'Coming of Age' the four legged way.

As a postscript to my blog yesterday on 'Coming of Age Day' I see that a piece on the Guardian website today is referring to the extraordinarily low birth rate in Japan. The 'real Japanese population' (and hello statisticians everywhere!) of ethnic Japanese began to decline in the late 1990's with deaths outnumbering births, but the tendency was disguised in absolute terms by higher non-ethnic birth rates (Filipina mums and Japanese dads) and the impact of the limited in-migration (mainly of people like me - spouses and students)that Japan allows. In the last few years though the decline has been absolute, people have just largely stopped marrying and having kids. There are less than half the number of 20 year old's around the place than there were 30 years ago.

One outcome of all this is that people in general keep many, many more cats and dogs. It seems that there are now six million more pets in Japan than there are children. You can see why - they don't cost a fortune to look after and educate for a start. And they stay small and loving and generally undemanding. Most of these pets fall into the small and cute 'kawaii' category. These are not beautiful traditional tail-wagging Japanese dogs like 'Akitas' and 'Chibas' that will drag you a couple of miles on walks every day and curl up in kennels in all weathers. These are miniature dachshunds and toy poodles dressed in suits who live in condominiums on the twentieth floor and get pushed around the DIY store in trolleys designed for kids.

Now it seems than on the second Monday in January millions of childless pet owners are celebrating 'Coming of Age Day' for all their pets that have made it through the first year with ceremonies and gifts. No doubt too that soon there will be more pets arriving at the age of majority than kids. Perhaps they too will be given the vote. As long as they are ethnic Japanese pets what possible objection could there be?