Word: japanism
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...Ozawa wrong in seeing that Japan faces enormous challenges. At home, it confronts a rapidly aging population and declining birthrate. The number of those aged over 65 is projected to jump from 28 million today to 35 million by 2025, by which time nearly 30% of the population will be elderly. This demographic shift will put enormous strain on corporate Japan, which is running out of workers - something that could be ameliorated by substantial immigration if Japan's leaders were bold enough (none has been) to prepare a traditionally closed society to open itself up. And an aging society will...
...Overseas, Japan, which just 20 years ago was the subject of books (how strangely they read now) predicting it would overtake the U.S. as the world's No. 1 economy, must cope with a resurgent competitor to its east. China's economic model is now admired around the world as a model, as Japan's once was. Asia has never seen a time when both China and Japan were simultaneously strong. That does not mean such a state of affairs is impossible; it does mean that both nations will need wise leaders if they are not to turn into bitter...
...Above all, Japan has to cope with the fact that the economic model on which it built both its postwar prosperity and social stability is broken. Japan's spectacularly successful export-oriented industries were responsible for creating the world's second largest economy, and their lifetime-employment policies, with generous benefits, obviated the need for a comprehensive social safety net of the sort familiar to Western Europeans. Then came the bubble. After financial markets were liberalized in the 1980s, Japan went on a debt-fueled binge that made modern Americans look as thrifty as Amish farmers. The stock market soared...
...bubbles do, this one burst. While Japan's bureaucrats dithered, failing to face up to the crisis in the financial system, the economy went into a long "lost decade." The stock market plunged, then limped, then plunged again. (The Nikkei index is down 82% from its peak in 1989, and recently hit a 26-year low.) Banks that had once been the envy of the world had to be recapitalized. Growth picked up again after the turn of the century, as demand in China and the U.S. grew, only to be clobbered by the global recession and the collapse...
...pictures of Japan and the world...