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The story
Protests against the cost-of-living crisis are erupting across Europe one after another. In France, student protests demanding better educational conditions, including tuition costs, were joined by citizens voicing their economic hardship, swelling into a demonstration involving roughly 550,000 people. Rising oil prices driven by the deteriorating situation in the Middle East are also seen as fueling the unrest, and governments across the region are on alert for the protests spreading to their own countries. On 5ch, a thread compared inflation rates across European countries and debated why no similar riots have broken out in Japan.
[Paris — Hiroaki Uechi, Brussels — Yoji Uesugi]
The prolonged cost-of-living crisis is cited as the main driver behind the wave of protests sweeping Europe.
In France, student protests calling for improved educational conditions became the spark, with citizens struggling under the cost of living joining in. Governments, also grappling with soaring oil prices stemming from the worsening situation in the Middle East, are struggling to find countermeasures while remaining wary of the protests spreading further.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
The leftists do their little protests now and then, but those are so lame they're not even worth talking about. Seriously boring.
Re: #7
Foreigners will end up doing this here eventually.
・Japan didn't let inflation happen
・Elsewhere, inflation pushed up nominal GDP but real GDP fell
Take Germany — the economy is shrinking (negative real GDP), but inflation pushed nominal GDP up (meaning people's lives are getting harder)
Japan's economy is growing (positive real GDP)
・Japan cut gasoline prices to avoid triggering riots
・Housing costs can't legally be raised all at once
Large-scale protests erupt across France against soaring gas prices and more, 550,000 participants, arson and looting in multiple cities, 400 detained
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/13b9f805e943c687fb4e66bf6490ee3f6bb7ce5a
Tens of thousands also protest in Portugal's capital against the cost-of-living surge and housing crisis
https://www.reuters.com/jp/markets/japan/HGF4K6AAQ5P7PAX7YURPUI7DBQ-2026-10-19/
Unless it keeps happening everywhere with people getting killed or injured,
they'll keep letting in problem immigrants.
China's actually pretty stable.
Well, there was Tiananmen.
The Chinese military ran protesters down with tanks.
North Korea doesn't have them either (probably).
Russia actually does get protests, surprisingly.
Though you get arrested lol
Protests against partial mobilization break out across Russia — rights group says over 1,300 arrested
https://www.bbc.com/japanese/62977547
People are living in hell — unpaid wages, no jobs —
but they're too scared of the CCP to push back.
That's no place for human beings to live.
The reason real wages aren't rising at companies serving Japan's domestic market is that more and more people depend on social security (i.e., taxes) for their livelihood.
Even when you hand money to people living off social security — pensioners, welfare recipients — whose income doesn't grow through economic activity, they try to maximize that money's value by buying the cheapest goods they can.
Trading companies respond to that demand by importing cheaper substitutes from third countries, and the Japanese market fills up with cheaper goods.
Domestic-facing manufacturers then absorb rising import costs for raw materials by holding down employee wages, in order to meet demand from people dependent on social security.
For Japan to raise real wages, it has no choice but to cut pensions and welfare payments for people under 80 and put to work those who are healthy enough but choose not to work.
Japan was the only one in deflation.
Though China's heading that way too lately.
By global standards, Japan's inflation rate is actually ideal — the 2% that the whole world aims for.
Against the Bank of Japan's 2% annual target, Japan's most recent annual inflation rate (CPI, year-on-year) is 1.9% (as of August 2026).
Levels well above the European Central Bank's (ECB) 2% target have persisted, so while there are calls for further rate hikes, debate continues over the timing (October or December) amid surging government bond yields and concerns about the economy.
• Major countries (September, year-on-year)
• Spain: 5.0%
• Italy: 4.1% (or 4.2%)
• France: 3.4% (HICP basis)
• Germany: 3.3%
• Netherlands: 3.0%
Even with the recent price increases, the rate is still lower than in the West.
The trash media (マスゴミ, a derogatory pun combining 'mass media' with 'garbage') is just hyping up the cost-of-living story.
That's because the West started out in inflation to begin with. Japan started from deflation — what it's seeing now is textbook cost-push inflation driven by overseas inflation plus a weak yen.
So are most people just being fooled by the media into demanding price countermeasures? Is the shopping I actually do some kind of dream?
A French otaku defending an otaku goods shop
That's badass…
Though kicking him from behind is pretty cheap.
Looks like he's got decent size, but he's a bit on the heavy side — a quick, agile opponent would run circles around him.
Not bad, Oda (likely a nod to Eiichiro Oda, creator of One Piece).
Guess I'll never buy luxuries like ice cream again.
Sorry, son.
Son: 'Dad, that's called an indulgence.'
My kids stopped asking for snacks.
I think they're being considerate in their own kid way.
If anything, China probably wouldn't even air footage like this — they can't risk people thinking 'oh, so that's how you do it.'
In Japan, no matter how much people try to stir up unrest, the moment one person commits a crime, the whole group gets branded as criminals.
If riots break out in China, Xi Jinping ('Kinpei,' a mocking nickname) is finished.
This country's so peaceful it's unbearably boring.
Japanese people aren't the type to just casually gather and riot.
You'd have to start with organizing first — good luck with that.
We're talking about a people who can't even manage a riot to topple Xi Jinping — getting organized is probably asking too much.
Online flame wars are honestly pathetic — there's just no real impact.
You need cars smashed to bits for it to actually feel like something.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The European Central Bank’s (ECB) inflation target is the same 2% annual rate as the Bank of Japan’s, yet recent inflation rates — 5.0% in Spain, 4.1% in Italy, 3.4% in France, and 3.3% in Germany — far exceed that target, feeding the real sense of a cost-of-living crisis. France’s protests, too, originally started as objections to educational conditions like tuition, with discontent over rising prices merging in later and expanding their scale — so they can’t be pinned on a single cause. The thread featured a lot of comments along the lines of “Japan never let inflation happen,” but strictly speaking, this stems from the Bank of Japan’s long-running deflationary trend that never reached its 2% target, combined with government policies — such as gasoline price subsidies — that have continued to hold down prices. Japan’s separate structural problem of stagnant real wages exists on an entirely different axis from Europe’s situation, so framing it simply as “prices aren’t rising, so Japan is safe” risks being misleading.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “[European Protests] ‘Prolonged high prices’ add fuel… governments on alert for spread to their own countries.”
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