Even if you possess only a cursory understanding of sexual trends in modern-day Japan – which, in all likelihood, is most people – the nation’s current “sex crisis” probably isn’t news. According to numerous studies, young and middle-aged Japanese adults are losing interest in traditional relationships and sex in general due to the country’s out-of-whack work-life balance. Men report working up to 80 hours per week, depleting them of both the time and stamina for sexual activity. Women report societal pressures to choose between a family and developing their careers – and a majority of them choose the latter. The problem is so severe that, if the trend goes unchecked and cultural attitudes unchallenged, the country’s population could dwindle and ultimately become extinct. And now there’s a clock tick-tocking away the minutes, hours, and centuries to extinction.
Reseachers at Tohoku University have put together a countdown timer that, taking into account the nation’s aging populace and dramatically declining fertility rates, claims to predict the precise date and time when the population will shrink to just one person — supposedly on August 16, 3766, or in 1,750 years. Economists Hiroshi Yoshida and Masahiro Ishigaki fine-tuned the timer based on population statistics from 2014 and 2015. They estimate that Japan is currently home to approximately 16 million children, a paltry number on a steep annual decline.
As far as doomsday clocks go, however, theirs is pretty innocuous looking; it isn’t etched into ancient stone or riddled with grotesque, primitive hieroglyphics. It’s just a series of numbers whose intricate relationships are based on cold, inflinching algorithms. Which, then again, is perhaps the scariest kind of clock there is.
(Via Metro)
