It’s a very good, wide-ranging article but one of the things Japan probably got right, in spite of its stagnating economy, was to resist the blandishments of neoliberalism, which in my view has been responsible for the economic inequalities that are causing divisions in our own, increasingly fissiparous society.
As the South Korean economist Ha Joon Chang points out in his latest book, ‘greater income inequality and fewer labour rights generate not just more clashes between the powerful and those under them but also more conflicts among the less privileged, as they fight over the dwindling piece of the pie available to them.’
Right now, of course, the right-wing press here are fanning those flames and seeking to turn us against each other, as we see with their attempts to cultivate an animus against striking workers and ‘wokeness’.
This is what you tend to get after four decades of neoliberalism have normalised self-seeking behaviour.
Contrastingly, while a stiflingly conformist group mentality has its own disadvantages, as encapsulated by the Japanese proverb that ‘the nail that sticks out must be hammered down’, Japan still has a lot going for it in terms of social cohesion.
And it does very well when you think about who its neighbours are geographically.
But anyway, for anyone who wishes to take a deeper dive into the present state of Japan, David Pillings’ Bending Adversity is a readable and very thorough (if slightly overlong) study.
Richard Lloyd Parry has also authored a couple of excellent books on the country.
www.bbc.co.uk