Word: japanized
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...That insecurity helps explain why Japanese consumer spending has remained stagnant. Each month in 2006, households spent less than they did in the same month in 2005. A Cabinet Office report found that household sentiment swooned in December, and Japan's top three department stores reported declining sales in the run-up to the country's New Year holiday. While unemployment has declined from 5.4% in 2002 to 4.1% at the end of 2006, wages have gone nowhere. According to statistics from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the average Japanese made $2,881 a month...
...Japanese workers aren't likely to feel richer or more secure anytime soon. Corporations have kept wages in check in part by shifting more work to part-time employees, who now constitute over 33% of Japan's workforce, up from 20% in 1992. Business leaders insist wages must be suppressed for Japanese companies to compete globally, but Katz points out that enforced fiscal austerity is toxic for the economy as a whole. "If every company cuts wages at the same time, no one is going to buy your products," he says. "That is what's happening...
...shift to part-time workers is also exacerbating the income disparity that more than 90% of Japanese believe is a growing problem, according to a recent poll by the broadcaster NHK. Although Japan has never fully realized its self-image as ichioku sochuryu (the nation of middle-class people), the income gap is getting worse because the rich are getting richer while the poor are actually losing ground. According to the O.E.C.D., Japan is now second to the U.S. among developed countries in terms of relative poverty-the proportion of people living on 50% less than the median income...
...permanently doomed to part-time work and paltry wages. "You have people competing for the diminishing number of good jobs, and a lot of kids just don't have the resources to compete," says Scott North, a sociologist at Osaka University. Those trends, he adds, may in turn worsen Japan's declining birthrate. "If you don't have stable employment, it'll be hard to get married, hard to raise children...
...years. Late last year the city government announced a harsh fiscal-restructuring plan that would involve raising local taxes to the maximum while cutting public services to the bone. With its crippling debt, aging population and depressed job market, Yubari has come to embody many of Japan's ills. "All the problems that Yubari faces as a city are the same problems that Japan as a country faces," says Tatsuro Sasaya, a Yubari businessman. "It makes me wonder where Japan is headed...