Travers Naran <tnaran@direct.ca> wrote in message news:<iGt5b.136054$K44.87613@edtnps84>...
> Michael Cash wrote:
> 
> > While skimming through Debito's statement to the High Court, I noticed
> > the following:

I was thinking of posting about this myself, so thanks for saving me
the trouble. The big problem I have with this and most other of his
writing is his plucking statistics out of the air - actually, my
biggest problem is his writing is bloody awful (so is mine, but I
don't claim to be a writer or a teacher of English), with too many big
words that look like they've just been pulled from a thesaurus for the
express purpose of sounding more pompous.

> > "According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare,
> > recent years have demonstated a jump in international marriages in
> > Japan, between Japanese and non-.  There are now about 40,000
> > international marriages per annum in Japan--a leap of around 30% since
> > 1999.  

If I wasn't at work, I'd check this figure, but I'm pretty sure in
2000 it was 40,000 Japanese men plus 10,000 Japanese women, but only
increasing at a much smaller rate.

> > If those families live in Japan 

A *big* if - these are wedding registered in Japan, yes? I've
registered my wedding in Scotland, but I sure don't live there! I also
remember the British consul expecting I'd be on the next plane back to
Blighty after registering the marriage, which suggests a lot of gaigin
honkies bugger off back "home" sharpish.

> > and average about two children,

Are gaigin going at it like rabbits compared to the Japanese average
of 1.4? And what about fake weddings - I saw a program that had a
segment on sham marriages for visas for Chinese prostitutes.

> > you will eventually have 80,000 new international children every year
> > born here.  In ten years, that will be 800,000."
> > 
> > My math skills suck, but something tells me that there's something a
> > bit too 単純 about it for it to be correct. Comments?
> 
> He's making the following assumptions (which may or may not be true):
> 
> - The number of international marriages per year will stay the same
> without divorces, remarriages, etc. which make the calculations that
> much harder.  For example, a Japanese woman marries an American,
> divorces him then marries another American in a year or so.  That counts
> as two marriages using Debito's math.
> 
> - That the live birth average for international couples is in fact 2 per
> couple.
> 
> - All "international children" will be born in marriage.  There maybe
> more outside of marriage, but they might not count.
> 
> - No international couples or their children will ever leave Japan.

And what about if both partners are foreign, although that must be a
pretty small percentage.

> The 2nd assumption is the most problematic. Would Jeff "2-belo" care to
> comment? :-)
> 
> The better way to do this is look at the actual statistics of
> international children (i.e., children who aren't considered Japanese)
> for the last 20 years or so and then perform interpolation on that data.

Researching another bit of data recently, I found an official-looking
figure that said 80% of Zainichi Koreans marry Japanese. As Korean
weddings make up about 30% plus of all international weddings
(hopefully correctly remembered from the book I read!), but Zainichis
are a different kettle of fish from first-generation immigrants (ie,
parents should both be pretty fluent Japanese); that I suspect knocks
another 3/10ths off the figures.

Anyway, I think the whole thing is overdone - yes, "No Gaigins" is of
course a bad thing, but this continual "Help, help, I'm being
repressed!" is tiresome. What fraction of one percent of businesses
carry out this practice? I can't help feeling all this "Woe is us!"
martyrdom is counterproductive.

Ken