Re: Japanese Household Demographics

Sara, I love that you brought up Ansari's Modern Romance! I have read it as well, and his case study certainly came to mind while we discussed the "single-person household" in Saturday's session. Without discrediting Ansari's work, I feel that it may be too gross of a simplification to infer that the main cause of the single-person household is stress or a resistant attitude toward sex/dating. 

I truly had no idea - until Saturday's session - of the intense lack of space Japan faces. (6-8 individuals standing on one newspaper is truly mind-boggling to me!) Dube's comparison with California was especially notworthy: although California is still larger in terms of physical size, it only has 39 million+ inhabitants compared to Japan's 126 million+. I would like to infer that perhaps the single-person household has grown in popularity, because Japanese citizens simply want to feel they have their "own space." Although it may certainly not be the only reason for the rise in these households, perhaps Japanese adults crave this "space," since they lack it so much in their day-to-day lives...