全文翻译自大西洋杂志7月20日文章
原题：The Mystery of Why Japanese People Are Having So Few Babies
作者：Alana Semuels
译者：冬天毛
大西洋杂志（The Atlantic）是美国一本经典杂志，于1857年创刊，是获得美国国家杂志奖（National Magazine Awards，自1966年开始每年颁发）次数最多的月刊。
（维基百科）
正文：
Many point to unromantic 20-somethings and women’s entry into the workforce, but an overlooked factor is the trouble young men have in finding steady, well-paid jobs.
很多人把问题归结为女性加入劳动力，以及二十几岁的年轻人不愿意恋爱结婚，却忽视了另一个因素：年轻男性难以找到稳定、高收入的工作。
TOKYO—Japan’s population is shrinking. For the first time since the government started keeping track more than a century ago, there were fewer than 1 million births last year, as the country’s population fell by more than 300,000 people. The blame has long been put on Japan’s young people, who are accused of not having enough sex, and on women, who, the narrative goes, put their careers before thoughts of getting married and having a family.
东京报道——日本的人口正在萎缩。去年，日本新生儿数量低于100万，而全国人口减少了超过30万，在有政府记录可查的一个多世纪以来，这还是头一遭。长期以来人们都将少子现象归罪于日本的年轻人，认为他们性生活不够频繁，并且也怪罪女性，按照他们的说法，认为她们专注事业优先于结婚成家。
But there’s another, simpler explanation for the country’s low birth rate, one that has implications for the U.S.: Japan’s birth rate may be falling because there are fewer good opportunities for young people, and especially men, in the country’s economy. In a country where men are still widely expected to be breadwinners and support families, a lack of good jobs may be creating a class of men who don’t marry and have children because they—and their potential partners—know they can’t afford to.
但对于日本的低生育率还存在一种更简单的解释，而且对美国来说同样有意义：日本的生育率降低，可能是因为年轻人、尤其是男性的工作机会越来越差。在一个人们依然广泛认为男人应该挣钱养家的国家，好工作的稀缺或许导致了这样一类男性的形成，他们不结婚不生子，因为他们（以及他们潜在的婚恋对象）都知道他们出不起这个钱。
“The gender stuff is pretty consistent with trends around the world—men are having a harder time,” said Anne Allison, a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University who edited the recent collection of scholarly essays Japan: The Precarious Future. “The birth rate is down, even the coupling rate is down. And people will say the number-one reason is economic insecurity.”
杜克大学文化人类学教授安·艾利森最近担任了学术小论文合辑《日本：摇摇欲坠的未来》的编辑工作，她表示：“性别这方面的问题（日本）和全世界的趋势是一致的——男人的日子不好过。不仅生育率低迷，连性交率都很低，而人们认为首要原因就是经济上的焦虑。”
This may seem surprising in Japan, a country where the economy is currently humming along, and the unemployment rate is below 3 percent. But the shrinking economic opportunities stem from a larger trend that is global in nature: the rise of unsteady employment. Since the postwar years, Japan had a tradition of “regular employment,” as labor experts commonly call it, in which men started their careers at jobs that gave them good benefits, dependable raises, and the understanding that if they worked hard, they could keep their jobs until retirement. Now, according to Jeff Kingston, a professor at Temple University’s Japan campus and the author of several books about Japan, around 40 percent of the Japanese workforce is “irregular,” meaning they don’t work for companies where they have stable jobs for their whole careers, and instead piece together temporary and part-time jobs with low salaries and no benefits. (Such temporary workers are counted as employed in government statistics.) Only about 20 percent of irregular workers are able to switch over to regular jobs at some point in their careers. According to Kingston, between 1995 and 2008, Japan’s number of regular workers decreased by 3.8 million while the number of irregular workers increased by 7.6 million.
在日本这个目前经济运转良好、失业率低于3%的国家，这可能很让人吃惊，但经济机会萎缩的源头是一种更大的趋势，其本质是全球性的：不稳定就业的兴起。从战后的年月以来，日本都保持了一种一般被劳工专家称为“固定就业”的传统：男性在职业生涯一开始就从事福利高、加薪稳定的工作，并且明白只要他们努力工作，就可以一份工作干到退休。而如今，根据天普大学日本校区教授、数部日本相关书籍作者杰夫·金斯顿的说法，日本有约40%的劳工都是“非固定”的，即不是在提供稳定终生工作的公司就职，而是用低薪、没有福利的兼职和临时工作拼凑职业。按照政府的统计方法，这样的临时工人是算在就业人群里的。在非固定劳工中，只有大约20%最终能转到固定岗位上。根据金斯顿的说法，从1995年到2008年，日本的固定劳工数量减少了380万，而非固定劳工数量增加了760万。
Irregular workers in Japan are sometimes referred to as “freeters,” which is a combination of the word freelance and the German word arbeiter, which means “worker.” According to Kingston, the rise of irregular workers in Japan began in the 1990s, when the government revised labor laws to enable the wider use of temporary and contract workers hired by intermediary firms. Then, as globalization put more pressure on companies to cut costs, they increasingly relied on a temporary workforce, a trend that intensified during the Great Recession. “This is a major new development in Japan’s employment paradigm, as new graduates find it increasingly difficult to get a foothold on the career ladder as regular employees,” Kingston and Machiko Osawa, a professor at Japan Women's University, write in “Risk and Consequences: The Changing Japanese Employment Paradigm,” an essay in Japan: The Precarious Future.
在日本，非固定劳工有时也被称为freeter/フリーター/飞特族，这是由英文的freelance/自由职业者和德语的Arbeiter/劳工两词组合而成。据金斯顿表示，非固定劳工在日本的兴起始于90年代，当时政府修订了劳工法律，使人们能够广泛通过中介公司雇佣临时工和合同工。随后，全球化趋势开始迫使公司们削减成本，而他们则越来越依赖临时劳动力，而这种趋势在经济大萧条期间进一步恶化。在《日本：摇摇欲坠的未来》收录的一篇小论文《日本就业模式转型的风险和后果》中，金斯顿和日本女子大学教授大泽真知子这样写道：“这是日本就业模式的一个重大转折，应届毕业生们越来越难登上固定职员的职业阶梯。”
In a culture that places such an emphasis on men being breadwinners, this has serious implications for marriage and childbearing. Men who don’t have regular jobs are not considered desirable marriage partners; even if a couple wants to get married, and both have irregular jobs, their parents will likely oppose it, according to Ryosuke Nishida, a professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology who has written about unemployment among young workers. About 30 percent of irregular workers in their early 30s are married, compared to 56 percent of full-time corporate employees, according to Kingston. “Japan has this idea that the man is supposed to get a regular job,” said Nishida. “If you graduate and you don't find a job as a regular employee, people look at you as a failure.” There’s even a tongue-in-cheek Japanese board game, Nishida told me, called “The Hellish Game of Life,” in which people who don’t land a regular job struggle for the rest of the game.
日本的文化中，男人挣钱养家是极为重要的，而这对婚姻和生育有着实实在在的影响。男人如果没有固定工作，就不会被看成令人满意的婚姻对象。东京工业大学教授西田亮介在年轻劳工失业问题上有所著述，他表示即便两个人想结婚，而两个人都是非固定劳工，那么双方的家长就很有可能反对。据金斯顿表示，在30岁出头的非固定劳工中，有大约30%是已婚的，而全职公司雇员中这一比例为56%。西田说：“日本有这么一种理念：男人就该有一份固定工作。如果你毕业了但找不到固定雇员的岗位，人们就会认为你是个失败者。”西田告诉我，日本甚至有一种恶搞的棋盘游戏，叫做“超级悲惨人生游戏”（冬天毛注：人生ゲーム 極辛），参与游戏的人如果找不到固定工作，整局游戏都会举步维艰。
Women seeking full-time work frequently find themselves in irregular jobs too, which also has implications for raising a family, since the hours are unpredictable and the pay is low. But it is more of an obstacle for marriage if a man doesn’t have a good job—roughly 70 percent of women quit working after they have their first child, and depend on their husband’s salary for some time.
谋求全职工作的女性也往往不得不将就于非固定工作，这对于养家是有所影响的，因为工作时间不稳定，报酬也低。然而，如果一个男人没有一份好工作，对于婚姻来说是更大的障碍——大约有70%的女性都在生下第一个孩子后辞职，并依靠丈夫的薪水度日一段时间。
Women in Japan’s big cities say they’re getting tired of the lack of available men. While in Tokyo, I visited an event put on by Zwei, a matchmaking company. Dozens of women clustered in a small studio to take a cooking class featuring food from Miyazaki Prefecture, in southern Japan. The event was part of an initiative that Zwei was putting on to make them interested in life—and men—outside of Tokyo. Zwei’s business model is based on matching women in Japan’s big cities with men in other areas of the country, where men are more likely to have good jobs and be considered viable partners. “Men in this city are not very masculine and they don't want to get married,” Kouta Takada, a Zwei staff member, told me. A recent survey of Japanese people aged 18 to 34 found that nearly 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women aren’t in a relationship.
日本大城市的女性表示她们已经厌倦了没多少男人可选的现状。在东京时，我参与了一家婚恋介绍公司Zwei举办的活动。几十个女人聚集在一间小工作室里上烹饪课，学习日本南部宫崎县的料理。这次活动是Zwei公司一份倡议计划中的一个环节，主旨是让她们对东京之外的生活（还有男人）产生兴趣。Zwei的业务模式是将日本大城市的女性和其他地区的男性配对，在那些地区，男性拥有好工作的可能性更大，也更容易被看做靠谱的对象。Zwei的一名员工高田幸太（音）对我说：“本市的男人都不太有男子气，不想结婚。”最近的一份针对18-34岁日本人的调查发现，70%的未婚男性和60%的未婚女性都没有交往对象。
I also visited the office of POSSE, a group formed by college graduates who wanted to create a labor union for young people. Haruki Konno, the group’s president, told me that some of the young men in irregular jobs become what are called “net-cafe refugees”—people who live in the tiny cubicles available for rent overnight at Japanese internet cafes. (Shiho Fukada, a photographer, has documented the lives of these “refugees.”) Others with irregular jobs live with their parents or go on welfare.
我还造访了POSSE的办事处，这是一个由大学毕业生组成的团体，旨在为年轻人创造一个工会。团体理事今野晴贵告诉我，一些从事非固定工作的年轻男性成了所谓的“网咖难民”——他们在日本的网咖中租下小隔间过夜。（一位名叫深田志穗的摄影师记录了这些“难民”的生活）其他一些非固定劳工则和父母住在一起，或是领政府救济度日。
POSSE calculates that irregular employees earn on average about $1,800 a month, but spend much of that money on rent, paying back their college loans, and paying into Japan’s social-security program. That doesn’t leave them much to live on. About a quarter of Japan’s college graduates—a proportion that roughly corresponds with the share of students who go to big-name universities—are set for life in good jobs, he told me. Everyone else, he said, is struggling. “Men in their 20s, they don’t have an idea of having families or a house,” Makoto Iwahashi, another POSSE member, told me. “Most of them feel that it’s just not a reality.”
据POSSE计算，非固定劳工的平均月收入约为1800美元，但大部分都用于付房租、偿还大学贷款，以及支付日本的社会安全金，剩下能用来过日子的钱没有几个。他告诉我，日本的大学毕业生中大约有四分之一能过上有好工作的日子，这个比例大致对应了能上名牌大学的学生比例。他说，其他人都在艰难度日。另一位POSSE成员岩桥诚告诉我：“20多岁的男人，对家庭和房子都没有概念，对于他们大多数人来说，这些根本就没有真实感。”
The surge in irregular jobs doesn’t just create problems for the people working those jobs. It’s also led companies to feel that they can treat their regular workers poorly, because those workers feel so lucky to have a job, Konno told me. Knowing that people in their 20s and 30s are desperate to get regular jobs, companies hire lots of young people and force them to work long hours for little to no overtime pay, assuming that most won’t be able to survive the harsh conditions, Konno said. Japan has long had a culture of overwork—there’s even a Japanese word, karoshi, for death by overwork—but Konno says that it has worsened since the Great Recession, as companies have realized that good jobs are hard to find in Japan, and so push their employees harder.
今野告诉我，非固定岗位的兴起不只是给这些岗位上的人们造成了问题，它同样也使公司们觉得自己可以亏待那些固定雇员，因为他们光是能有份工作就觉得谢天谢地了。今野表示，公司们清楚二三十岁的人们极度渴望找到固定工作，他们雇佣大量的年轻人，逼迫他们长时间工作，却不给什么加班费，从一开始就认定大部分人无法在这样艰辛的条件下坚持下来。日本长期以来都有着过劳的文化——甚至有一个日文词汇“过劳死”，表示过度工作导致的死亡——但今野说，从经济大萧条以来，情况进一步恶化了，因为日本的公司们意识到好工作不好找，所以就进一步压迫他们的员工。
Konno published a book in 2012, Evil Corporations: The Monsters Eating Up Japan, that used the phrase “Burakku Kigyo”—which loosely translates to “dark companies” or “evil corporations”—to describe firms that take advantage of workers in this way. That phrase has since become a buzzword in Japan. A group of journalists and labor advocates now issue a Burraku Kigyo of the Year award for the company that treats its workers the worst. (In 2015, Seven-Eleven Japan won the honors.) “It’s harder to find these jobs as a regular employee, and those places that are hiring, they have an advantage to exploit the workers as much as they can,” Konno said.
今野在2012年出版了一本书，《黑心企业，吞噬日本的妖怪》，书中使用了“ブラック企業”这个说法，大致可以翻译为“黑暗企业”或“邪恶的公司”，用来描述那些如此压榨员工的公司，而这个词从此也在日本成了一个热词。记者和劳工权益活动者们组成了一个团体，每年给员工待遇最差的公司颁发“年度黑心企业奖”（2015年，日本711连锁便利店获得了这一殊荣）。今野说：“现在要找一份固定雇员的工作更难了，而那些雇人的公司处于有利地位，可以全力压榨劳工。”
The result is that even Japan’s “good” jobs can be brutal. People who hold them may earn enough money to support families, but they often don’t have much time to date, or to do anything but work, sleep, and eat. Many are so stressed they can barely function. At POSSE, I met a young man named Jou Matsubara, who graduated from Rikkyo Daigaku, a prestigious private college in Japan. Matsubara, who comes from a working-class family, thought he’d achieved the Japanese dream when he graduated from college and got a job at Daiwa House Group, a Japanese home builder.
这就导致了日本的“好”工作也可能很残酷。拥有这些工作的人或许能挣到足够的钱养家糊口，但往往没什么时间约会，或是从事除了吃、睡和工作以外的任何活动。很多人压力太大，几乎无法正常生活。我在POSSE会见了一位名叫松原升（音）的年轻人，他毕业于立教大学，日本的一所名牌私立大学。松原生在工薪阶级家庭，大学毕业时，他在日本的建设商大和房屋集团找到了一份工作，那时他以为自己已经达成了日本梦。
The company advertised itself as a great place to work, but Matsubara, who was a wrestler in college, told me it soon became evident that it was anything but. Though company employees left work at 7 p.m. on paper, Matsubara said he was required to work until late at night almost every day. Employees were required to sign off at 7 p.m., even if they were still working, and were given iPads so that they could do so even if they were out of the office at meetings. If they didn’t sign off, they’d get a call on their cellphones brusquely asking them to sign off immediately but keep working, he said. “The amount of time you're actually working and the amount of time that is recorded you're working have absolutely no relation to each other,” he said. Matsubara got almost no time off, and was required to take classes to receive real-estate certifications on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which were days he was told he’d have free. This lifestyle made dating impossible. The closest he got to women, he said, was when his boss would drag him to cabaret clubs, and then make him pick up the tab.
这家公司将自己宣传标榜为一个就业的好去处，但大学时曾是一名摔跤手的松原告诉我，很快他就发现这根本不是事实。松原说，虽然公司员工在纸面上是晚上7点下班，但他几乎每天都得工作到深夜。他说，即便雇员们过了7点还在工作，但公司仍要求他们签退，就算此时正在办公室外开会，也得用iPad签退。如果不签退，就会有人打电话到他们的手机上，唐突地要求他们立刻签退，但要继续工作不能停。他说：“你实际工作的时间和记录上的工时根本就毫无关系。”松原几乎从没有假期，而在说好休息的每周二周三，公司还要求他参加课程以获取房地产从业证书。这种生活方式使得约会成了不可能的事。他说，他离女人最近的时候，就是上司把他拽到夜总会，然后让他买单的时候。
After a year, the long hours and stress started to affect his health. Matsubara had trouble sleeping, and started hearing voices. He fell into a depression, he said, because the experience he had expected from a regular job and his own experience were so different. Matsubara told me he was taken to the hospital multiple times in an ambulance because he couldn't breathe. Eventually, he suffered a nervous breakdown. He said the company forced him to resign, and then made him pay back the money he’d saved from living in a company dormitory. (Daiwa House did not return a request for comment.) Matsubara is now living on welfare. “My life that was going smoothly and systematically was destroyed by Daiwa House,” he said. He estimated that out of the 800 people who started with him at Daiwa House, 600 have quit.
工作一年后，漫长的工时和巨大的压力开始影响他的健康。松原难以入睡，并开始产生幻听。他说他陷入了抑郁，因为他的实际经历和他对固定工作的期望实在相差太远。松原告诉我，他有好几次因为呼吸困难而被救护车送到医院。终于，他精神崩溃了。他说，公司强迫他辞职，然后逼他把住公司宿舍省下的钱付还公司。（大河房屋集团对我发去的问询不置评论）如今，松原正在靠政府救济生活。他说：“我的人生原本一帆风顺，却被大河房屋系统性地摧毁了。”据他估计，和他同期在大河房屋工作的800人里，有600人已经辞职。
Of course, Japan is not unique in having workers who say they feel abused and overworked by their employers. Nor is it the only country that has seen an increase in temporary workers in today’s economy. But a few things differentiate Japan from the United States and other developed economies. The first is that regular employment is still deeply valued in Japanese culture, so much so that people who can’t find regular employment, no matter their qualifications, are often criticized in a way that people in other countries might not be. “There's a tendency, when someone doesn't have a job, to blame them,” Nishida, the professor, said.
当然，劳工声称雇主虐待、过度驱使自己，这种现象并不是日本独有的，而且日本也不是如今世界上唯一一个临时工数量上涨的国家。然而，有几个方面使得日本有别于美国和其他发达国家。首先，日本文化对于固定就业仍然是非常看重的，以至于那些找不到固定工作的人们不管条件如何，都往往会受到其他国家的人们不会受到的批判。西田教授表示：“人们有责怪无业者的倾向。”
The second is that Japan’s is a culture in which hard work and long hours are widely accepted and in which it is considered rude to leave before your boss. People who complain about working long hours may not find much sympathy from friends and family members, let alone the government. Finally, Japan is a country in which labor unions are weak, and often focus on collaborating with companies and preserving the good jobs that do exist, rather than fighting on behalf of all workers, according to Konno. “Unions here are for the companies—they’re not effective,” he said.
第二，辛勤、长时间的工作在日本文化中是受到广泛接受的，雇员在上司下班前离开是一种不礼貌的行为。那些抱怨工作时间太长的人们无法得到家人和朋友的同情，更别说政府了。最后，据今野说，日本是一个工会势力弱小的国家，而且工会往往致力于与公司合作，以保全现有的好岗位，而不是为所有劳工而战。他说：“这里的工会代表的是公司的利益，起不到应起的作用。”
But Japan’s problems do have implications for the United States, where temporary jobs are common, and where union power is getting weaker with every year. As I’ve written before, men are struggling in many regions of the country because of the decline of manufacturing and the opioid epidemic. And studies have shown that as men’s economic prospects decline, so do their chances of marrying. The U.S.’s fertility rate is already at historic lows—and worsening economic conditions for men could further depress it.
但日本的问题对美国来说也是有参考价值的：在美国，临时工作很常见，而且工会的力量正在逐年弱化。我此前也曾写到，由于制造业的衰落和类鸦片药物的盛行，全国很多地区的男性都身陷困境。各种研究也表明，随着男性的经济前景衰微，他们结婚的机会同样在缩水。美国的生育率已经处在历史新低了，而男性们的经济条件变差可能会导致状况进一步恶化。
The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has turned some attention to the rise of bad jobs in Japan, but critics say the administration isn’t doing enough. A government labor-reform panel has proposed capping the number of overtime hours that companies could legally require people to work at 100 per month. And this year, for the first time, the Japanese government has also published a list of more than 300 companies that have violated labor laws, hoping that publicly shaming companies will make them change their ways. But overall, the Abe administration is pro-business and anti-regulation, and according to Kingston, of Temple, few of its reforms led to any real change.
安倍晋三首相的政府已经将一部分注意力转向了劣质就业岗位的兴起，但批评者称政府做的还是不够多。政府的一个劳动改革小组提出方案，要将公司要求员工加班的合法时间限制在每个月100小时以下。今年，日本政府首次公布了一张包括300多家违反劳动法律的公司的清单，寄希望于公开蒙羞能使公司改变作风。然而安倍政府在总体上是支持产业、反对管制的，而根据天普大学的金斯顿的说法，政府的改革没有几个能真正带来转变。
The Abe administration, and Japan as a whole, has long vowed to address the problems of the country’s falling birth rate. Many of those pledges focus on helping women better balance work and family, which is certainly part of the problem. But not all of it: Though Japan’s men have long had more economic and social power than the country’s women, they too need help finding stability in a changing economy.
安倍政府和整个日本在长时间以来都发誓要应对低出生率的问题，他们的承诺有很多都集中于帮助女性更好地平衡工作和家庭，这虽然也肯定是问题的一部分，但并不是全部：虽然日本的男性长期以来都比女性有更强的经济和社会实力，但他们为了在不断变化的经济环境中谋求稳定，同样是需要帮助的。
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