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Ozawa: The Shiva of Japanese politics, creator and destroyer
Author: Richard Katz Like the Hindu god Shiva, Ichiro Ozawa is both creator and destroyer. Currently the Secretary-General of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), he has a history of building up...
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Inflation targeting will not work on Japan’s deflation problem
Author: Richard Katz, TOE Japan’s deflation is back and worse than ever. In the October to December quarter the GDP deflator, the broadest measure of price declines, fell by 2.8 per cent from a year...
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Is Japan losing its competitiveness?
Author: Richard Katz, The Oriental Economist Although Japan’s merchandise trade deficit in 2011 — the first since 1963 — is a product of the natural disasters of 2011, it is a harbinger of things to...
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Noda’s confused nuclear policy
Author: Richard Katz, The Oriental Economist When it comes to the Democratic Party of Japan’s nuclear policy, only one explanation makes sense: Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is determined to prove that...
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Abe not placating the right; he is the right
Author: Richard Katz, TOE When people ask why Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to worship at Yasukuni Shrine against the advice of most of his advisers, one of the most common answers is that...
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Will the ‘India boom’ shake Japan?
Author: Richard Katz, TOE Once again, talk of an ‘India boom’ has emerged in Japan. This year, India came in second (behind Indonesia) in a government survey on the top countries in which Japanese...
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Best to get the TPP done right, not done fast
Author: Richard Katz, Oriental Economist Report Unless the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade talks are concluded soon, they risk dragging on interminably. If that happens, the United States’...
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What drives Shinzo Abe?
Author: Richard Katz, Oriential Economist Report Around the world, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is perhaps most famous for his ‘Abenomics’ program to revive Japan’s economy. So far, it has not...
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Will US Republicans torpedo the TPP?
Author: Richard Katz, The Oriental Economist Report In a surprising development, US congressional Republicans and a few of their business allies now pose the biggest threat to the Trans-Pacific...
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TPP to tarnish US relations
Author: Richard Katz, The Oriental Economist Report When President Barack Obama said, ‘The TPP means that America will write the rules of the road in the 21st century’, he was not speaking...
View ArticleSolving Japan’s wage stagnation
Japan is hardly the only rich country where price-adjusted wages have been suppressed in the last few decades, but it’s second only to crisis-wracked Greece in showing virtually no growth in labour pay...
View ArticleSouth Korea surpasses Japan in real GDP per capita
The measure used to calculate ‘real’ GDP is called Purchasing Power Parity, which eliminates distortions caused by varying price levels and gyrations in exchange rates. South Korea overtook Japan...
View ArticleKishida retreats from new capitalism
When it came to the foundational principle — that healthy growth and a more equal distribution of income needed each other — Kishida surrendered to critics in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)...
View ArticleRestoring Japan as a start-up nation
When an advisory committee of bureaucrats, businesspeople and academics came up with a superb analysis of the hurdles to entrepreneurship, the Prime Minister’s Office insisted instead that they omit...
View ArticleThe Bank of Japan minds the interest rate gap
As the gap grows between interest rates on 10-year government bonds in Japan and those in the United States and Europe, investors are withdrawing money from Japan. That has caused the yen to drop like...
View Article’Degrowth’ shrinks the fight against climate change
Were environmentalism to be associated with either communism or ‘degrowth’ — as a minority of environmentalists in the United States, Asia and Europe advocate — it would be the political death knell of...
View ArticleScarcity of international collaboration hampers Japan’s innovation
A growing number of new successful Japanese entrepreneurs have had significant international experience. Some have studied or worked overseas while others have worked for a foreign firm in Japan....
View ArticleChina charges ahead of Japan’s auto exports
At a time when 25 per cent of new car sales in China are EVs or plug-in hybrids, a lack of EVs is costing Japanese brands sizeable sales. In a market weakened by COVID-19, Japanese brands tumbled the...
View ArticleChina’s economic evolution from Deng’s vision to Xi’s divergence
Had Deng Xiaoping not sought and received advice from Japan and Singapore in his creation of ‘socialism with Japanese and Singaporean characteristics’, China’s economic miracle would have been less...
View ArticleEntrepreneurship can power Japan’s economic revival
Amid all the negative economic news about Japan — with its GDP in late 2023 no higher than in 2018 — there is good news. Powerful societal and technological changes are giving Japan its greatest...
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