"Escape is shameful but useful" TV series stills, behind the warm and funny plot, is the current situation of Japan's recession.

　　□ Changjiang Daily reporter Li Xu

　　"Who has fallen into trouble from a well-off family?" This is one of Mr. Lu Xun's famous lines in the preface of "Scream". The editor of Sanlian Bookstore kindly printed this sentence in "Competition to Avoid Falling" On the back cover.

　　What if an entire country and a generation of people fell into trouble?

So what?

This is the core theme of "Competing to Avoid Falling".

　　The author of the book Masahiro Yamada is a professor of literature at Chuo University, Japan. His major is family sociology and emotional sociology. He analyzes the plight of the Japanese generation from the perspectives of age group, family composition, marital status, and professional status. They analyzed their current situation, estimated their future, and proposed countermeasures.

　　■ The first developed country to "flow down" a large number of citizens

　　This is a serious academic book, but it mentions the 2016 TV series "Escape is shameful but useful".

　　After graduation, the 25-year-old female graduate student could not find a formal job and could only work as a contract worker. She was subsequently dismissed. She was unemployed, with no one to care for, living in an unfixed place, and experiencing the bitterness of life.

Her father asked her to help with housework in a 35-year-old single white-collar IT man.

The heroine took good care of the hero, and later proposed to "get married like a job."

The two signed a contract, kept the people around them secret, and started a marriage life of "employer = husband" and "employee = wife". The two people who did not have any love lived under the same roof and gradually developed feelings.

　　In fact, if you "penetrate" the warm, funny, fashionable, etc. on the surface of the TV series, you can see the core background of "Competing to Avoid Falling".

　　Why do you want to "marry like a job" with an unloved man?

This is not only difficult for female graduate students to find a job, but more importantly, Japanese women must quickly find a "meal ticket", preferably a man with a higher income than their father, so as to ensure that their standard of living is not worse than that of their mother.

Conversely, because the Japanese marriage system is for men to support their families and women to be full-time, men must be very cautious when they get married, which may cause a decline in their living standards.

However, because Japan's economy has not been prosperous in the past 30 years, the chances of being able to enter large companies and become full-time employees or permanent employees have decreased.

The combination of these factors has led to Japanese men's efforts to enter large companies and women's efforts to find employees in large companies. It becomes very difficult to get married, and the corresponding "fewer births" will come.

　　How did Japan get to this point?

　　Before World War II, Japan's social class was divided into a small part of the wealthy class and the majority of the civilian class. There were basically no opportunities for mobility between classes, and occupations were all hereditary.

After the war, with the rapid development of the Japanese economy, a "middle-class society" was formed.

"Competing in order to avoid falling" defines "mid-stream life" as: owning your own real estate and car, complete home appliances, children can do so if they want to receive higher education, and the whole family can also have some leisure and entertainment activities.

　　Japan's "National Life Awareness Survey" shows that after 1970, more than 90% of people thought their living standards were "middle-class."

People who grew up in that era had good taste, generous shots, and liked famous brands.

In the labor market at that time, the phenomenon of "difficulties in employment" did not exist at all. On the contrary, cases of companies going bankrupt due to lack of manpower often appeared. Therefore, companies made unique tricks in order to retain those who were hired by default, and even led those who were still working in other companies. Travel abroad.

　　At that time, there were also some fresh college students who could be full-time employees, because they wanted to do what they wanted to do, they just did odd jobs and didn't report to the default company. That's how the term "freelance" comes from.

　　With the bursting of the bubble economy, the Japanese economy basically stopped growing, and the so-called "downstreamization" appeared, which means "although a minimum life can be guaranteed, it is impossible to expect a more affluent state than before."

In other words, it cannot flow upwards.

　　Now in Japan, even freelancers, if they live with their parents, their life is not a problem right now, because Japan’s living security system is very sound, and their parents have generous pensions and wealth; but they can’t see that they can live. The "future" of the affluent mid-stream life.

"Competing to avoid falling" believes that this is the current situation of young Japanese people.

　　The author writes: "Competition to avoid falling" can be described as a major feature of contemporary Japanese society. This kind of competition is by no means active forward, but backward. Young people are not so poor that they can't get enough to eat. Entertaining and playing with friends, but they no longer have the desire to climb up, only resistance to "downward mobility", these young people have no future.

　　The author predicts pessimistically: Japan will become the first developed country to have a large number of people flowing downwards.

　　■ More and more people choose to "discontinue"

　　The author pointed out that because the parents of the generation who received generous pensions are generally still there, Japan’s current "100 million people in the middle class" situation has not collapsed, but some signs have emerged.

In the 1990s, cases of concealing the death of their parents and continuing to receive pensions were often reported. In the future, such things will no longer be news.

　　In the 1980s and 1990s, young people communicated generously and enthusiastically, and society was filled with love and romance; now, young people are becoming more conservative, avoiding all risks, and more and more people choose to "break away".

　　For example, if you break your mind about marriage, you don't participate in making friends for the purpose of getting married; you "do not want to get married", deny the marriage itself, or think pessimistically that "I can't get married."

At the same time, the "virtualization" of love also began to appear, becoming more and more obsessed with virtual characters and nightclubs, chasing idols and stars, etc.

They threatened that they no longer need to fall in love and get married.

　　The so-called "low desire society" is actually such a thing.

　　The author thought uncomfortably: "All Japanese seem to be devouring their parents' assets like a declining aristocrat, and they also dream that this aristocratic life will continue in the future."

　　However, with the death of their parents, their pensions are gone, and their income is limited, so their living standards will gradually decrease.

When the parents' savings slowly bottom out, the house can only be sold for a while.

After selling the house, the money will gradually run out.

When I get old and my money is gradually spent, survival becomes a problem.

"At that time, I am afraid that you will only be able to receive the minimum living security. Nowadays, the amount of living security for single elderly people is gradually increasing. The biggest reason is that the number of elderly people without family members is increasing. In the future, such elderly people will With an increase of hundreds of thousands every year, will the living security system really be able to maintain it by then?"

　　Not only that, because the population is declining, real estate is no longer good for sale.

The book states: Even now, villas in declining areas and suburban areas are basically in a state of "prices but no cities", "vacation apartments in local counties and cities are as cheap as free."

For example, studio apartments in ski resorts, because these areas are like "ghost cities" with declining daily life infrastructure, no one wants to live even if the money is not given away.

In short, real estate may even change from a safe asset to a huge "unsafe asset" in the future.

"Competing to avoid falling

　　——Japan Disparity Social Future》

　　[Sun] by Masahiro Yamada

　　Life·Reading·Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore

　　■ The author predicts "the new form of the family"

　　The author certainly understands that “reducing expenditure is not as good as increasing revenue” and that the continuous growth of national wealth is the fundamental solution to the problem.

But-"As long as no new energy is found in the exclusive economic waters, there will be no epoch-making improvement in the Japanese economy. It can only be predicted that the current situation will continue." This is the author's comment on the Japanese economy. Views on trends.

　　If this is the way to 2040 and beyond, how should the Japanese be able to deal with it?

　　The author believes that one of the countermeasures is to "widen the family form."

　　The broadening of the "horizontal axis" refers to the broadening of "partnership" relationships such as remarriage, de facto marriage, cohabitation, and house-sharing cohabitation, which can guarantee the system that "the elderly are no longer isolated."

Single-living elderly people use their homes as "collective homes for the elderly" to recruit friends and make appointments to send them off to each other; among single female girlfriends, people often suggest that "if we stay single in the future, let's move together when we grow old."

Of course, this is just a talk at present, but in the future, these young appointments may be able to be put into practice.

　　The broadening of the "longitudinal axis" refers to the "parent-child relationship that is not bound by blood."

The author gave an example of a friend—a single man (wife died, no children) who owned a single-family house in Tokyo adopted his nephew, who was about 60 years old, as his adopted child. The author believes that this is a win-win situation.

But it also pointed out that there must be corresponding safeguard obligations and rights in the law to prevent fraud and evil deeds with the goal of inheritance.

　　The second countermeasure is to establish a "basic income" system in which all citizens can receive a fixed amount of money regularly throughout their lives.

Japan has accumulated a lot of assets and should be able to implement this policy.

　　At the end of the book, the author hopefully wrote: What can we do to make Japanese society have a brighter future?

Our goal should be to build a society where we can "always happily associate with people we like" even if the economy is not well-off and even if there are no family members.