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April 30, 2024
 

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JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES

BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jan 28, 2013
Inflation targeting easy to promote, but difficult to achieve without tools
T he government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Bank of Japan agreed last week to set a 2 percent inflation target to be achieved "as soon as possible." All sorts of issues have been raised, from the dangers of intervening in monetary policy to the waning independence of the central bank, but there are many problems inherent with inflation targeting.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Dec 24, 2012
Rip van Winkle returns to government with trade war on his mind
Japan is about to get a new government and it's just like old times. Liberal Democratic Party leader Shinzo Abe, who is set to become prime minister, again sounds as if he has been spending his time out of office back in the 1960s.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Dec 17, 2012
Deflation only natural when politicians refuse to fix oversupplied Japan
Needless to say, the biggest challenge for the government to be formed after Sunday's general election is to put the Japanese economy on a growth path.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Nov 19, 2012
Elusive 'wealth of nations' in a global economy
We live in the global age. We have been living in it for quite some time now. It is some 20 years, give or take, since the word "global" began to establish itself in the economic lexicon. A friend one has known for that length of time ought to be someone we know a lot about. Yet globalization still continues to baffle us. Really, we do not even seem to know whether it is friend or foe. Making sense of the global economy is not an exercise in which we have excelled thus far. So what should we do?
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Nov 5, 2012
Excess supply, not lack of demand, weighing on the global economy
The demand and supply balance is adjusted through price fluctuations under a market economy. However, price changes often go too far, occasionally leading to creation of a bubble boom and its subsequent collapse. When Japan's bubble boom went bust in the early 1990s, Japanese companies were burdened with three excesses — excess workforce, excess debt and excess production capacity — and spent the following two "lost" decades" adjusting the redundancies.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Oct 22, 2012
No nation can afford to act like an island in Asia's globalized age
Japan is having trouble keeping up a cordial relationship with its next door neighbors. Long dormant territorial disputes have suddenly come to the fore. Who owns what from when and why? Who can claim legal ownership? Who is in actual control? Arcane issues have suddenly become hot topics of the moment between Japan and China as well as South Korea over tiny bits of land mass in the seas.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Sep 24, 2012
Toll of double tax hikes on the economy will be even worse than in '97
The number of people in Japan aged 65 or older has reached 30.74 million, or 24.1 percent of the population, according to a government estimate released on the Respect for the Aged Day last Monday. The numbers are record highs and warn of snowballing health and welfare costs the country will soon have to face. Will Japan have enough political willpower to enforce the upcoming tax hikes and will they have a positive effect on the economy?
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jun 4, 2012
The risks of democracy: When markets resolve what politics cannot
The European sovereign debt problem that began with Greece has entered a new phase. In addition to the ruling party's defeat in polls Greece held May 6, Nicholas Sarkozy, who helped champion fiscal austerity as the cure for the crisis, was replaced as French president by Francois Hollande, a Socialist who has called for greater emphasis on growth.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
May 14, 2012
Atomic exit deserves warm welcome in land of nuclear apprentices
As of May 6, Japan became a nuclear power-free zone. All of the nuclear plants throughout the country are offline, either as a result of last year's Fukushima disaster or routine maintenance. The government and electric power companies are hoping to see them back in action soon, but public sentiment remains strongly skeptical.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Apr 23, 2012
Consumption tax fiasco magnified by absence of financial fundamentals
To paraphrase Winston Churchill's all too famous words at the time of the Battle of Britain: "Never in the field of economic policy has so little been achieved by so many hours wasted by so many lawmakers." The outcome of the debate over Japan's consumption tax would surely extract a quote to surpass all Churchillian quotes in its acerbity were he here to witness it.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Apr 16, 2012
Trade deficit a reminder Japan needs to brace for economy's fifth stage
Japan's ¥2.49 trillion trade deficit in 2011 — its first in 31 years — tells you where the economy's development stands in relation to the balance of trade. Let's review how the trade balance has fluctuated in each stage of the nation's postwar development and look at some of the challenges ahead.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Mar 26, 2012
Diversity, inclusiveness should be the key words for Japan after March 11
March will forever be a month to remember in Japan. Already a year has gone by since that awful 11th of March when the world erupted in all sorts of ways around us. Given all the terrible things that happened then and continue to haunt us now, what are the values that we need to hold most dear? What kind of mindset do we need to maintain so that we do not return unquestioningly back to the old ways of doing things — the same ways that lie under some of the crucial man-made problems that followed the natural disasters that hit us just over a year ago.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Feb 27, 2012
Fiscally hobbled Japan nears multiple-currency era: Is yen's demise nigh?
For a single-currency area to be sustainable, one of two conditions needs to be met. One, sufficient economic convergence throughout the area in question. Two, a transfer mechanism to offset whatever economic divergences exist in the area. The eurozone currently meets neither of these conditions. Thus the eurozone's days look numbered. Couldn't be simpler. End of story.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Feb 20, 2012
Lost in inflation: the trap of focusing solely on the consumer price index
Japan's wholesale price index has consistently been on the rise since December 2009 due chiefly to rising oil and food prices. But the consumer price index has fallen year on year for three years in a row. One reason behind the decline in the CPI is the rising influx of cheaper, high-quality products from overseas. This is reflected by globalized Japan's descent into its first trade deficit since 1980 and by the rivers of red ink flowing from its once mighty electronics makers.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Dec 26, 2011
Brace for the year of the dragon, when all shall be revealed
In the Sino-Japanese cycle of annual zodiac signs, the year 2012 will be the year of the dragon. 2011 was the year of the hare. How quickly it is jumping away.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Dec 19, 2011
Lawmaker attitudes, Tohoku both in dire need of transformation
The extraordinary Diet session closed Dec. 9 after the Upper House endorsed the opposition-submitted censure motion against Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa and consumer affairs chief Kenji Yamaoka. Was anything else accomplished? The legislature passed the third extra budget of the year for disaster recovery and enacted laws to establish a reconstruction agency and deal with the dual-loan problem burdening people in tsunami-ravaged areas.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Nov 28, 2011
'Japanization' needn't be an economic curse word
Everybody walks in fear of Japanization these days. Everybody wants to avoid their version of the lost decade. They don't want to see their economies become locked into a never-ending spiral of deflation, Japanese-style.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Oct 31, 2011
Deciphering eurozone: financial stability quest a study in surrealism
EFSF stands for European Financial Stability Facility. Or so they say. I can only see it as standing for European Financial Science Fiction. How can it be anything else given the nature of the arrangement?
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Oct 24, 2011
Going back to the past won't help Japan Inc. protect supply chain
The joint declaration adopted Oct. 15 by the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers expressed a willingness to take resolute action to deal with the serious downside risks being faced by the global economy. But Japan, beset by the damage caused by the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis, has posted three consecutive quarters of negative growth since October 2010.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Sep 26, 2011
Prime Minister Noda the no-sider can have no one on his side
So yet another Japanese prime minister comes out of the woodwork. One gets so tired of talking about revolving doors, merry-go-rounds, musical chairs and passing the parcel.
When will Japan intervene to support the yen?
Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki has reiterated the government's readiness to take an appropriate action as the yen continues to slide against the U.S. dollar.
'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
Raising kids in Japan as a single parent? It takes a village.
Making things work as a foreign, single mother in Japan isn't easy, but these tips and tricks can help you through the hardest parts.
Yen rebounds strongly after first slide past ¥160 since 1990
The yen dropped to ¥160.245 per dollar on Monday before heading into the other direction to ¥155.01 amid speculation of an intervention by Japanese currency authorities.
Man, 28, arrested in Okinawa over burned bodies found in Tochigi
Hikaru Sasaki enters the Metropolitan Police Department's Osaki police station in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward on Monday after being arrested on suspicion of disposing of two bodies found in Nasu, Tochigi Prefecture, earlier this month.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.
Casa del Cibo: A thriving jewel born from Tohoku’s harsh past
When chef Ryohei Ikemi moved to Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, and opened Casa del Cibo in 2011, it was the first proper Italian restaurant in the city.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.

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