When
I first arrived in Japan, 20 years ago, there was a strong sense
of optimism and an economy that was only going one way, up! The majority
of people were pretty content with their lot in life, lifetime
employment, enough good food, maybe even a foreign vacation, which was
just becoming fashionable then, a government that was most certainly
corrupt along with the bureaucrats and business executives, but scandal
was unheard of, because it was never allowed to see the light of day,
until the first major scandal involving Nakasone.
The
government protected all areas of industry from foreign competition,
rice farmers, steel producers, ship builders, car manufacturers, etc.
O.K., there were strikes, especially famous, was the old J.N.R strikes
which saw loyal company employees walking along the railway tracks to
get to work or sleeping at their office at nights until the strike was
resolved. In Tokyo, many people wore smiles on their faces, happy with
their life, children and teenagers were polite, didn't have dyed hair,
generally, high school girls did not sell their bodies in order to buy a
brand label dress or handbag as they do today.
One of my Japanese friends remarked to me at the time, "Tokyo is
always changing, old buildings are coming down and new ones are
springing up, its so exciting". It was difficult to find an
homeless person in Tokyo, everyone seemed to have a job and enough
money, It was truly awesome for me to step into such a climate of
hopefulness and confidence, coming from London, where a strike was a
weekly occurrence and young people (like me), certainly, thought it was
a natural part of life, and the working man had little hope of a bright
future, until Margaret Thatcher came along to break the strangle hold
that the unions had over my countries well being.
What has happened to that country that I fell in love with all those
years ago? What has happened to the people of Japan, who have little to
smile about now? What have the almighty leaders of this proud nation
done? What has happened to Japans future, its children?
In
other sections I have started to address these questions, but with the
continued nose dive of the economy and the moral degeneration continuing
at an alarming pace, with a government who make empty promises and
policies that have no effects, I have decided to speak out bluntly,
because the sadness I feel for the decline in Japan needs to be
expressed with complete honesty.
It is high time for the Japanese people to get rid off the old power
brokers in Japan. Those old men who for decades have ruled with an iron
grip, behind the scenes, rarely mentioned, usually only in Western media
are they talked about and sometimes criticized. They have ruled like the
old shoguns before the Meiji Restoration, with little regard for the
common man. Prime Ministers rise or fall at these peoples whim. The LDP
is certainly not a "peoples party" it is riddled with
corruption and controlled completely from "behind". They rely
on the farmers and other associations for their votes. Why, you should
ask, are rice prices so high in Japan? Why are there no imports of
foreign rice? The answer, according to the LDP is that the Japanese
people will not eat it. Fine, then those companies that import it will
make a loss, not the government. The Japanese people should decide if
they want to eat it or not. Japanese rice farmers need the barriers to
stay in business, why isn't the government honest enough to at least
admit this obvious fact and also say that they will lose a huge block of
votes! That is one example of government propping up a redundant system
for their own end, there are certainly many others. Lets look at the
banking industry and what has befallen it. Corruption, greed,
incompetent banking executives, racketeering and theft, all have
occurred in Japanese banks. Few banks have been untouched by this
debacle. The government is pumping trillions of yen into propping them
up. The money is coming out of the taxpayers pockets. Is this helping
their recovery, according to most reports (outside of the government),
no it isn't, the situation with bad loans, is in fact getting worse.
Maybe, like me, you have witnessed bank presidents crying and
apologizing on TV, for the mess they have caused (the banks), what
happened to them afterwards? Many of the banking hierarchy are still at
their desks, running the banks that they helped to run into the ground.
Others have retired, receiving very large golden handshakes. Surely they
do not deserve it? Handcuffs would be more justifiable, one banker is
perhaps going to return the money to the bank, and does he really feel
any guilt?
How about other industries, such as, steel, shipbuilding, oil, cement,
they have all been protected, they cannot compete against outside
competition. Now the effects of all those years of protectionism have
come home to break the back of Japans economic well being.
Drastic
and severe restructuring is needed in all industries if Japan is ever
going to drag itself out of the black hole that it has dug for itself.
Too many companies "rested on their laurels" and did nothing
to make products that would stand up to foreign competition, just on
there own merits, and not protected by the government. The exceptions
are the electronics and auto industries in particular.
Risutra
(:restructuring = redundancies) -
is the word that no company employee wants to hear, the fear is at the
back of a growing number of peoples minds, even in fairly secure
industries, uncertainty of what the future may hold is becoming more
apparent. It is a brave man, who will say with complete assurance that
he will work for his company for another twenty years. Twenty months, I
feel is also being optimistic in quite a few companies.
Around 1997 I had a very interesting conversation with a very senior
manager of a fairly famous company, He thought Japan should have done as
the English had done under the Thatcher government, get rid of all the
"dead wood" in industry and start again. This would have been
good advice to the government, but they hid their collective heads in
the sand and did nothing. Some estimates put the number of workers who
are redundant but still working at around seven million. At the present
time (February 1999) the unemployment rate stands at 4.3%, a
conservative figure, how much higher can it go, maybe between 8-12% is
not improbable over the next year or two.
What happens to these people who were promised lifetime employment when
they joined their companies after graduating from school? They commit
suicide, they live in the gutter or they walk around aimlessly in a
daze, a few try to retrain for a new job. A fifty year old man has very
little chance of finding any kind of job, however hard he retrains
himself, those are the simple facts of life in Japan, now.
The
government recently enacted a stimulus policy, which has been dubbed
"the most stupid economic policy in the history of the world".
Stupid, is not a strong enough word to describe it.
The
stimulus package:
people
over the age of 60 and families with children, will be given 20.000 Yen,
for them to spend in their local shops, to help boost the local
economies. Surely like me (if I am lucky enough to get it, foreigners
may not get it even though they pay the same taxes, a case of racism?),
families will use these vouchers to buy the necessary things in life and
put the extra money into a savings account. This is another insane LDP
policy, which I believe was intended to "buy" votes, for the
upcoming election. Obuchi (Prime Minister) was brazen enough to say on
TV that this initiative (?) will help the economy, he even said it with
a straight face. Are the Japanese people "taken in" by this, I
really don't know anymore, perhaps they want to believe it, like
children want to believe in Santa Claus, but as they get older they
understand, deep down that it is a fallacy.
There isn't a Margaret Thatcher type personality in Japan; all its
so-called leaders exude weakness and mistrust. Japan cannot hope for any
Prime Minister in the foreseeable future to turn the economy around. The
electorate should devoid themselves of the LDP though, even if it only
shakes things up in the political world, it is better than voting for a
party who must take a large part of the blame for Japans demise.
The
children have little to look forward to, study, study, and study and at
the end of it, unemployment! In England children drop out of school,
they are on the "scrap heap". In Japan, children are forced to
sacrifice their childhood, for what? Is it really any wonder that
Japanese kids are forswearing Japanese society and all it holds dear?
This is not a minor problem, concerning a few children; it is becoming
an epidemic, from elementary to high school. Teachers are afraid of the
children, carrying knives is becoming common, children are frightened of
children, adults are becoming frightened of children. In a short time
Japan has started to become like the streets of London, with youth gangs
looking for an easy target, to take out their frustrations on. You do
not need to be a fortuneteller to see where this may lead to in the not
so distant future. With more and more disaffected kids out on the
streets, the stakes are being raised. If as some people predict, total
economic collapse with millions of unemployed, Japan will no longer be a
safe place to live. The very lifeblood of Japan is running down the
drain, every child in Japan is important to the rapidly growing ageing
society, what value are they going to have in the future.
Untrained,
undisciplined, lacking moral restraints, looking at society and seeing
only dishonesty, corruption and hopelessness. Looking at their parents
and seeing disillusionment and disappointment in their parents both of
whom, having sacrificed so much to the fathers company. Then the company
easily undergoing risutora and next finding him, after all, without a
job for life. A defunct education system that allows for no discussion,
no freedom of thought, unbending and rigid teaching methods, that only
produce young adults that very often cannot think for themselves have
few opinions that they are able to express with any clarity, and lack
the dynamism that will lift this country off of its knees. The Education
Ministry has made a halfhearted attempt to change things, with these
changes, beginning in a year or two's time. Changing teaching methods
and "freeing up" the curriculums has not been changed. Other
government ministries seem to be unable or unwilling to carry out
effective restructuring on themselves.
There
are two many chiefs with conflicting ideas, where consensus rules. To
ever make any important decisions, or take vitally needed drastic
measures. This conundrum affects the government and bureaucracy through
and through, leaving anyone whom understands the situation in Japan,
with little to hope for in the future.
Murderers are starting to multiply, murder by poison is an especially
insidious act. Poisoning lunch boxes and soft drinks and then placing
them on supermarket shelves has become common place. Using a variety of
poisons, many of which cannot be detected by smell or taste are used.
The National Police Agency has told people to spit the drink out if it
tastes strange. If there is no taste, this advise is (as usual for them)
useless. I always inspect very carefully any can or carton of drink
before I buy it, some supermarket employees look at me strangely, I want
to ask them if they know about the poisonings or not. But I must
restrain myself, like the rest of the problems in Japan, the Japanese
try to "sweep it under the carpet", and pretend everything is
rosy in the garden that is called Japan.
The much feared Aum Shinrikyo cult
(responsible for the gas attacks in Tokyo and many other serious crimes)
are back. The legal system was incapable of destroying what must be
enemy number one in Japan. They are growing in numbers, the ranks
swelled by the disaffected youth. The police can only look on and wonder
if they are planning to cause more havoc on innocent people in the
future.
I
know a couple of respected scientists who said that they would join the
cult if they ever had serious problems in their lives, because the cult
offers a sense of security and a father figure with whom they could look
up to. So much for the intelligentsia of Japan. |