Just got back from my first visit to Japan in two years, and while I personally had a great time, I was still somewhat shocked the depth of quiet despondency I encountered.

- When I first came to Japan in 1996, it felt like the country of the future. Now, it seems increasingly to be the city of the past: aside from the occasional soulless showpiece like Shiodome or ever-snazzier Shinkansens, the entire country's building and infrastructure stock seems to date from the 1980s or earlier.
- The economy has been treading water or sinking for twenty years now, with no improvement, much less end in sight. In Tokyo, the only industries that seem to be booming are 100-yen shops and pachinko parlors, while up in doddering Yamagata (median age 60 and population shrinking fast), even the pachinko places seem to be going bust.
- The DPJ seems completely incapable of breaking the status quo or enacting any sort of meaningful reform, instead throwing more money (which Japan doesn't have) on yet more useless infrastructure and wasteful subsidies.
- Everybody, and that's everybody, I talked to had a negative to hopeless outlook for the future.

The really scary thing is that, as far as I can tell, the only reason Japan hasn't entered a total depression death spiral is that the government keeps on lending money and throwing it at sustaining the bloodsucking bureaucracy-industrial complex that has brought the country to its knees. But sooner or later, they'll find themselves at the point where they can't keep going... and what will happen then?

You would be surprised on how many enterprising young Japanese have learned putonghua and emigrated to China. And the same story in SE Asia where a lot of Japanese highly skilled managers are living semi-permanently.

And Japan has an advantage in being the torchbearer of the LOHAS lifestyle that is now booming in Korea and about to do so in China...

Doesn't sound too different from the US. When I come home now after a trip I often am amazed at how shabby every thing looks compared to China or where ever.

Although we still look better than Argentina.

In some ways, I think people in Japan are more realistic than those in the U.S. You don't see that, "Everything's just wonderful here, and if it's not wonderful for you, you're just lazy" attitude that is fairly common over here.

However, an excess of realism can lead to paralyzing despondency.

I wonder if what you are experiencing is one of the many forms of culture shock or reverse culture shock. Not saying it is, just that it's the first thing that came to my mind when I read the OP.

Interesting view OP.
For me I still see a mix of Japanese and gaijin buying side by side in the high end shops of Ginza and Aoyama... similar to what I see on 5th Ave in NYC... shop away the woes of the world... Happy twentyten!

Actually, I don't share the OP's opinions at all.

While there isn't unbridled enthusiasm, the people I've spoken to certainly didn't have a "negative to hopeless outlook for the future."

<em>the government keeps on lending money and throwing it at sustaining the bloodsucking bureaucracy-industrial complex that has brought the country to its knees</em>

This is the case in practically every significant country in the world, isn't it?

...That said, this table is scary.

Coincidentally, this week's Ecomist echoes my line:

http://www.economist.com/businessfin...=hptextfeature

I'm not entirely convinced of the validity of comparisons of Japan to other countries grappling with the financial crisis. Sure, public finances have taken a dip everywhere and many other governments are arguably doing variants of this, but the huge difference between Japan and the rest of the world is that Japan's not just fighting the current crisis, they're still dealing with 1989. There are a million things Japan could do that would make them more competitive in the long run -- let some big banks and keiretsu go bust; terminate the vast majority of Japan's increasingly useless public works projects; slash protectionist red tape; cut agricultural subsidies; allow larger, more efficient, mechanized farms; allow real immigration instead of just temporary 3K workers; put some money into restoring countryside instead of covering it with concrete; etc etc -- but they would cause too much short-term pain and shred too many cushy pits of corruption, and that's why in 20 years the only thing that's happened is that Japan is now in a much worse position to start dealing with this.

The other major difference is that, in most of the rest of the world, populations are young and increasing, creating new demand for goods and new taxpayers to pay for it all. In Japan, on the other hand, the population is already actively shrinking and the age pyramid becomes more and more insupportable with every passing year.

mosburger mentioned the trend of young Japanese moving overseas to escape Japan's stagnation, but -- at least in the short term -- this will only exacerbate the problem. They're often employed by Japanese companies at a fraction of the cost they'd need to pay in Japan, which is good for the company's competitiveness, but doesn't help Japan's tax base. Old-school lavishly funded expats are an increasingly rare breed, and here in Singapore the local Japanese community has been slashed from a peak of around 50k to under half that, the vast majority of those remaining being on salaries of S$3k (~200k yen) or less, and even they are constantly at threat from Japanese-speaking non-natives.

Ah, we'll beat Zimbabwe in a year or so.

Ugh. First of all, this is what makes Japan so special, and why I want to go back, despite the doomed aura. My not so sweet home is proof of what happens when you forget what public works are about, our infrastructure is crumbling everywhere, and we're a nation of fatties because our food supply is so far from being food.

They could cut out the public works projects, sure, but with a population (even if it is 'decreasing', certainly not in any dramatic fashion) of almost 1/3rd of that of the United States in an area smaller than California, they need to continue in some fashion.

One of our greatest virtues is that we learn from our mistakes. The mechanized farm thing is one of the biggest mistakes we've ever made. With mechanized farming we've actually forgotten thousands of years of agricultural history and knowledge, and resorted to doing absolute asinine things like spraying the ground with petrol-based fertilizers. We never rotate crops and wonder why our dirt is so low quality. The US was already a force to be reckoned with before Earl Butts gave the last blow to our food supply when Nixon was president. Big pharma and medical care facilities make so much money and absorb so many more of the costs that would not exist had people were properly fed.

As for the countryside, restoration can mean many number things...if by that you mean turn it into awful factory farms I'd say no way Jose.

I'd like to see government encouragement to decentralize. Everything--and I do mean everything--is concentrated in either the Tokyo area or the Osaka area, while other parts of the country are losing population.

People could enjoy a better quality of life in the smaller cities if there were good jobs there. A couple of years ago, I visited Aizu-Wakamatsu in Fukushima prefecture. It's a pleasant town, but it's too far from Tokyo to commute, even by Japanese standards, and the business district was about 1/4 dead.

I bet there are a lot of people who would like a five-minute commute to work instead of a two-hour commute, and a nice manufacturing plant or corporate headquarters would do wonders for the local economy.

I'm another one who would hate to see mechanized agriculture taking over Japan. Food may be expensive there, but it's not unaffordable, and the quality of their produce and meat is very high.

Some of the casualties of the exam system may be secretly dreaming of a life where they didn't have to be part of the rat race or live out their lives as freeters. Some of them may have an untapped gift for growing plants and raising animals. That would solve the problem of the aging farm population.

Something like this is actually happening. There was a feature about it in the holiday issue of The Economist.

One of my close friends moved back to Saga from Osaka. His son is much happier on a farm. Their family home is huge compared to a "mansion" unit.