Japan is hosting an annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for the first time since 1964. A lot has happened in the intervening very nearly half a century — to both Japan and the IMF. Yet both Japan and the IMF do not quite seem to realize just how much has happened to them over those years.
Both Japan and the IMF seem to be suffering from the same disease. They cannot see themselves in the mirror. It is not that they have become invisible to themselves in the mirror. They do see reflections. The problem is that those reflections do not reflect properly. Like the Mirror of Desire in Harry Potter's Hogwarts School, the mirrors that Japan and the IMF keep gazing into will always show them not their faces but their hearts' desire.
In Japan's case its heart's desire is to be forever young. Like the legendary Faust, Japan is ever willing to sell its heart to the devil in return for lasting youth. It refuses to acknowledge itself as a grown-up economy. Indeed, its heart's desire would surely be to have time stop in 1964, in which it was not just host to the IMF-World Bank meeting. Tokyo was also the venue for the Summer Olympic Games that year. Oh, to entertain the global financial mafia and sports celebrities in one's metropolis in one and the same year. How glorious, how wondrous, how desirous. All the more desirous, given that double-digit economic growth was starting to become something of a habit with the advent of the 1960s.