This book was written in 1989 by Bill Emmott who was Tokyo bureau chief of the economist. It is said that this book anticipated the bubble economy happened to Japan in 1989. At that time, He pointed out the problem Japan had that people overlooked. As Japanese, I have complex feeling because he pointed out everything very clearly. Why couldn’t Japanese do this? It may be because the people believed what the people wanted to believe.
And also when I was reading this book, I am not thinking about Japan. It seems there are a lot of similar problems are happening in China. And there is also difference, China also is ageing though, the problem is they are not rich enough to start aging society. To be honest, I can’t believe statistic from China but some says the fertility rate in China is 1.18, and too many man compare to the number of women because of one child policy. People want a boy for first born child because he has to run their family. The aging in China is much faster than that of Japan. I know how hard this aging society because Japan is now facing. I don’t know how China will be able to fix this. Also, there are a lot of promising things in their future, I would love to talk this later.
I believe that Bill Emott is brilliant. Unfortunately and surprisingly, he explained very well Japanese society and economy. Many things he pointed out became true in Japan, such as the problem about women work force, aging society, Japanese as reluctant to leader, and so on. Almost every problem, we are facing now was pointed out this book already. Why couldn’t Japanese fix these?
So then, I am very angry with the older generation of Japanese. A lot of problems he pointed out have never been solved. They just left this problem for our generation because they didn’t take things seriously. But, I want to change. I would never run away from the problem we are facing now. Our generation will stop this.
While honestly speaking, I believe Japanese can manage many problems described in this book. I am an optimist and I think Japanese can fix almost all problems, except this aging society. This is biggest problem in Japan. There are several options to save, Japan should do everything. Frist step we could do is raising up fertility rate, we need to set up the society women are comfortable for working and having children. The second step is immigrant. Japanese is not taking immigrant officially, but the government started.
However, I am not sure immigrant policy is good for Japan. I don’t think immigrant policy in like Canada and Australia went well. I believe ever the U.S has a lot of problems with immigrant. But, basically the immigrant policy in the U.S. is working well, that is one of reasons the U.S. is strong. They can collect world’s best talents. Talents want to go to the U.S., because they have chances, they have opportunities, they have education, and they might get investment.
I hope that Chinese people are reading this, if they don’t and they are arrogant enough to believe they are doing well. That is relief for Japanese people. We don’t need to be afraid of rising of China. Because we know what would happen and the problem we are working now, we can do business to fix because we will already have already fixed that problem. To avoid, please read this, Chinese people!!