The rising incident of crime among the “silver set,” –aging Japanese who shoplift or commit petty crimes — was the subject of my conversation today with Michelle Norris of NPR’s All Things Considered today.
You can hear the conversation here.
Some of you know I publish a column every six weeks or so in the Nikkei Shimbun…or at least the English Weekly version.
However, since the paper is not really “Web friendly” I thought I would put my latest column here, too.
JAPAN’S LESSON FROM NOV 4
STOKE POLITICAL COMPETITION
Stock market collapses. Government passes package to stimulate consumer spending. Central bank cuts interest rates to spark growth.
These are headlines we have come to associate with Japan as it struggled through a “lost decade” of deflation and decline, and ones we have been reacquainted with now that Japan’s political bureaucracy is trying to shelter the nation from the global financial crisis. In recent weeks however, the same headlines have also surfaced in the U.S. after the collapse of major investment banks and financial institutions.
Because the harvest of recent headlines seems so similar, I am often asked whether I think America could possibly fall into the same trap of deflation, debt and decline that continues to plague Japan in 2008, nearly twenty years after the economic bubble burst.
Routinely my answer is “no” – but not for economic reasons alone.
Even though obvious similarities exist between America’s current struggles and the collapse of Japanese equity and real estate markets in the late 1980s. I don’t think the U.S. will succumb to a similar fate.
That’s because fixing the economic challenges that confront both superpowers is as much about political leadership, innovation and the will of its people as it is about the details and timing of macro-economic policy. And on November 4 the American electorate, as well as the American political system, once again resoundingly demonstrated that it retains the vital ingredients necessary for rebirth and renewal that Japan unfortunately still sadly lacks.
The lesson for Japan from November 4 seems quite simple and stark: No nation can expect to emerge from a long, structural depression until it creates a system that permits real political change and encourages real political competition. Unless its people can grasp a real sense of the possible, that one citizen’s commitment and passion and energy can really make a difference and engineer fundamental social change, then a nation like Japan can only conjure a future shadowed by stagnation and ennui.
Make no mistake. The landslide victory of Democrat Barack Obama over the incumbent Republican party was not some cosmetic statement about a younger man’s charm or charisma, though Obama offers these qualities by the bushel.
Obama was an unlikely challengers when the long presidential campaign began. He is, after all, a young, African American with little previous national exposure. His victory personifies the passion of millions of Americans to set the nation onto a starkly different course. They expressed that passion by voluntarily contributing millions of dollars to the Obama campaign, and by spending thousands of hours of their own time canvassing neighbors, knocking on the doors of strangers and enrolling new voters to participate in the political process.
This passionate engagement of the citizenry to overturn an old order helped turn the election to the opposition party. The political victory evoked tears of joy among hundreds of thousands of loyal supporters. Could you ever imagine seeing such a thing in Japan?
What still astounds most foreigners about Japan’s contemporary predicament is that after twenty years of lousy economics and slumping growth, rising suicides, falling birthrates and stubborn unemployment the same party, the Liberal Democrats continue to run the country. No opposition group –not even the leading alternative party, the rival Democratic Party of Japan – has been able to articulate a coherent, comprehensive, competing political ideology that might engage the citizenry. And when it comes to the basic building-blocks of politics – issues, organization and strategy – the vast majority of the Japanese people simply don’t care, abdicating their power to plodding bureaucrats and inept, corrupt politicians.
Without a passion to invest in political action, without an ideological “brand” to bring to battle, without a zest for social reinvention or a belief in a brighter future, Japan is destined to be stale and bereft of new ideas.
Whatever the achievements or failures of the Obama administration which takes over next Jan. 20, the American people have demonstrated that wealth and military power does not exempt a nation from the burden of reinvention if it hopes to maintain its strengths and position of leadership in a changing world.
It is fair to wonder when the Japanese people will be able to make a similar statement.
A huge surprise in Tokyo tonight as Yasuo Fukuda, who had been Prime Minister for less than a year, abruptly stepped out from office…with no clear sign who will replace him.
“We need a new team to carry out policies,” Fukuda said at a hastily-called press conference. “I thought it would be better for someone else to do the job than me.”
Fukuda, 72, was a decent man who caught few breaks. Less nationalist — and more politically moderate — than his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, Fukuda never enjoyed a deep enough vein of solid support within his own party to negotiate from strength with the opposition Democrats at a time when the opposition controls the Upper House. He was intent on hosting the G-7 meeting in Hokkaido, but never was able to come to terms with an economy sliding precipitously into stagflation. And he was never able to cut a deal with Ichiro Ozawa, the mercurial head of the Democratic Party, on how the two parties might together create a comprehensive strategy to tackle Japan’s long-term economic and social challenges.
History will look upon Fukuda as another ineffectual placeholder at a time when Japan desperately needs some re-invention. His support levels recently have hovered only at 30 percent.
Alas, Fukuda’s departure won’t lead to more clarity, but to more discord and uncertainty. Taro Aso, a repeatedly failed candidate for PM, may well be chosen next…but he is likely to churn out more political storm than he diminishes, as he is known to make deeply undiplomatic comments
This new bout of political chaos does speed up the likelihood of a general election to sort out the nation’s political mess, but most pundits think Japan is at least two elections away from some semblance of political coherence.
It’s a wealthy-enough nation so there’s no sense of crisis, even if Japan is falling further and further behind world trends. And that’s unfortunate.
“I have never met a Japanese man who did not want me to be his mommy.” So does the Washington Post today describe the birth crisis facing contemporary Japan, which I refer to as “Womb Strike” in my book.
Blaine Harden correctly notes that the number of children being born per married Japanese woman has held steady for three decades..but the rate of marriage has plunged. This once again shows that the decrease in fertility is related to the refusal of Japanese women to wed.
Harden’s piece shows that nearly two years after Shutting Out the Sun was published, there has not been much change.
For a country that has suffered a long and demoralizing period of deflation, you might think that a bout of INFLATION would be good for Japan. Rising prices could induce consumers to start shopping to beat price hikes, and as prices rose, offer employers incentives to produce more and create new jobs.
But alas, the new GDP numbers from Japan this week show the worst. Rising inflation because of external forces, like the spike in oil prices, and continued lackluster domestic demand. The data shows the Japanese economy shrank by 0.6 percent, or 2.4 percent on annualized basis in Q2. And as U.S. demand for imports from Japan likely may weaken…Japan’s future growth is once again under question.
Japanese banks had only modest exposure to the US subprime mess, and should continue to benefit from China’s growth, even if in its post-Olympic period, Beijing tries to cool its hot-running engine. But the continued lack of serious restructuring and deregulation, and the continued reliance on huge multinationals, rather than young entrepreneurs, to create innovative new firms that can build wealth, will continue to depress Japan’s prospects in the near term.
What foreign words are most recognized in Japan??
A recent survey gives you a sense of the Japanese mood, the Kyoto newswire reports:
“Stress” is the most recognized and frequently used loanword in Japan, a survey on the Japanese language by the Cultural Affairs Agency showed Thursday.
In the nationwide survey conducted in March, to which around 2,000 people responded, the agency asked respondents whether they understood the meaning of 60 loanwords, if they had seen or heard the words, and how often they had used them.
In the survey, 98.5 percent of the respondents said they had either seen or heard the word “stress,” prompting an agency official to comment that it was a “reflection of the current state of Japanese society, in which many people feel stressed.”
I am often surprised to see how much “credit” US and other foreign commentators give to Japan when it comes considering Japan’s future strategic identity, and its policy options as it now must deal, rather uncomfortably, with a U.S. now facing global resistance to the Unipolar View once offered up by the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Wolfowitz axis, and the inexorable revival of China as the next power within Asia.
Since the end of World War II, Japan has with almost blinding alacrity pretty much “jumped” whenever Uncle Sam wagged a finger. In very few cases has Japan really developed it own, distinctively Japanese perspective, on how to manage its foreign policy challenges and its inexorably economic decline, as the 21st century unfolds.
So I was very pleased to review a piece by Hitoshi Tanaka that candidly reviews the “stagnation” in Japanese politics, and its implications for future Japanese foreign policy. Tanaka, once a US Consul-General in San Francisco, was the point man for former Prime Minister Koizumi when Koizumi made his landmark opening to North Korean strongman Kim Jung-il.
You can read the piece here
I was recently interviewed by the Carnegie Council and asked to explain how Japan’s hikikomori, or social isolation syndrome, also helps us better understand Japan’s future trajectory in Asia-Pacific and the world.
You can find the audio link here:
Here’s a fascinating story from the UPI, written by Harumi Kawamura Gondo.
Kawasaki, Japan — Japanese “monster parents” – parents who make unreasonable demands of their children’s schools or teachers – have been a hot topic of online discussion in recent times.
For example, an elementary school captured a lot of interest when it put on the play “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” The curiosity of it was that there were 25 Snow Whites, but no dwarfs and no witch. Giving in to pressure from parents, who launched a campaign of bullying and harassment against them, school authorities decided against favoring one girl to play the role of Snow White.
In the past, Japanese parents would apologize to the teacher and school for their children’s behavior. But nowadays, parents view themselves more as privileged customers and horror stories of their behavior abound.
Yoshihiko Morotomi, a professor at Japan’s Meiji University, has recently published a book about the phenomenon. He lists hundreds of incidents that illustrate the behavior of these monster parents. The mother of one child, accidentally injured on the playground by another child, demanded the suspension of the other child – her reasoning was that the other child should not benefit from the lessons that her son would be missing during the duration of her son’s recuperation.
Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper has joined in the fray, publishing actual things that parents have said or done to teachers. Notable among them are the parents who visit teachers and principals at their private residences to address at length problems at school, or the parents who insinuate connections with organized crime in order to accentuate their requests.
A recent television program showed a parent calling a teacher, asking, “My child refuses to take a bath. Can you come over and make my child get in the tub?”
Japanese school teachers have joined in the online discussion, sharing their own experiences. One teacher in Yokohama wrote, “I teach English in Japan and once booted a boy from class for punching a girl after being ordered to stop. He told his mom and she came to school demanding an apology for embarrassing her angel.”
Another teacher in Hiroshima wrote, “Here, students are not failed…If you sit in a test and write only your name and fall asleep you are not given an F for that test, you are given a C. A student who hits a teacher is not suspended or expelled. A student who cannot control himself in class is not removed.”
Indeed, many schools have dropped the traditional “undoukai,” which were sports competitions held annually in schools across the country. The new undoukai consist of similar games and competitions but without a competitive edge, and without winners or losers.
An English language director at a college in north China said the same things were happening there. “I can validate academic standards being slaughtered – a ‘no fail policy’ for the most incompetent and/or lazy students. Parent/student pressure is standard.”
Morotomi identified the more dangerous monsters, the “teacher hunters,” who meet in diners and coffee shops to conspire against certain teachers. Their efforts sometimes end in demands for the teacher’s resignation.
Some have blamed such behavior as symptomatic of deeper social troubles in Japanese society, rooted in the economic crisis in the late 1980s and 1990s, erupting in recent times and visible in extreme bullying in schools, soaring suicide rates and the appearance of shut-ins – mostly men and boys who refuse to leave their rooms for years on end.
Michael Zielenziger, author of a recently-published book, “Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan created its own lost generation,”writes of a conversation he had with Haruki Murakami, one of Japan’s most famous novelists. Murakami commented, “We believed in the strength of the society and the power of our economy. And we believed that things were getting better and better, year by year and day by day…That’s a kind of confidence, but that was lost…Once the Cold war ended, everything changed. We couldn’t adjust to the new situation. It was a kind of chaos and we lost our sense of direction.”
Others have offered other reasons. One online reader reflected, “In Japan, women are oppressed. The mothers are getting together for coffee and talking about their kids’ teachers. If women had more rights in the workplace in Japan, they’d be too busy (and perhaps fulfilled) to waste their time with this kind of nonsense.”
Another reader from the United Kingdom wrote, “Perhaps the Japanese are evolving from a society of silent conformity to one of open discussion and there are, perhaps, many buried issues that need to evolve and develop.”
The behavior of the parents has increasingly captured concern and national interest. Feeding upon the zeitgeist there is even a new drama series, “Monster Parent,” scheduled to air on July 1 on Japan’s Fuji Television. The drama series casts actress Ryoko Yokenura as a lawyer dispatched to the Board of Education to fight parents who make outrageous demands of the schools.
More news from Japan tells us that the bloody rampage of Tomohiro Kato, who fatally stabbed seven people in Tokyo’s Akihabara’s shopping district on Sunday was no random act.
Kato clearly signalled his intentions on a website, sending a message from his cellphone about seven hours before the attack which read, “I will kill people in Akihabara, have a vehicle crash and, if the vehicle becomes useless, I will use a knife.”
The day before his attack, Kato also apparently posted another message from his mobile phone saying, “Should I run down people with a car because everybody makes a fool of me?” A subsequent post said the author had spent “eight years of life as a loser every since I graduated from high school.”
It is probably unrealistic to suggest that someone, having read these message on the website, might have come to Kato’s aid. But these and other posts show that Kato’s frustration and anger had been growing for some time, and that he felt his best option was to become “famous” by committing a violent act.
Of course Kato’s actions are his alone to account for. Yet they clearly speak to the larger sense of frustration and anger welling up among many young adults in Japan who see themselves mired without dreams in a society that doesn’t really want to open itself and permit more self-expression and independence. That helps explain the recent rise of chemical-based suicides.