The economy here in Japan has certainly been better, and it seems that every day brings more news of production being scaled back in this industry or that. A big part of the problem for Japan is that their economy is closely tied to exports, which exposes companies to extra weakness when there’s a slowdown in the rest of the world. But there are other problems with Japan, or at least they look that way to me when viewed from my point of view as an American living here. First of all, the country is positively addicted to building things like dams and roads and quasi-educational facilities like the Chiaki Mukai Memorial Science Center, built to celebrate Japan’s first female astronaut. These projects are important, except when they’re a big waste of money, like the time our city became nationally famous when the mayor (who lived next door to me) decided that we needed a brand new Ferris Wheel despite the perfectly good one we already had. Related to this is amakudari (“descending from heaven”), in which government beauracrats guide large public projects through the approval process then retire to receive lucrative jobs with the companies that directly benefited from those projects. Another challenge is the low amount of “entrepreneurial spirit” among many Japanese. When I see news of employees getting risutora (what layoffs are known as in Japanese, from the English word “restructure”), I always wonder if one of them won’t take the opportunity to make the proverbial lemonade and go into business for themselves. There are actually some benefits to starting a business in a recession, including lower costs, the ability to hire good people cheaply and a great chance to learn how to be a bootstrapper, but I’ve not met many Japanese who would agree with me. More often than not, they’d fall back on that famous Japanese mantra of sho ga nai (“it can’t be helped”).
Sometimes the Japanese seem to lack the entrepreneural spirit.
