And where it is now rising:
"Once-powerful Japan finds few believers in its recovery" by Chico Harlan |
Washington Post, November 04, 2012
TOKYO —An alternative — and
increasingly accepted — school of thought about Japan: The country is
not just in a prolonged slump but also in an inescapable decline.
There’s frequent evidence for that in economic data, and the current doom is a sharp reversal from several decades ago, when
Japanese companies bought up Columbia Pictures and Rockefeller Center,
and Americans argued whether Japan was to be feared or envied.
Like a separate but related group, known as ‘‘Japan bashers,’’ the
optimists were bullish about Japan’s future as an economic powerhouse.
But unlike the bashers, who viewed Japan as a dangerous challenger to
the United States, the optimists saw Japan as a benevolent superpower —
rich but peaceful, with a diligence worth emulating.
Now, when Japan is discussed, it’s instead for its unenviable fiscal
problems — debt, rising costs of social programs, and flagging trade
with China because of an ongoing territorial dispute.
See: Chinese Seize Japanese Islands
China, not Japan, is mentioned in US presidential debates and
described as the next threat to American supremacy. Japan’s government
has announced record quarterly trade deficits while some of its iconic
companies — Sony and Sharp — have announced staggering losses....
Today, former Japan optimists also see a disturbing trend. Fewer
Japanese, they say, want to interact with the rest of the world, and
undergraduate enrollment of Japanese students at US universities has
fallen more than 50 percent since 2000.
The generation now entering Japan’s job market is described by older
workers here as risk-averse and unambitious, with security and comfort
their top priorities.
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