Regarding Michael Hoffman's Jan. 30 Timeout article, "The decline and fall of Japan and its sex drive": As an American biology student, I am amazed to see another article blaming Japanese families for not having enough children. Throughout history, all animals have made sensible decisions about how many children they can manage to support to adulthood.

Because of crazy real estate prices and massive government debt, the average young Tokyo family must pay more of their "harvest" to landlords than medieval families did.

Today they spend a good part of their long work days first paying off government debt, and then they have to start paying off the older generation, who are buying most of the few houses that are produced each year. Each child is born with the burden of decades of study and hard work before he or she can afford basic shelter. I think it's quite flippant to blame anime for reducing interest in sex when the real cause is a serious mismanagement of housing inflation.

JOHN Ma

carthur