Here’s a stunningly inept analysis of Japan’s problems, by somebody from a company that markets chinese crap to welfare moms.
Another problem is that Japanese business people and companies are lacking in individuality. Too many people think that everyone must be the same. That’s a basic fault.
Finally, Japanese companies seem to have their eyes in the rearview mirror. They have become introspective. I think we should get back to something more like we were at the end of the war when Japan rose to prominence from a situation in which it had nothing. (It was during this period that Fast Retailing got started, in 1949.)
I do not intend to fisk this article, but it gets thick real fast. He complains that Japan looks in the rearview, then suggests that the solution is a Great Leap Backward. Oh, and this particular Wayback Machine should be set to when Japan was an utterly crushed nation being rebuilt under American supervision, with American cash, and a heart-breaking degree of sacrifice by people who worked themselves to death for the sake of their now ungrateful and ignorant descendants, like this fool.
We’ve lost that spirit, maybe because we are under the illusion that we are rich and superior. But many countries are just as rich, and in Japan, income has stagnated for many people for a decade or more. Japan is still very comfortable to live in, if you are Japanese. But there’s a difference between being comfortable and being viable. We are gradually losing our viability.
In short, Japan has been utterly defeated as an economy. We’re losing the economic game. So why are we being so foolish? Or, more precisely, why aren’t we learning from our mistakes?
Learning from mistakes is something that Uniqlo has had to do—several times, unfortunately.
via Dare to err – McKinsey Quarterly – Strategy – Globalization.
This is more Carter / Obama “Malaise”. When the policies fail, blame the people. It’s not the socialism that’s killing you, it’s that you are unworthy of success. Obviously I see differences between people here (Japan) now and those who rebuilt this country, but those were also different times. The spirit which has been lost is not one which should be recaptured, as it was necessary and appropriate to unimaginably bleak times. You can’t have one without the other.
If any spirit is lacking, it is one of looking to the future with something other than dread. I have coined a couple of phrases which to me encapsulate differences between Japanese and American society, and one of them is that in Japan, “The Future is Dark”. No reason it has to stay that way, other than the pervasive socialism and the rampant corruption. Recent press muscle-flexing has ebbed and flowed, but on the whole seems to be making headway against the ridiculous strictures of the Press Club, and many outlets have been strident in their seasonal denunciations of corrupt politicians and their influence partners. All well and good, and not only a palliative corruption, but an effective antidote to socialism. A government which cannot count on the press to hide its abuses cannot long exist as a confiscatory state.
One of Japan’s more bitter recent issues has been the debate over subsidizing parenthood in general, and single-motherhood in particular. This is a fascinating intersection of culture and policy, and to me has served to illuminate aspects of both It’s like the superconducting supercollider of society; Let’s smash these things together and see what they’re made of.
A nation without enough children to support its aging population, or to sustain a growth economy, needs to think fast and move precisely. There are many acceptable solutions, I am sure, but nostalgia is not one of them.
