Japan’s economic leadership depends on a single task: building Tokyo into a market rivaling the NYSE. Only that focus can guide and stabilize the world economy.

2016-04-12

As readers know, I still subscribe to the Asahi Shimbun and the Nikkei.
I read the Nikkei as a financial paper, yet its political stance largely mirrors that of the Asahi.
I am convinced the Nikkei should abandon political advocacy altogether.
Instead, it should devote itself to strengthening Japan’s economy—remembering that Japan is a nation in which, by the providence of history, the “turntable of civilization” continues to turn.
Its mission should be to act as the vanguard in building the Tokyo Stock Exchange into the world’s largest market, on par with the New York Stock Exchange.
Beyond that, it has no reason to exist.
Otherwise, it should stop calling itself an economic newspaper and declare itself merely a mouthpiece for economic interests.
Japan is, in substance, still the world’s second-largest economic power; this is why its contributions to the United Nations have long been the largest in the world.
While the United States often suspends payments at its convenience, Japan has continued to shoulder an overwhelmingly large share to sustain the UN.
For a country that must lead the world alongside the United States for the next 170 years, an economic newspaper that fails this role is utterly unqualified.
The Nikkei must engrave this fact deeply into its consciousness.
The inadequacy—indeed, the foolishness—of that awareness has helped create today’s unstable world.
What must be done is simple: immediately set to work on making the Tokyo market the world’s largest.
Only this will guide and save the world.
The time has come to gather the collective wisdom of all employees and transform Japan into a nation where even 0.5 percent of its roughly 1,700 trillion yen in private assets flows daily through the market.
Japan possesses world-class companies across countless fields, backed by diligent and honest workers whose character has produced this immense wealth.
Returning that wealth to Japan’s own market is only natural.
Yet the Nikkei has never embraced even this basic understanding, choosing instead to belittle Japan in concert with the Asahi.
Such behavior has imposed needless suffering on the 99 percent of workers who sustain the country.
Recognize that humanity’s fate rests on your shoulders, and without delay, build the Tokyo market into one that stands alongside the NYSE as the world’s largest.