{"id":8480,"date":"2011-01-31T12:01:04","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T03:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=8480"},"modified":"2011-01-31T12:01:04","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T03:01:04","slug":"nyt-japan-society-puts-up-generational-roadblocks-wastes-potential-of-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=8480","title":{"rendered":"NYT: Japan society puts up generational roadblocks, wastes potential of young"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hi Blog. \u00a0Continuing with the recent theme of what reforms Japanese society needs to face the next century<\/a>, here’s Martin Fackler from the NYT making the case about the structural barriers that waste the potential of youth in Japan. \u00a0Bit of a tangent, but not really. \u00a0Fresh ideas and entrepreneurial energy (regardless of nationality) should be welcomed as revitalizing, but as Fackler writes, the sclerotic is turning necrotic and people are seeking opportunities elsewhere. Arudou Debito<\/p>\n

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/<\/p>\n

THE GREAT DEFLATION
\nGenerational Barriers
\nThis series of articles examines the effects on Japanese society of two decades of economic stagnation and declining prices.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Japan, Young Face Generational Roadblocks
\nBy MARTIN FACKLER
\nThe New York Times: January 27, 2011, courtesy lots of people<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/01\/28\/world\/asia\/28generation.html<\/a><\/p>\n

TOKYO \u2014 Kenichi Horie was a promising auto engineer, exactly the sort of youthful talent Japan needs to maintain its edge over hungry Korean and Chinese rivals. As a worker in his early 30s at a major carmaker, Mr. Horie won praise for his design work on advanced biofuel systems.
\nThe Great Deflation<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But like many young Japanese, he was a so-called irregular worker, kept on a temporary staff contract with little of the job security and half the salary of the \u201cregular\u201d employees, most of them workers in their late 40s or older. After more than a decade of trying to gain regular status, Mr. Horie finally quit \u2014 not just the temporary jobs, but Japan altogether.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

He moved to Taiwan two years ago to study Chinese.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cJapanese companies are wasting the young generations to protect older workers,\u201d said Mr. Horie, now 36. \u201cIn Japan, they closed the doors on me. In Taiwan, they tell me I have a perfect r\u00e9sum\u00e9.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As this fading economic superpower rapidly grays, it desperately needs to increase productivity and unleash the entrepreneurial energies of its shrinking number of younger people. But Japan seems to be doing just the opposite. This has contributed to weak growth and mounting pension obligations, major reasons Standard & Poor\u2019s downgraded Japan\u2019s sovereign debt rating on Thursday.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a feeling among young generations that no matter how hard we try, we can\u2019t get ahead,\u201d said Shigeyuki Jo, 36, co-author of \u201cThe Truth of Generational Inequalities.\u201d \u201cEvery avenue seems to be blocked, like we\u2019re butting our heads against a wall.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

An aging population is clogging the nation\u2019s economy with the vested interests of older generations, young people and social experts warn, making an already hierarchical society even more rigid and conservative. The result is that Japan is holding back and marginalizing its youth at a time when it actually needs them to help create the new products, companies and industries that a mature economy requires to grow.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A nation that produced Sony, Toyota and Honda has failed in recent decades to nurture young entrepreneurs, and the game-changing companies that they can create, like Google or Apple \u2014 each started by entrepreneurs in their 20s.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Employment figures underscore the second-class status of many younger Japanese. While Japan\u2019s decades of stagnation have increased the number of irregular jobs across all age groups, the young have been hit the hardest.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Last year, 45 percent of those ages 15 to 24 in the work force held irregular jobs, up from 17.2 percent in 1988 and as much as twice the rate among workers in older age groups, who cling tenaciously to the old ways. Japan\u2019s news media are now filled with grim accounts of how university seniors face a second \u201cice age\u201d in the job market, with just 56.7 percent receiving job offers before graduation as of October 2010 \u2014 an all-time low.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cJapan has the worst generational inequality in the world,\u201d said Manabu Shimasawa, a professor of social policy at Akita University who has written extensively on such inequalities. \u201cJapan has lost its vitality because the older generations don\u2019t step aside, allowing the young generations a chance to take new challenges and grow.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Disparities and Dangers<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

While many nations have aging populations, Japan\u2019s demographic crisis is truly dire, with forecasts showing that 40 percent of the population will be 65 and over by 2055. Some of the consequences have been long foreseen, like deflation: as more Japanese retire and live off their savings, they spend less, further depressing Japan\u2019s anemic levels of domestic consumption. But a less anticipated outcome has been the appearance of generational inequalities.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

These disparities manifest themselves in many ways. As Mr. Horie discovered, there are corporations that hire all too many young people for low-paying, dead-end jobs \u2014 in effect, forcing them to shoulder the costs of preserving cushier jobs for older employees. Others point to an underfinanced pension system so skewed in favor of older Japanese that many younger workers simply refuse to pay; a \u201csilver democracy\u201d that spends far more on the elderly than on education and child care \u2014 an issue that is familiar to Americans; and outdated hiring practices that have created a new \u201clost generation\u201d of disenfranchised youth.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Nagisa Inoue, a senior at Tokyo\u2019s Meiji University, said she was considering paying for a fifth year at her university rather than graduating without a job, an outcome that in Japan\u2019s rigid job market might permanently taint her chances of ever getting a higher-paying corporate job. That is because Japanese companies, even when they do offer stable, regular jobs, prefer to give them only to new graduates, who are seen as the more malleable candidates for molding into Japan\u2019s corporate culture.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

And the irony, Ms. Inoue said, is that she does not even want to work at a big corporation. She would rather join a nonprofit environmental group, but that would also exclude her from getting a so-called regular job.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather have the freedom to try different things,\u201d said Ms. Inoue, 22. \u201cBut in Japan, the costs of doing something different are just too high.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Many social experts say a grim economy has added to the pressures to conform to Japan\u2019s outdated, one-size-fits-all employment system. An online survey by students at Meiji University of people across Japan ages 18 to 22 found that two-thirds felt that youths did not take risks or new challenges, and that they instead had become a generation of \u201cintroverts\u201d who were content or at least resigned to living a life without ambition.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a mismatch between the old system and the young generations,\u201d said Yuki Honda, a professor of education at the University of Tokyo. \u201cMany young Japanese don\u2019t want the same work-dominated lifestyles of their parents\u2019 generation, but they have no choices.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Facing a rising public uproar, the Welfare Ministry responded late last year by advising employers to recognize someone as a new graduate for up to three years after graduation. It also offers subsidies of up to 1.8 million yen, or about $22,000 per person, to large companies that offer so-called regular jobs to new graduates.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But perhaps nowhere are the roadblocks to youthful enterprise so evident, and the consequences to the Japanese economy so dire, as in the failure of entrepreneurship.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The nation had just 19 initial public offerings in 2009, according to Tokyo-based Next Company, compared with 66 in the United States. More telling is that even Japan\u2019s entrepreneurs are predominantly from older generations: according to the Trade Ministry, just 9.1 percent of Japanese entrepreneurs in 2002 were in their 20s, compared with 25 percent in the United States.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cJapan has become a zero-sum game,\u201d said Yuichiro Itakura, a failed Internet entrepreneur who wrote a book about his experience. \u201cEstablished interests are afraid a young newcomer will steal what they have, so they won\u2019t do business with him.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Many Japanese economists and policy makers have long talked of fostering entrepreneurship as the best remedy for Japan\u2019s economic ills. And it is an idea that has a historical precedent here: as the nation rose from the ashes of World War II, young Japanese entrepreneurs produced a host of daring start-ups that overturned entire global industries.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Entrepreneur\u2019s Rise and Fall<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But many here say that Japan\u2019s economy has ossified since its glory days, and that the nation now produces few if any such innovative companies. To understand why, many here point to the fate of one of the nation\u2019s best-known Internet tycoons, Takafumi Horie.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

When he burst onto the national scene early in the last decade, he was the most un-Japanese of business figures: an impish young man in his early 30s who wore T-shirts into boardrooms, brazenly flouted the rules by starting hostile takeovers and captured an era when a rejuvenated Japanese economy seemed to finally be rebounding. He was arrested five years ago and accused of securities fraud in what seemed a classic case of comeuppance, with the news media demonizing him as a symbol of an unsavory, freewheeling American-style capitalism.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In 2007, a court found him guilty of falsifying company records, a ruling that he is appealing. But in dozens of interviews, young Japanese brought him up again and again as a way of explaining their generation\u2019s malaise. To them, he symbolized something very different: a youthful challenger who was crushed by a reactionary status quo. His arrest, they said, was a warning to all of them not to rock the boat.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a message that it is better to quietly and obediently follow the established conservative order,\u201d Mr. Horie, now 37, wrote in an e-mail.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

He remains for many a popular, if almost subversive figure in Japan, where he is once again making waves by unrepentantly battling the charges in court, instead of meekly accepting the judgment, as do most of those arrested. He now has more than a half-million followers on Twitter, more than the prime minister, and publicly urges people to challenge the system.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHorie has been the closest thing we had to a role model,\u201d said Noritoshi Furuichi, a 25-year-old graduate student at the University of Tokyo who wrote a book about how young Japanese were able to remain happy while losing hope. \u201cHe represents a struggle between old Japan and new Japan.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. Furuichi and many other young Japanese say that young people here do not react with anger or protest, instead blaming themselves and dropping out, or with an almost cheerful resignation, trying to find contentment with horizons that are far more limited than their parents\u2019.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In such an atmosphere, young politicians say it is hard to mobilize their generation to get interested in politics.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Ryohei Takahashi was a young city council member in the Tokyo suburb of Ichikawa who joined a group of other young politicians and activists in issuing a \u201cYouth Manifesto,\u201d which urged younger Japanese to stand up for their interests.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In late 2009, he made a bid to become the city\u2019s mayor on a platform of shifting more spending toward young families and education. However, few younger people showed an interest in voting, and he ended up trying to cater to the city\u2019s most powerful voting blocs: retirees and local industries like construction, all dominated by leaders in their 50s and 60s.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAging just further empowers older generations,\u201d said Mr. Takahashi, 33. \u201cIn sheer numbers, they win hands down.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

He lost the election, which he called a painful lesson that Japan was becoming a \u201csilver democracy,\u201d where most budgets and spending heavily favored older generations.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Social experts say the need to cut soaring budget deficits means that younger Japanese will never receive the level of benefits enjoyed by retirees today. Calculations show that a child born today can expect to receive up to $1.2 million less in pensions, health care and other government spending over the course of his life than someone retired today; in the national pension system alone, this gap reaches into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Abandoning the System<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The result is that young Japanese are fleeing the program in droves: half of workers below the age of 35 now fail to make their legally mandated payments, even though that means they must face the future with no pension at all. \u201cIn France, the young people take to the streets,\u201d Mr. Takahashi said. \u201cIn Japan, they just don\u2019t pay.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Or they drop out, as did many in Japan\u2019s first \u201clost generation\u201d a decade ago.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

One was Kyoko, who was afraid to give her last name for fear it would further damage her job prospects. Almost a decade ago, when she was a junior at Waseda University here, she was expected to follow postwar Japan\u2019s well-trodden path to success by finding a job at a top corporation. She said she started off on the right foot, trying to appear enthusiastic at interviews without being strongly opinionated \u2014 the balance that appeals to Japanese employers, who seek hard-working conformists.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But after interviewing at 10 companies, she said she suffered a minor nervous breakdown, and stopped. She said she realized that she did not want to become an overworked corporate warrior like her father.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

By failing to get such a job before graduating, Kyoko was forced to join the ranks of the \u201cfreeters\u201d \u2014 an underclass of young people who hold transient, lower-paying irregular jobs. Since graduating in 2004 she has held six jobs, none of them paying unemployment insurance, pension or a monthly salary of more than 150,000 yen, or about $1,800.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI realized that wasn\u2019t who I wanted to be,\u201d recalled Kyoko, now 29. \u201cBut why has being myself cost me so dearly?\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A version of this article appeared in print on January 28, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continuing with the recent theme of what reforms Japanese society needs to face the next century, here’s Martin Fackler from the NYT making the case about the structural barriers that waste the potential of youth in Japan. Bit of a tangent, but not really. Fresh ideas and entrepreneurial energy (regardless of nationality) should be welcomed as revitalizing, but as Fackler writes, the sclerotic is turning necrotic and people are seeking opportunities elsewhere. <\/p>\n

NYT: An aging population is clogging the nation\u2019s economy with the vested interests of older generations, young people and social experts warn, making an already hierarchical society even more rigid and conservative. The result is that Japan is holding back and marginalizing its youth at a time when it actually needs them to help create the new products, companies and industries that a mature economy requires to grow.<\/p>\n

A nation that produced Sony, Toyota and Honda has failed in recent decades to nurture young entrepreneurs, and the game-changing companies that they can create, like Google or Apple \u2014 each started by entrepreneurs in their 20s.<\/p>\n

Employment figures underscore the second-class status of many younger Japanese. While Japan\u2019s decades of stagnation have increased the number of irregular jobs across all age groups, the young have been hit the hardest.<\/p>\n

Last year, 45 percent of those ages 15 to 24 in the work force held irregular jobs, up from 17.2 percent in 1988 and as much as twice the rate among workers in older age groups, who cling tenaciously to the old ways. Japan\u2019s news media are now filled with grim accounts of how university seniors face a second \u201cice age\u201d in the job market, with just 56.7 percent receiving job offers before graduation as of October 2010 \u2014 an all-time low.<\/p>\n

\u201cJapan has the worst generational inequality in the world,\u201d said Manabu Shimasawa, a professor of social policy at Akita University who has written extensively on such inequalities. \u201cJapan has lost its vitality because the older generations don\u2019t step aside, allowing the young generations a chance to take new challenges and grow.\u201d..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,16,31,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-business-practices","category-labor-issues","category-tangents","category-unsustainable-japanese-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}