About six months ago, when I was in Japan, I made the observation that Japan seemed much less “depressed” than one would expect of a country that was in the throes of a two-decades-long economic downturn. I suggested we look at it as a “sustainable recession.”
Now, The Atlantic‘s James Fallows is on board. He seems to agree with me: not that he knows what I wrote. But I know what he’s writing, and in broad terms, he seems to back up what I was observing. He says that if Japan is a failure, it may be the sort of failure we should envy.
Japan may represent a future: where a society can come to terms with – and finally end – the fetishization of never-ending economic growth.
Someone named William J Holstein (to whom I was directed by Fallows) blogs about Asia extensively. He takes on The Economist‘s editors love affair with a doom-and-gloom analysis of the Japanese economy, head on. He begins: “It is positively surreal to read what the Economist is writing about Japan while actually visiting the country. There is a major disconnect.” Definitely – I’ve noticed this too, in my loyal consumption of the magazine’s content.
His conclusion identifies an ideological engine driving the magazine’s mis-analysis. I’m not sure I completely agree, but I do think it’s worth quoting at length, because, again, it recognizes that there are alternatives to a no-holds-barred, economic-growth-at-all-costs “free market” ideology.
Why is the Economist, a normally respected publication, so wrong about Japan? I think it’s because the Economist sees itself as the bearer of the free market orthodoxy. If Japan is facing “grim” conditions amid overall “gloom,” then the Economist’s ideology is correct. No nation can be advanced and sophisticated without embracing “the market.” But if Japan is, as I argue, a country that is managing itself very well without accepting the Anglo-Saxon version of capitalism, then the Economist’s ideology is faulty. The reform of embracing market reforms does not work for everyone. It is not universal. That very simple idea is what the lads at the Economist cannot allow to take root because it undermines their intellectual legitimacy. So they persist in their doom-and-gloom analysis of Japan–even if it does not even begin to square with the reality on the ground.
A final note, pertaining to South Korea: I personally think that Korea’s economic leadership is watching Japan very closely, and always has been. And I think the Koreans may recognize that Japan, more than, say, Europe or the US, represents South Korea’s “most probable future.” I don’t think that would be a bad thing, either. The main point: Japan is not the cultural or economic basket-case that the Western media likes to portray.
