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After moving to Japan from the United States, I've started to realize just how biased Western articles about Japan really are. Stories about Japan by Western news outlets often limit themselves to a few common "takes" on Japan:
> Japan's economy is stagnant (e.g. [1])! -- Western media tends to apply Western economic metrics to everything--and as we have all seen recently, the stock market is NOT the economy! It's not necessarily a problem for an economy to stop "growing" once it has reached a comfortable size. These same articles often conveniently ignore that lower- and middle-class workers in places like the United States are suffering from similar problems.
> Japan is "weird"! Maid cafes! Kawaii culture! -- Conveniently forgetting that in a metropolis of 14 million people like Tokyo, it's not difficult to find 10,000 people interested in absolutely any niche topic you can think of. New York is just as "weird" [2].
> Japanese people are sad! -- Articles often misrepresent Japan's suicide rates as being higher than Western countries [3].
> Tokyo is expensive! -- I live in Tokyo, and this is patently false. I pay less in rent, groceries, transportation, restaurants, and entertainment than I ever did in a major city in the United States. See [4].
> Japanese people are racist! -- Sure, some people face discrimination, Chinese and Korean immigrants especially, and it can difficult to fully assimilate. However, I feel incredibly welcome as a foreigner, and I believe that most friction between native Japanese and foreigners can be attributed to a language barrier. For instance, renting apartments can be an issue for foreign residents with poor Japanese language skills [5]. It is exceedingly rare to meet someone who is outwardly hostile towards foreigners, but the same cannot be said for places like the United States.
After seeing these patterns and actually living here, I can't help but view most writing about Japan as pro-Western propaganda, whether intentional or not. Certainly the United States has a thing or two to learn from Japan when it comes to infrastructure, city planning [6], healthcare, and safety. Most articles, though, serve the purpose of reiterating to American audiences that America is the best country on Earth, and there's no reason to ever change or question anything!
As the author said at the beginning, there is a great deal of writing about Japanese economics and government that hasn't been translated. If anyone can point me to some English resources giving the Japanese perspective, I would love to read more!
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/e5b9e75a-a8b8-4899-a0e4-4aea19d97...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_To_with_John_Wilson
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/k39yps/in_japan_more...
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vi2xePezOE
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ5f_QokinY
[6] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
The textbook is a refined version of his previous work, "The Economic Development of Japan", which is available for free: https://www.grips.ac.jp/forum/pdf06/EDJ.pdf.
That said, for a country with limited natural resources and a rapidly aging population their economy is arguably reasonably healthy. If anything it shows what happens to a modern western economy when you don’t adjust for very low birth rates with immigration.
PS: Deflation is also a very very bad thing economically, trying to gloss over it is a very bad idea.
Why? I'd be interested in reading more if you have sources. Genuinely asking, I know almost nothing about deflation other than what I just read on Wikipedia [1]. My generation has had to grapple with the negative effects of inflation combined with low interest rates and wage stagnation, so I'm genuinely curious to hear about a different time/place where long-term deflation caused problems.
https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-deflation-definition-caus...
> Deflation occurs when asset and consumer prices fall over time. While this may seem like a great thing for shoppers, the actual cause of widespread deflation is a long-term drop in demand.
> Deflation often signals an impending recession. With a recession comes declining wages, job losses, and big hits to most investment portfolios. As a recession worsens, so does deflation. Businesses hawk ever-lower prices in desperate attempts to get consumers to buy their products and services.
You end up with a liquidity trap in the amount of money doesn’t increase/decrease roughly in proportion to the size of economic activity. Fortunately “roughly” as it’s hard to measure.
By that logic asset inflation can actually act as a deflationary force because the relative value of consumer goods shrinks compared to the rest of the economy and the surplus can be used to provide an excess of consumer goods which further drives down prices. Of course this assumes that asset holders are not planning on spending their capital gains domestically. Considering current demographics (the retired own houses but don't spend as much) and globalization (Chinese workers can do your job) it is pretty much assured though.
Anyway. The reason why deflation is bad is highly obvious. Imagine a highly simplified economy consisting of one factory. Some initial event happened that caused demand to go down. The factory has trouble selling its inventory. It lowers its prices over time to attract more customers. People looking to buy the latest gadget just put it off because they can buy it later for even less money. At some point the factory has to close because nobody is buying. Then suddenly everyone wants a gadget but there is no factory.
If you want a business to operate in 2025 then it has to also operate in the years before that. Deflation sets up the exact opposite incentive. It makes sure everything you did in the past cannot be topped in the future without extreme effort. It means your best years are already behind you because there is less money to be made in 2021 than in 2020. It tends to reward hoarders, those who don't need to be productive.
Inflation is the opposite. It makes sure that the future is always brighter than the past. There is more money to be made in 2021 than in 2020. It tends to reward workers, those who do productive work.
The answer to deflationary problems? Give people a reason to work.
It's why we have so many "gig economy" companies. It's nothing new. It's just day labor with some software lipstick applied to it. There is an overabundance of unskilled workers so there must be some way to economically deploy that workforce even if its not enough for a full time position. Converting unskilled workers into skilled workers would be even better but it would mean the government or the employer has to foot the bill. It's just not going to happen even though there is plenty of money around to fund education.
Do you mean something like the Consumer Price Index? If I'm reading this graph [1] correctly, CPI has been increasing at a rate of +1-2% since 2010, and--except for a brief dip below zero during the 2008 financial crisis--at a rate of 2-4% between 2000-2010.
This is consistent with my own experience that the price of groceries / home goods / basic services has increased quite substantially in the past ~15 years.
Doesn't this mean we have consumer inflation after all? Certainly buying power has decreased. Metrics like CPI also do not account for the phenomenon of shrinkflation [2], which may necessitate consumers to buy cheaply-made goods more often when they break or cannot be repaired.
> Imagine a highly simplified economy consisting of one factory. Some initial event happened that caused demand to go down. The factory has trouble selling its inventory. It lowers its prices over time to attract more customers. People looking to buy the latest gadget just put it off because they can buy it later for even less money. At some point the factory has to close because nobody is buying. Then suddenly everyone wants a gadget but there is no factory.
This example seems too simple to be useful. It also seems pretty logically inconsistent, since
* If there is only one factory, all of the consumers must work for that one factory in order to have money to spend on gadgets * The factory doesn't just poof gadgets into existence -- it must obtain raw materials somehow, either by employing workers or purchasing them from another company. * Is the gadget a luxury item with no functional value? if so, who's to say that the factory closing is a bad thing? * If it's not a luxury item, it must serve some functional purpose? If so, that purpose is probably to increase the rate at which gadgets can be made, since there are is literally no other economic activity. So if the factory closes, then no one needs gadgets anymore.
I'm not necessarily saying that you're wrong, just that your example is far from convincing.
> Deflation...makes sure everything you did in the past cannot be topped in the future without extreme effort. It means your best years are already behind you because there is less money to be made in 2021 than in 2020. It tends to reward hoarders, those who don't need to be productive.
Ok, I can see your argument here. I will need to ponder it for a while. However...
> Inflation is the opposite. It makes sure that the future is always brighter than the past. There is more money to be made in 2021 than in 2020. It tends to reward workers, those who do productive work.
...I think it is dangerous to characterize inflation as a good thing. It seems that 1) inflation encourages as much spending as possible today, since your money will have less value tomorrow, 2) inflation discourages working today, since the same effort will earn me more money tomorrow, so why bother?
I guess maybe you can say inflation is abstractly "good for the economy" whatever that means, without reference to the impact on the life satisfaction of real people. But it seems like we should all be able to agree that 0% inflation is the best scenario. I'd be curious to hear an argument for 1% inflation over 0%.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkflation
Anecdotally, my experience living in Japan vs the United States is that it's much better to be poor in Japan than poor in the United States, for various social / economic reasons (for instance, national healthcare in Japan, car culture in USA). At least before COVID-19, small businesses in Japan seemed to be doing pretty well, compared to the United States.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/765781fe-f136-11e7-b220-857e26d1a...
In the UK suicide stats come from ONS, and they count:
> all deaths from intentional self-harm for persons aged 10 years and over and deaths caused by injury or poisoning where the intent was undetermined for those aged 15 years and over.
The US uses
> Death caused by self-directed injurious behavior with an intent to die as a result of the behavior.
(but not for people under 9 years old). Including "intent" means the numbers end up being pretty different.
That's why newspapers make yarn out of the tiny difference between Japan's suicide rate (14.3/100k) and America's suicide rate (13.7/100k). They ignore non-suicide deaths of despair in America. Overdoses alone are (21.7/100k) and concentrated in regions where the US traded some industry or another for "geopolitical advantage."
Americans are the most heavily propagandized civilization in this history of humanity.
For instance, in my country I see young people adopting the same hostile attitude towards the police force as is standard practice in the US, despite us not having any of the problems that Americans justify this attitude with. Hell, even our legal frameworks are different (we're a civil law country, not common law). And yet, the US attitude is being imported wholesale and without question.
I felt this too. All of my interactions with Japanese people during a short trip were positive. They were super kind and friendly. The one unusual interaction was when I was sitting on the side of the road, scrolling on my phone. A guy comes up to me and tells me not to sit there. I try asking him why, but he’s unable to explain to me. I try using the translate app but it didn’t work for us. It’s possible to interpret this as him being unwelcoming but it’s probably just that I was breaking some unwritten rule and he didn’t know how to explain it in English.
If anyone can explain this to me, I’d be grateful. I was sitting on the tiny bump on the side of the road near Meiji Jingu (like this, but not near any structure - https://images.app.goo.gl/SY8mqcym2jNS9tsdA)
Japan is the only wealthy country where everything is its own, necessarily making it "weird" to the rest of the world.
The other common theme for Japan is depopulation. Japan is the oldest country in the world and will soon have 4 pensioners for every child. While this is not particularly noticeable in Tokyo (unless hunting for diapers and realizing that it's much easier to find ones for adults than for babies) large parts of the country are falling into disrepair, with rural villages depopulating entirely and smaller cities hollowing out fast. There are no obvious ways out of this, and Japan is not unique here, just ahead of the curve, as much of the Western world is already starting to hit the same demographic cliff.
People trying to assimilate in Japan... most of them will always remain foreigners in the eyes of their new country and fellow citizens. No matter what they do. Simply because they don’t look the part.
Regarding their attitude towards people from other Asian countries. Well, let’s just say I’m glad to have lived there as a white kid.
However it’s true; in Japan you’ll rarely, if not never, face any outwards violence or hostility as a foreigner.
But, let’s be honest: you’ll rarely face any sincere and authentic outwards anything ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Personally, the baseline quality of life I'm able to live here is quite a bit higher than anywhere I've been in the United States. Wherever I go, I'll be more than satisfied with a group of 5-10 close friends, and in a city like Tokyo over over 14 million people, I can certainly find what I'm looking for socially, even if not every individual person I encounter is a potential close friend. I tend to to multicultural events here anyway, where people are predisposed to open themselves up to non-Japanese.
I have often indeed been told that the younger (my?) generation is quite different on numerous aspects from the previous ones. From how they see foreigners to their relationship to work.
This is a difficult subject to answer in a simple way. I think they are, but it doesn't matter as much we tend to think, and it has less impact than what would be expected.
For instance I agree with you that outward hostility is extremely rare, or any racism explicitly verbalised. It also have basically no effect to foreigners above a certain living standard. To put it bluntly, if you're rich or at least middle class, you would be hard pressed to find signs of discrimination.
It's on the lower part that it becomes more apparent. To follow on your point:
> For instance, renting apartments can be an issue for foreign residents with poor Japanese language skills
It's not the language skills most of the time, although if you're crazy good at negotiation you might be able to dig your way through it. In my experience it's more that if you want to a flat at the same basic conditions than an average Japanese worker you will only have access to 5 or 10% of the offers. Those flagged "foreigners OK" for whatever reason.
For what it's worth, if you're a dude with no guarantor you won't have the same conditions as student girl backed by her gov. worker parents, as well.
In contrast, if you're ready to shell 200k a month on location and work at a prestigious place, you will be mostly welcome whatever your gender or race.
And of course a lot of things work the same. If you're looking for a job, trying to work at low wage job might be harder as a foreigner than applying to an IT department or financial institutions. The lower you go the more people will care if you're a foreigner or not.