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A country that has been in constant economic crisis for almost 4 decades now and still among one of the richest countries in the world. They must have been insanely rich back in the 80s.

"There are 4 types of economies: Developed, undeveloped, Japan and Argentina" - Simon Kuznets

I live in japan. People here save like crazy. It's actually kind of insane. It would be interesting if you made a video on the japanese housing market. It's quite different from most countries in the west. There is no housing shortage here, even in places in Tokyo and Osaka, which is a blessing if you have lived in any major western city. On the other hand, buildings themselves don't seem to hold value. Investing in a home and making a profit isn't really a thing here. I wonder how that affect things like mobility. If you buy a house here in Japan you are never going to get that investment back unless the land itself goes up in value so why would you ever sell your house and move?

Japan lost the early market lead they had in Lithography sector rather too easily without even trying. I am a IT professional and we have lot of Japanese clients and I was shocked to see how rudimentary applications and websites were of our Japanese clients. Even phone apps were simply weblinks for their main websites for long. They missed the IT and Digital bus for sure

I remember when , on paper , financially Tokyo was more valuable than the entire USA ; and Japan Inc. was going to rule the world. Anxiety over Japan was real. Now when most people think of Japan they think about animae.

You missed few points: Japan missed digital revolution train. 1. Japan is slow to improve worker productivity using advanced IT/network technology. 2. They were slow to invest in growing digital industry like semiconductor, display, smartphone and software. 3. Advent of strong competitors like South Korea, China and even Taiwan. 4. Low worker wage and long work hours, which led to low consumer spendings and low fertility. 5. One-party politics: no political impetus to innovate society and industry.

I remember when I was a kid in the '80s and there was such American interest in Japan. Of course there was all the talk about Japan crushing our economy or whatever with all their Sony Walkmans and Japanese cars, But I also remember how eveyone loved Japanese products and Nintendo and movies about Japan and just everything Japanese. And I had all these T-shirts and clothes and toys with the Japanese flag and Japanese writing on it. And it was all the rage. Everywhere you looked you saw something with that big red ball on it with Japanese writing under it.

This was the first video I've seen from your channel. I really appreciate how you ask for feedback from those people perhaps most qualified to give it. Overall this video seemed very in depth and covered many of the often complex mechanisms of economics. I feel like I learned a lot about Japan, modern economies, and how people affect each other. Thanks for your hard work!

Remember "Back to the Future 2"? Bob Zemeckis envisioned 2015 to be when most Americans had to work in Japanese corporations. Because the movie was made in 1989. How things have changed since then.

I'm a Japanese high school student and I was benefiting from the boom when my parents were in their twenties I've been in recession since I was born. Damn.

Excellent content. This has to be one of the better, if not best, UKposts video essays discussing Japan's economic stagnation short of a full blown university lecture. Looking forward to your future content!

i rate this video 5/5! should be a quality indicator for stuff like that! i truly appreciate your work! this is a very insightful intelligent overview over japanese economy and almost easy to understand! keep it up! i saw some videos from you but now its time to subscribe :D

in japan: media, individualy, decided not to report a situation in the best interest of japan in portugal: a television channel announced a news that was not entirely true and a bank that was going through difficult times collapsed

The 1980's thru the 1990's were Japan's Golden Years. The days of the Sony Walkman! Thanks for the video.

Wow this video was so well made! Thanks so much for breaking this down into digestible chunks or sections. Really helpful for casual viewers like me.

finally brought myself to watch this video, and i have to say i thoroughly enjoyed it. i'll be sticking around for more of this, great job!

Keep in mind that Japan's "fall" was from 2nd to 3rd place, and even if they fell to 4th or 5th, they'd still be a highly-developed, rich economy with high living standards and a high GDP per capita. It's just that they used to be growing rapidly, and now they're mostly stuck where they are in absolute terms, while falling behind the growth of other countries, which puts their relative position at risk.

The algorithm has lead me here, this channel is gonna get big soon

Wow, finally an indepth video made easy to understand on the topic of recent Japanese economic history. Thank you.

I was in Japan in 2019, it looked decades ahead of the US and most of Europe. There might be structural economic issues but the country has one of the best infrastructures in the world and it's an amazing place

There is an award winning documentary about this called “princes of the yen”

It wasn’t the Kyoto Palace = California. It was the Tokyo Chiyoda Palace.

I enjoyed your video and finally understanding a bit move. I was sent to Japan in the late 80’s to do some work and training. I saw a booming economy and imagined what it would be like to emigrated; a missed opportunity. Years later what happened? why Japan economy was not getting , now i have a good idea. I still have that 1000 yen note at that time it was like buying a $10 CDN cup of coffee (not the can coffee from the vending machines) . That coffee tasted great.

The strange thing is, Japan hasn’t been doing great,but it hasn’t been doing terribly, either. No wage increase, but no price hike, either. Very low unemployment rate (less than 3%). The crime rate has been getting lower during the “lost” decades actually. I personally think slowly shifting from the obsession with economic growth to sustainable, non-wasteful lifestyle is a desirable thing, so I don’t think it’s all negative to lose some excessive steam.

Good job!! As a Japanese citizen, I thought that your views are quite comprehensive and well-balanced. I think this is a very good introduction to what happened to the Japanese economy during the last 4 decades, especially the last 3 decades of stagnation.

I've been living in Japan for 12 years. And the economic health of the average Japanese worker has gotten worse. Poverty in Japan is a growing problem that no one talks about.

thanks man for great video, I got a lot of answers I was looking for in very convenient format

Outstanding report , very well explained also. I’m subscribed ! 👍

I lived in Japan and one thing I noticed, corporations were expected to over employ people to soak up the numbers of unemployed in society. Young people are paid less money because it’s expected they still live at home with parents. Girls were expected to marry and fall out of the employment market.

Great neutral read of Japan's economy over the past 40 years.

Glad I have found your channel. Very informative! Good job

I literally watched this last night and thought Abe would do great things. Woke up this morning and he’s been assassinated.

29:45 "When something isn't working, the answer is rarely 'well, let's just do more of it'". Welcome to Japan, where people plan something once, try it, and if it doesn't work, just continue doing it, because it is supposed to work a day or another. Japanese people just hate admitting they were wrong. It is a matter of dignity, even if that is completely counter-productive. PS : I live and work in Japan.

I'm seeing more and more migrant workers working at shops and convenience stores since Abenomics has started. Your analysis is spot on! Also it's true that there is save and reserve attitude among the youth. Especially because of the prospect that the government pension program might someday fail and we have to support ourselves on our savings. Even if it doesn't fail, we will still be paying more for the program than what we will get in the end since the money goes directly to the more populous baby boomer generation which is currently being served.

Woaw, great job of research. Hats off!

Very nice made content with full of valuable logical and factual informations. Thanks man!

I've been surprised about how the meaning of the word "Entrepreneurship" is relatively unknown by the japanese population. Young people there are too afraid of raising their own business.

Japan: trying to boost up inflation for decades and failed. Other countries: Oh no, inflation out of control!

The editing that goes into this 👌🏾

Such a great video! Super helpful and easy to follow! 🙏👏

This was very well structured and extremely informative. I'm fascinated by Japan's Economy and Corporate structure, and only grew more fascinated when I visited the nation.

Thank you for the video. I currently live in Japan. My knowledge on economics is very limited. However, there are two things I would like to ask/share. One, from my work experience here, I learned that it is quite usual for a Japanese company to have very little operational income year after year. Labour and provider costs typically eat up all the money they made. Labour costs are very high not mainly because of wages, but because of welfare. Japan has this system called welfare society instead of welfare state, in which companies and households are the main safety net, not the state itself. Second, (and about this I would like to ask for your opinion), there is the retirement pension policy. Government consistently states that pension system will not disappear but this will happen by severe cuts on pension amounts. This is often felt by most people as the main reason to save money instead of using it: they consider that they have to save enough in order not to be poor at the age of retirement. But I do not know whether there is a causal relation between pension policy and household savings, and I would like to hear your opinion on that. There are also other reasons to save money, such as healthcare. National healthcare insurance covers 70% of costs, but the patient must pay the other 30%. Which can be a lot of money in case of a serious disease.

I LOVEEE YOUUU. I had to do this presentation for Individual Societies (IS) on Japan's Abenomics and why they needed it and how the abenomics played out. I did countless research but my head was spinning instead. This neat and well explained video helped me a lot!!! Thank you soooo much!!

Great video! I really appreciated all the Anime references as well.

Something that may help, modernize the goddamn banking system, there is no reason why you need to go through all these hoops to do basic banking tasks like getting a debit card that doesn't allow cash withdrawals and depending on cash cards that their only use is to withdraw cards with fees on ATMs

What I've noticed in terms of japanese people having babies is that the sheer lack of both facilities and time make it very difficult for young people to have babies. Regardless of daycares built by Abe, finding a daycare is an absolute waiting list hell and incredibly expensive. When looking at it a step back, I see that people are unable to properly date in Japan (Tokyo at least). Most professionals I know work at least 11 hours a day and some change on the Saturday. People are simply too exhausted and stressed to find time for relationships, let alone babies. Maternity leave is actually pretty good but it really depends on the company. Japanese corporations and politics keep holding on to the 80's notion of working yourself into a stupor and it is very difficult to change this culture. It's not that abnormal to find japanese young professionals who haven't dated anyone since graduating college because they are so damn swamped

Thanks for this amazing research !

Thank you for all your videos they are all gold!

Absolutely awesome description of Japan's recent economic history! You have a real knack for creating a clear plausible narrative out of a mass of information! Through an orthodox macroeconomic lens, of course. :-) I am in the demography camp: a lot of the things that happened (property bubble, disinvestment, deflation, etc) are explicable as products of the demographic life cycle, with a very big "baby boom" cohort. Japan's "baby boom" peaked around 1950-53, about 10 years earlier than the USA's. It was much more compressed than the Netherlands' (spread out over 1950 - 1970-ish). (Interestingly, Italy, the demographic "Japan of Europe", didn't really have much of a baby boom. Just the bust.) I think that you blur matters a little by using overall population rather than working age population. The "working age" population is also the house-buying, car-buying, and child-goods-and-services spending age population: it is the "economically relevant" population. (Using total population does make for a more linear narrative, of course.) (If cohort size is stable, the difference between working-age and total population would not matter much, but the fact that it was not is to me the reason why we had a property price bubble in Japan and why we are having a property price bubble in much of Europe, North America, and Australia-NZ, starting 15 years ago.) The cause of the property bubble, to me, is the efforts of Japan's "baby boomers" to save for their old age during their peak income years, 40-55. Similarly, the high savings of Japanese companies is a direct result of the decline of Japan's working age (really, "spending age") population. Once that population starts to decline, there is little reason for companies or local governments to invest. As you say, the government could counteract the lack of consumption and investment by increasing transfers to the people who are most likely to circulate them, but it has not done so. No country has yet tried a policy that increases fertility sustainably. I don't think anyone has any idea how.

私は日本の高校生です。非常にわかりやすかったです。ありがとうございました。

Great video and research!

Again thanks for ur videos ive seen this one multiple times to understand it fully. Ty a lot and i hope u keep makeing this kind of videos ❤️

Good presentation! Walking through decades of Japan’s economy was a help, knew parts of it like Abenomics, but a wholistic picture in this presentation is what we need! Please keep up the good work, thanks!

I searched for Lost Decade and reached here. No Regrets. Awesome use of my 36 minutes. Loved the way you presented different concepts. I would love to see videos where you extrapolate current economic situations.

Excellent video! Exactly what I was looking for

Excellent article! Thank you.

This was a very interesting video, and I will say that my favorite phrase from it was "that is not my area of expertise" when discussing population growth. Way to be honest about your capability to comment, you're a rare creature here on this platform. respect.

Glad to find this channel. You did great in this case study explanation, it helped me alot considering my non-economics background.

wow this is one of the most understanding explanation history, thanks for not being rush

Amazing content. A free master class.

Amazing I got this in recommend Plus you did mention Plaza Accord and I'm surprised because none of UKpostsrs explain it or they just flat out didn't know.

Really interesting information, I have been living in Japan since 2012, renting and with a full time job, I can say there is definitely no much innovation but small improvements and additions in technology, but as you may know, Japan is a very traditional society, birth rates has definitely decreased, I don't think they are having babies and the stagnation is noticeable, however, Macro-economy and Monetary policies are not something I understand much, hence the reason to check your video. Thank you again and I will definitely check some more of your work.

Very well explained !!

Very very VERY informative. Thank you

Isn't that Richard Werner argument about how the Japanese economy lost steam through the central back policy?

I've been interested in economics for a long time and this video strangely worked to connect a lot of dots for me in what I already knew but didn't understand. Great video

Great video again!

Great video! 🤗

Hey Lad ! That was really nice ! Keep up the good work !

Superb explanation. My goodness. You are brilliant. Please keep the videos coming and also consider writing several books on various economic topic. You are brilliant. You managed to boil down very complex concepts into simple forms.

You make good sense!!

Really good understandable explanation.

Japan is one of the least trade-dependent economies in the world, only the US has less trade as % of GDP among major economies (but that's because the US economy is so vast that much of the activity becomes "internal"). In that sense, they are the complete opposite of Germany. Japan is also not as financially integrated as Western economies and were not that directly exposed to the subprime crisis, making it even harder to explain why they were one of the hardest hit economies in 2008-09.

Nice video! I don’t agree with most of your analysis, but I appreciate how thorough and informative the presentation is.

Wow! Thank you very for this! It’s the most comprehensive economic history of Japan that I’ve ever come across! We have business partners in Japan, I work very closely with them. Also visited Tokyo a couple of times. The fortunes of Japan are of a great interest to me.

Amazing video, thank you

Very intellectual discussion but relatable at the same time. Thank you for this highly informative video.

Loved the anime references in this great documentary

Great video - thanks!! Why did the BoJ stop window guidance, and why did it restart window guidance as the bubble was bursting (and afterward)?

cool video, just taught this topic to my students

Very insightful video. I'd love to visit Japan one day. I've been very interested to understand Japan's economy more, especially regarding stagflation. Thanks for the breakdown!

Overall I feel like the Japanese economy is pretty in the middle. I work here and due to COVID a lot of things are changing rapidly. Lots of businesses are floundering and people aren’t spending nearly as much as they had before. I’d be interested in seeing your take post COVID as, due to the Olympics in large part, things have gotten consistently more and more dubious.

One problem not mentioned is the competition from China and South Korea in areas where Japan was once dominant. Consumer electronics used to be dominated by Japan, but now Japan doesn't even have one large LCD factory left.

excellent analysis.

Funny that you were born in 1989. It makes me feel old now. I went to Japan in 1990 on a working holiday visa from Canada, I spent a year there and I have to say it was grand experience. I guess I was a migrant worker, teaching english as well as working as a computer programmer. I made a lot of friends and really liked the country and the Japanese people. I had heard about Japan as being the place to go and knew people that made a lot of money at the time thanks to the rising yen. Funny that the Japanese actually say "en" not "yen" but by the time I got there it was slowing down. I recall the huge property bubble and the point about the Tokyo Palace being worth as all of California. We all knew the recent news that the Japanese had bought Rockefeller center and Sony bought Columbia Pictures. I even watched the Gulf War take place when I was in Tokyo so it was interesting to get that frame of reference. Overall your analysis is on, I think you might have left out some minor things. When the Neo-liberals swept to power with Reagan and Thatcher, in the US Volcker raised the rates to fight inflation, Japanese money flew over to the US to take advantage of the rates on US T-bills. Another fact that a Japanese businessman mentioned to me that astounded me and really shows the difference between the Japan and other Western economies was that something like 40% of the GDP is unpaid overtime. The Japanese have a very strong work ethic, our idea of working as little as possible for as much as possible is rather alien to them. The other point is that for a capitalist economy they actually do a lot of central planning and even the big corporates work with each other rather than compete amongst themselves. There is also a problem when doing an analysis of one economy in an age of worldwide interdependence. Each economy is not really isolated, so much depends on trade, energy flows, migration and demographics. I had this feeling that when I was there Japan was a glimpse of the future, like it was 20 years ahead of us. Everything was automated, you had sliding doors and AC in every shop. There were all sorts of vending machines for anything you might need. Yet there were contradictions, like very modern building standards that still used bamboo scaffolding. And on an economy level - Japan heavily invested in infrastructure for rapid transit - and around each station one could take care of all their needs as far as shops and services. But alot of this was done at the expense of household convenience - many homes had no insulation or central heating, and it can get quite cold. People tended to rely on the kotatsu heaters which was a little table that one would eat off and underneath was a little heater to keep your feet warm (in the past it would have been charcoal). I also believe that the intergenerational wealth transfer is fine for Japan, so what if the central bank buys the debt - it is still an asset. The demographic shift is a big challenge for Japan, and it is something other western countries can expect (like Italy). So with an aging population you will have large demographic that no longer produces or consumes a lot (they already got the appliances) and this is an additional drain on the govt funds and there aren't enough young people working to acquire new assets themselves and pay into the pension funds. With Japan it is even worse, as they cannot depend on immigration, there may be some guest workers (when I was there there were a lot of Iranians who did the work that the Japanese did not, like working in the gas stations etc). But as a homogeneous population they do not welcome foreign workers to live and stay. Even now there are 4th generation Koreans who may not take on Japanese names for their kids, and could be deported to a country they've never been to or speak the language. Here is where the US and other western economies have an advantage if they are willing to accept immigrants. The demographics is a tougher challenge for Japan, as there is huge divide between male and female work both in the office and at home. At least when I was there 30yrs ago, Japan was as sexist as America was in the 50s and things didn't look like they were changing. It was typical for women to work as OL oh-eru (office lady) until she would marry a co-worker. This was of course welcomed by the corporation since now the male worker was likely to have a family and was expected to work hard. (Back in the 1950s the Japanese workers had fought for a lifelong jobs and it was expected to work for a company for their entire life) However there is now a large population of young men who are single and equally a large population of single women who have chosen not to marry as it's just too hard a lifestyle (and Japanese men do even less housework then American men). There has been a flight from the small towns and villages and there are many ghost towns with no kids, schools closed and even mannequins put up in various places to make it look like there are people. Positively I have heard of young people moving out to the country to take advantage of cheap housing and a simpler life. (Perhaps with the working from home trend this may continue). As far as money going for bailouts or to stimulate the economy which ends up as dividends or share buybacks (like the US airlines that spent 90% of their spare cash the past few years on stock buybacks) there is an alternative that does not involve raising taxes or bailing out corporates and that is citizen's wealth fund. (So it avoids being a right or left policy) So these days when we have a crash every few years and interest rates really low or even negative - the next time there is a crash, instead of just bailing out the corporates (we just had a 5 trillion bailout) why not issue bonds on say 20% of GDP like 4 trillion (with near zero or negative rates and inflation at 1% it is nearly costless) take that money and create a citizens wealth fund and invest it across the board in an index of blue chip stocks, have it professionally managed and out of reach by politicians. You should be able to earn 6-7% and in 10 years pay off the debt leaving a 4 trillion citizens fund to help people out with, say low interest loans to start business, fund some kind of minimum income etc. And no taxes were raised on anyone. Another thing is rather than handing over our privacy to social media - we know the FAANMGS (fb apple google etc) are 20% of the S&P and enjoy 60% profits, lets sell off the right to use privacy like we do the wireless spectrum for 5 years at a time. And again add this to the citizen's fund, or something similar. People can choose to opt out if they wish. These are some solutions from Economist Mark Blyth and Hedge Fund investor Eric Lonergan in their recent Angrynomics book. ukposts.info/have/v-deo/aIKBaa6ghoijkok.html

I’ve been living in Japan for the past 11 years. You touched on all the key points. As others have mentioned, there are cultural differences and in particular conservative approaches to about everything for which also continue to hold Japan back behind other countries both in Asia and also globally.

Great stuff ty a lot 🙏

While I agree with your monetary conclusions, I didn't see enough about the important fiscal strategies and challenges. Japanese infrastructure (Shinkansen, Highways, Airports) are world leading in terms of function and design upgrades. ( A clear example is comparing USA Airports, or Berlin's new airport with Nagoya or Haneda. )Japan has a strong portfolio of civil infrastructure which has made is easier and more convenient for Japanese. ON the down side is the constant concrete changes made to the coastline, essential to protect it from calamity of Tsunami as witnessed in recent times. The fiscal spending on infrastructure then depletes the reserves while Korean and Chinese manufactures are gaining more market share.

The timing is perfect, I can go back to Japan from US with fraction of my wealth here in US, and live an amazingly comfortable life.

The rotary phone, in 1997, is hilarious. 😂 Although, my family still used one until 1993, ☎️ Japan, surely, had transitioned to touch tone phones, by 1997. LOL

Great video thank you

Great Video! btw, do you know about prof. Richard Werner. he was an economist in japan

Just subscribed another excellent video to go with your rebuttal of EE, now going to watch Dutch via USA to hopefully get ammo against the future Great (not) UK/US trade deal.

“Japan’s economy seems to be doing quite well for its citizens. “ that is true if you are a pensioner. Japan’s poverty rate is increasing yearly without fail. The increase in single parent households has a lot to do with this and once you are on the bottom in Japan, it’s social doctrine makes it difficult to rise up out of their social situation. It’s difficult for men as well since if they do not get a decent job after they enter the work force or they get laid off they are relegated to low wage jobs from then on. Japan has many ways to waste the talents of its people.

Nice video. This is better than reading dry technical publications.

Thank you very much, Sir!!your survey is so interested for Macroeconomy & Monetary politics! Paris, Fr( 21/10/2021)

I would say one of the few of the reason Japan grew stagnant is due to the fact it expanded and perfected its process and infrastructure too quickly too . It is simply too expensive and risky to tear down something old in the eye of Japanese. For example in Singapore where I live, the old carpark system is a mess while the carpark in the newer one is excellent. The old carpark is usually residing in old city area that have british influence. While the roads and carpark in the new estates is just excellent. Because it was newly build on newly developed lands. In Japan, there seem to be an unwillingness to tear down the old systems for a better system. Might be due to cost, might be due to an perfectionist culture, might be the fear of risk for a new system. For China, there was nothing no existing infrastructure or digital stuff at all. They can just put in the latest most efficient system without caring about the old system. In other words, it is simply easy to build something up from zero.

I find it utterly unconvincing that the bursting of an asset bubble and the subsequent debt deflation spiral is why Japan went from very high growth to very low growth. The biggest problems with this story is that it does not make sense when you take into account the ability to eliminate deflationary expectations with central planning. Debt deflation spirals are an artifact of the myopic expectations of individual agents. This problem exists only when the economy is made up of many small individuals and it ceases to exist when a central planner steps in to run the economy. While having a central planner step in to correct the system may not be politically possible in the short run but surely it is possible if the problem persists in the long run. There are many ways central planners can eliminate deflation or demand reduction expectations. There is no way they can not do it if they really wanted to. The fact that the Japanese government could not or did not reverse the decline in growth suggests that the problem was far bigger than just deflationary expectations. There must have been some real supply side reasons that drove the decline of Japanese growth for such a long time.

Wonderful information. Respect from Taiwan.