The Future of Japan

[Gulliver]

Outgoing BBC Tokyo correspondent muses on his 10 years in Japan.

Required reading for anyone thinking of living here?

Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past By, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63830490

[RetireJapan]

Yeah, not completely sold on that one (especially from someone in the process of moving back to the UK -I know where I'd rather be living at the moment!).

Counterpoints: https://twitter.com/GearoidReidy/status ... 5083798529

[adamu]

One things for sure, it used to be his future, and now it's his past

[Gulliver]

Yeah, not completely sold on that one (especially from someone in the process of moving back to the UK -I know where I'd rather be living at the moment!).

Counterpoints: https://twitter.com/GearoidReidy/status ... 5083798529

I’m definitely am no longer clicking any links to Twitter. If YOU have a relevant/helpful insights I’d be happy to hear though.

One things for sure, it used to be his future, and now it's his past

Again, your point being?

[RetireJapan]

If YOU have a relevant/helpful insights I’d be happy to hear though.

Well, housing is for people to have somewhere to live, so I think Japan's affordable housing market where people can buy or rent easily and with a normal salary is preferable to the investment driven markets in the UK, Australia, Canada where it is extremely difficult for normal people to buy/rent at reasonable proportions of their salary.

Investing in infrastructure is a good thing for a country (contrast with UK/US where bridges are falling down and roads crumbling due to lack of investment).

Birth rates in other East Asian countries are lower than Japan, and similar in Western Europe.

Agree that government here could be more proactive in pushing companies to raise wages (as opposed to requesting or urging it over and over again).

[sutebayashi]

Interesting read. Some points I have different ideas on.

I don’t think those manhole covers are much clue about Japan’s large public debt. Nor the concrete everywhere.

I think the concrete everywhere stems primarily from a desire to eliminate risk. In Japan eliminating risk seems like it’s always justified, no matter the cost - there is no risk/reward trade-off. So concrete everything is justified because there might be a flood or a tidal wave. When you are spending other people’s money, to eliminate risk, as a public servant who is going to complain? But yes there probably is an element of protecting construction jobs in there too.

The driver of Japan’s public debt seems to be coming from the social welfare programs. They alone consume about total tax revenues, I believe. Japan simply spends more money that it has, and unfortunately that debt isn’t much of an investment, mostly just spending that doesn’t have much pay off.

I don’t think that debt situation ends well, but I do think that Japan does change when things get really, really bad. So there will be a new beginning, after the end!

But Japan will figure out how it wants to change for itself, when the inertia becomes unacceptable.

Anything that does get adopted in Japan always get adopted with traits of Japan, rather than adopted as-is from abroad. Democracy is a good example. Overseas, you vote for the politician whose policies you like. In Japan, you vote for your local politician (like when your ancestors had a local warlord prior to Meiji restoration), and then your local politician will jostle within his political party over policy. So within the LDP you see these swings between different types of policy (although always spending lots of money). So this is just a continuation of the old way of doing things in Japan, with a veneer of newness in the form of democracy.

I don’t see how immigration would solve the “problem” of a shrinking population in Japan. These days, with a weak currency it seems a lot of people are less inclined to want to come to Japan (to work) than before. And even if immigrants did come, would they be immune to the forces that lead Japanese themselves to have fewer children? I suspect not. These days the politicians are talking about the obvious solution - spend more money - to tackle the problem. But I don’t think that is likely to be it. But I don’t think the Japanese see the notion of Japan being populated by people as the goal, they want Japan to be populated by Japanese people.

In the end, I am not greatly worried personally. Japan is a pretty good country to live in, all told. If things are better elsewhere, one can always pick up and leave. I hope my kids will keep their options open too. But if they find a better place to live elsewhere, great. It’s a bit like those Russians fleeing Russia to escape being drafted into the military. Things here aren’t that bad! I don’t see a great caliber of politicians anywhere, so far this century. So it comes down to ourselves.

[Wales4rugbyWC23]

Yeah, not completely sold on that one (especially from someone in the process of moving back to the UK -I know where I'd rather be living at the moment!).

Counterpoints: https://twitter.com/GearoidReidy/status ... 5083798529

I’m definitely am no longer clicking any links to Twitter. If YOU have a relevant/helpful insights I’d be happy to hear though.

One things for sure, it used to be his future, and now it's his past

Again, your point being?

As a compromise, there are times when I think Japan is light years ahead of us (UK) and at others when they are light years behind us. It's when those times are where the trouble begins and when we get the social media storm. I have already seen this posted on Redit, Facebook and now Retire Japan (Don't do Twitter)

[zeroshiki]

You always get the complaining about Japan posts on reddit so it was a surprise to see it on the BBC. It does read like a laundry list of stuff westerners complain about Japan but doesn't have the things Japan does right.

I get the feeling westerners (on Reddit and elsewhere) always just see their home countries with rose colored glasses when comparing them to Japan but never consider the opposite view. Japan has good social insurance, amazing infrastructure and affordable housing. It's a country made up of the middle class where really poor people or really rich people are only a small percentage of the population.

You can live a good comfortable life in Japan no matter your background and I feel people lose sight of alot of this as they complain about how the staff at McDonald's tried to read them the menu in Japanese.

[captainspoke]

Outgoing BBC Tokyo correspondent muses on his 10 years in Japan. ...

Maybe he just used the wrong chatGPT prompts?

[captainspoke]

You always get the complaining about Japan posts on reddit so it was a surprise to see it on the BBC. ...

I posted a link to a reddit thread on this as a comment below the Monday Read.

I think most commenters are critical of the BBC article and supportive of japan.