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Text|sugar gourd
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One day in December 1989, there was a crazy scene on the stock exchange in Tokyo, Japan: when the doors of the stock exchange opened, investors rushed to the counter at a speed of 100 meters to ask for shares.
After some investors bought the stocks, they immediately picked up the stock trading certificates in their hands and frantically shouted in the trading floor, which caused countless cheers.
At that time, Japanese stocks had reached an all-time high, and everyone at the time felt that buying stocks in this context was a sure deal.
However, many people have not yet realized that this crazy transaction will not only be the swan song in Japan's economic history, but also the beginning of another nightmare.
Because in just a few months, the era of bursting Japan's economic bubble will come. From now on, Japan's economy will continue to hover in the trough.
When future generations look back at the history of the bursting of Japan's economic bubble, there will be a lot of discussion. At that time, Japan was in a full-blown recession in the shadow of a fiscal crisis, a collapse in housing prices, and a sharp decline in the stock market. It seems difficult to find a specific reason for this.
So, how terrible was Japan's economic crisis in 1990? What are the unknown reasons behind the bursting of Japan's economic bubble?
(Night view of Japanese streets)
Next, let's go slowly.
Roaring "eighties"
After the end of World War II, the United States provided massive economic assistance to Japan because it needed to build Japan into a bridgehead against the Soviet Union and the socialist camp in the Asia-Pacific region.
With these orders and assistance from the Americans, Japan's economy quickly recovered from the shadow of World War II. From the 60s to the 80s of the last century, the Japanese economy ushered in 20 years of crazy growth.
In the eighties, Japan's manufacturing and financial industries experienced rapid development. This rapid economic reality has also made Japanese society run wild on the road of drunkenness.
(Japanese people in the last century)
In the 80s, Japanese women were generally affected by the boom in the commodity economy, and a large number of Japanese women began to borrow money to buy real estate.
In order to cater to the shopping trend of Japanese women at that time, Japanese merchants at that time even put up commercial slogans such as "a girl should have five boyfriends".
On the other hand, a large number of Japanese use the money they receive from home to buy overseas real estate. Investors across Japan even bought 10 percent of U.S. real estate at one point.
(Japanese people walking on the streets)
On the streets of Tokyo, some middle-aged Japanese men even light handfuls of dollar bills to light cigarettes. In the eyes of the Japanese at that time, no matter how much money they spent today, they would one day earn it back with interest.
Therefore, throughout the roaring 80s, the Japanese were full of confidence in their expectations for the future economy. It is not difficult to explain why Japan's stock market boomed in 1989.
However, almost all Japanese people who enjoy the fruits of economic development overlook a crucial point: Japan's rapid economic growth after World War II was essentially due to the concessions made by the United States to Japan.
(Japanese stores of the last century)
However, if one day the United States senses Japan's economic threat and stops helping the Japanese economy. So how will the Japanese survive the rest of the day?
Sure enough, after seeing the strong purchasing power of the Japanese, the voice within the United States about suppressing Japan's economic development has become stronger and stronger. Eventually, this voice turned into political pressure and all of it was transferred to the Japanese government.
(Japanese streets in the 80s)
The Plaza Accord with Bad Intentions
In September 1985, U.S. Treasury Secretary James S. Beck and Japan's Finance Minister Noboru Takeshita, Germany's Finance Minister Gerhart. Stoddenberg and others signed an agreement at the famous Plaza Hotel in New York.
The agreement is ostensibly an official cooperation document for five countries, including the United States, Japan and Germany, to intervene in the foreign exchange market. In fact, the Americans rallied allies to sign the agreement for one purpose: to reduce their own fiscal deficits.
The most effective way to reduce the US fiscal deficit is to rapidly depreciate the dollar and make the yen appreciate rapidly. As a result, U.S. products will be more competitive in the international market than Japanese products.
(Japan's "Central Bank Building")
When the news of the yen's appreciation came back home, there was another carnival among ordinary Japanese citizens and business representatives. Because in the eyes of ordinary Japanese people who do not understand the laws of international finance, the appreciation of the yen against the US dollar is precisely the embodiment of Japan's rising international status.
But these Japanese people may never have dreamed that it was this seemingly ordinary news that opened the "Pandora's box" of the Japanese economy.
After a wild rally in Japan's stock market in 1989, the Japanese stock market suddenly came to a slash in 1990. Many investors lose their money overnight.
(Japanese people on the stock exchange)
Due to the rapid appreciation of the yen after the signing of the Plaza Accord, Japanese products completely lost their competitiveness in the international market, which made them have to misreport their financial situation and sell shares to alleviate the financial crisis.
However, paper balls cannot contain the fire after all. When the capital chain of these Japanese companies has reached the point of unsustainable, the thunderous moment of the entire Japanese stock market has begun.
Immediately afterwards, Japan's real estate also began to experience large-scale lightning explosions. Properties that many people painstakingly buy become junk assets overnight. Against this backdrop, the number of suicide cases received by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has also soared exponentially.
(Japanese night view in the 80s)
Due to the mass bankruptcy of Japanese companies, unemployment throughout Japanese society soared, and the Japanese government suffered an unprecedented fiscal crisis because it did not have enough sources of tax revenue.
Under these circumstances, in order to maintain the normal operation of government agencies, the Japanese government can only call on those unemployed Japanese people to fend for themselves, and the government's investment in social welfare projects has also plummeted, and some local financial bureaus cannot even pay pensions to local elderly.
However, even if Japan's economy has declined to such a point, the Japanese government has no intention of telling the truth to the public.
(Japanese people in the last century)
In the Japanese government's Economic White Paper released in 1992, Japanese politicians also lied to the Japanese people with pride that the growth rate of the Japanese economy at that time was only slowing down, but the overall Japanese economy was still growing.
Frankly speaking, in the eyes of ordinary Japanese people who have just experienced the 80s, there is nothing wrong with the government's statement. Even by this time, many Japanese people still wanted to believe that the Japanese economy would quickly return to the level of the 80s.
However, reality does not leave any room for fantasy in the Japanese. With the Japanese people still harboring illusions about their own government and the growth rate of their own economy, they can only face a more bitter disappointment than the last.
Later Japanese people also gradually got used to this sluggish economic environment. As a result, they refer to the period since 1990 as "Japan's lost 30 years."
(Billboards on Japanese streets)
The "Japanese economy" that fell into the abyss
After Japan's economy entered a "trough period", the entire Japanese society lost its vitality, and the high unemployment rate of young people also kept the living standards of young people at the level of food and clothing.
More elderly Japanese people can only choose to work to support themselves because they do not receive sufficient pensions. Therefore, these people have also become an extremely special force in Japanese society.
Every year, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare publishes a special data - the crime rate of the elderly. The problem of proving that the elderly commit crimes has become a very common social phenomenon in Japan.
(Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare)
In fact, most of these elderly people who commit crimes in Japanese society are not evil. Many of them have lost their ability to work and live due to accidents and have to rely on petty theft to make ends meet.
An elderly Japanese who entered prison once confessed to reporters that he deliberately stole something and was later caught by the police. Because he didn't want to hurt anyone, he just wanted to find a safe place to eat.
It is clear that the voice of this elderly Japanese represents a large proportion of elderly Japanese who are forced into prison. For these people who have lost their ability to live, prison has become their only destination, which is really a sad scene.
(Japan Local Police Force)
In fact, the successive Japanese governments of the new century are not without realizing the seriousness of the problem. Former Japanese Prime Ministers Yukio Hatoyama and Tomiichi Murayama tried to raise the government's tax on large corporations so that more money could be invested in social welfare.
However, such economic reforms amount to directly touching the interests of Japanese conglomerates and American shareholders. So, immediately after these economic reforms began, there was a huge wave of opposition within Japanese politics. In the end, Japanese politicians who advocated reform would have to step down.
As a result, there is such a very strange phenomenon in Japanese politics today: every Japanese government knows the crux of economic problems, but the economic reform of each Japanese government is only a small trouble, and does not touch the root at all.
(Working Japanese seniors)
Because under the influence of the Americans, Japan has formed a very stable model of "political and business collusion". No one thinks about the lives of ordinary people. And Japan's economy may get worse if Americans need it.
Therefore, Japan's economy has always been hovering and wandering in the trough. Over the years, countless people have prescribed countless prescriptions to the Japanese economy without daring to mention the nature of Japan's "economic colony."
(Night view of Tokyo, Japan)
As an "economic colony" of the United States, even if Japan becomes a developed country, the people still cannot escape the life of overtime and suffocation. This is a helpless reality, and it is the only choice for the Japanese.
Therefore, the experience of the Japanese has also sounded a wake-up call for countless countries: in the absence of independence, no matter how beautiful economic data is, it is just "other people's wedding clothes". Only by mastering absolute strength can we truly control our own destiny!
Bibliography:
What happened after Japans economy bubble burst?
The Japanese economy: The bubble of the 80's and the recession of the 90's Toru Kusukawa
How Japan has fared in 30 years since the stock market bubble burst Justin McCurry
The Lost Decade: Lessons From Japan's Real Estate Crisis BARRY NIELSEN
JAPAN'S BUBBLE BURSTS Robert J. Samuelson