how long it can go on, before the whole thing collapses. Japan is facing an agricultural dark age, as most of their farmers are now senior citizens, and nobody wants to live in the rural areas and replace them. The whole picture shows a very different state of affairs than what you get by flying into an airport, staying in the cities, and flying out. The underpinnings of it all are literally dying out and not being replaced.