This essay criticizes the anti-growth arguments seen in the Asahi Shimbun and in figures such as Chizuko Ueno, arguing that Japan’s lack of growth is not destiny but the result of deflation.
It insists that GDP is the foundation of tax revenue and national defense, and that denying growth means condemning future generations to poverty while leaving Japan unable to stand against an expansionist power such as China.
It further argues that labor shortages should be seen as a major opportunity for productivity-enhancing investment and calls on the Japanese people to reaffirm their will to pursue growth.

2019-04-10
In present-day Japan, the anti-growth theorists are beings so sinful that one could almost say it would be understandable even if they were deprived of freedom of speech.
They are, in effect, saying that they themselves may live comfortably thanks to the growth of the past, while future Japanese citizens should live in a nation sinking into poverty.
I am republishing here, in a consolidated form, the full chapter I originally posted on 2017-03-08 under that title.
This month’s issue of the magazine Seiron is filled with genuine essays.
Among them is an essay by the economic commentator Takaki Mitsuhashi.
The discerning readers who subscribe to Seiron and who also read my work must surely have noticed that this essay, too, proves the correctness of my own arguments one hundred percent.
In this entirely sound essay, he quite naturally criticizes an article in the Asahi Shimbun and also an article written in the Chunichi Shimbun by Chizuko Ueno, one of the representative figures of the so-called Asahi cultural elite.
As I wrote before, the true substance of her intellect is simply that she grew up reading the Asahi Shimbun and lives by the ideas of its editorial writers.
The world should be ashamed that, until August three years ago, it had taken such newspapers and such so-called cultural figures to be representative of Japan.

Still unable to understand the market economy?
Asahi Shimbun’s “Zero Growth.”
Economic Commentator.
Takaki Mitsuhashi.

On January 4 of this year, the Asahi Shimbun ran an article titled, “Is Economic Growth Eternal?
‘The Last 200 Years Are Rather the Exception,’” and presented a negative tone regarding Japan’s future economic growth.
The reporter who wrote the article, Makoto Hara, declared, “Yet over these past twenty-five years nominal growth has been almost zero.
And the result of the government repeatedly engaging in fiscal spending in an attempt to restore an economy of rising incomes has been that Japan has become the world’s most indebted country.”
As usual, he used the false rhetoric of “government debt = the world’s most indebted country” in order to deny growth.
Furthermore, Chizuko Ueno, professor emerita at the University of Tokyo, said in an interview published in the Chunichi Shimbun on February 11 under the title “Let Us Become Poor Equally,” “Japan should accept population decline and decline itself.
It should become a model for a society that declines peacefully.
We should throw away delusions such as maintaining a population of one hundred million or achieving 600 trillion yen in GDP, and face reality.”
I am one of those who dearly cherish freedom of speech in Japan.
Even so, every time I read the statements and articles of anti-growth theorists such as Makoto Hara and Chizuko Ueno, I am driven to think that perhaps, for reasons of national defense, it would be acceptable for our country to place restrictions on freedom of speech.
I am convinced that if the opinions spread by anti-growth theorists represented by Hara and Ueno cause the view to become widespread among the Japanese people that “Japan will not grow economically” or “Japan does not need economic growth,” then this country will, without exaggeration, be led to ruin.
To begin with, what these anti-growth theorists fundamentally misunderstand is that Japan’s lack of growth is neither our national fate nor any historical inevitability.
It is true that Japan has not been growing economically, but the reason is simply deflation.
A country in deflation, where incomes shrink faster than prices fall, cannot achieve economic growth.
After all, economic growth means the expansion of GDP, which is production, expenditure, and income.
A deflationary country in which income decreases faster than prices cannot possibly grow its economy.
For Japan to achieve economic growth, it is indispensable to escape deflation.
Yet if this type of anti-growth rhetoric wins public support, then the “demand creation by government” that is indispensable for overcoming deflation becomes impossible.
As a result, exactly as the anti-growth theorists desire, Japan’s economic growth rate remains depressed.
As for Makoto Hara’s demagoguery that “Japan is a debt superpower,” I have repeatedly pointed out its errors in many different media, so I will not deal with it in this essay.
Even before that, however, anti-growth theorists such as Hara and Ueno are so grave in their wrongdoing that one could almost think it acceptable to restrict their freedom of speech for three reasons.

First.
Whether Hara or Ueno, both have enjoyed the blessings of the growth of the Japanese economy in the past, that is, the expansion of income, and have lived richly and comfortably in Japan.
They themselves have benefited from the blessings of Japan’s past economic growth, and yet they deny future growth.
They are saying that they themselves may live in comfort thanks to past growth, while future Japanese citizens should live in a country sinking into poverty.
That is not something ethically permissible.
If Ueno wishes to argue that “we should all become poor equally,” then first she should set an example by donating all of her assets to the national treasury and becoming poor herself.
I say this categorically.
Those represented by Ueno who argue that “it is fine for Japan to become poor” are the very people who desperately gather and hoard Japanese yen for themselves.
They are shameless people who are frantic to accumulate yen for themselves while casually telling others that it is fine to be poor.

Second.
Hara and Ueno do not understand that GDP is the source of tax revenue.
GDP is the total income of a country.
And we pay taxes from our incomes.
Inevitably, GDP and government tax revenue are strongly correlated.
A country with a larger GDP has larger tax revenues, and therefore a larger fiscal scale.
Naturally, if the fiscal scale expands, it also becomes possible to spend large sums on military expenditures.

Without growth, national defense collapses.
Before Japan’s economy fell into deflation under the Hashimoto administration’s austerity policies, Japan alone accounted for more than 17 percent of world GDP.
After that, Japan’s share of world GDP kept falling, and by 2015 it had declined all the way to 5.6 percent.
On the other side, China continued to grow economically, benefiting even from direct investment from Japan.
Already, China’s GDP has swollen to more than twice that of Japan.
If Japan’s economy continues not to grow while China’s economy continues expanding, what will ultimately happen?
Within about twenty years, there will come an age in which China’s GDP is ten times that of Japan and its military spending twenty times as large.
How is Japan supposed to confront a communist dictatorship that spends twenty times more on its military?
The cruel answer is that it cannot.
In order to leave Japan as “Japan” to future Japanese citizens, our country must grow economically.
And to achieve economic growth, escaping deflation is indispensable.
Yet the anti-growth theorists represented by Hara and Ueno spread nonexistent theories of fiscal collapse and anti-growth arguments, obstructing the fiscal spending needed for Japan to break free from deflation.

Third.
Many anti-growth theorists are mistaken, but the fact is that Japan today is facing a perfect opportunity for economic growth.
What is economic growth?
Of course, it is the expansion of GDP.
Then what is required in order for GDP to expand?
Must the population increase?
What nonsense.
There has never once in history been a country on this earth that achieved economic growth simply by increasing its population.
What is necessary for economic growth is the expansion of output per worker who labors day by day.
The expansion of GDP, or output, per producer is called an increase in productivity.
Economic growth is an economic phenomenon achieved only through increases in productivity.
Japan today is indeed experiencing population decline.
That is true.
But whether a population rises or falls, countries that grow economically will grow, and countries that do not will not.
Japan today is seeing labor shortages intensify because of the declining ratio of working-age population caused by a low birthrate and aging society.
Labor shortages are precisely the ideal opportunity for investment aimed at raising productivity.
After all, when supply capacity is insufficient relative to demand, firms can profit by investing.
Productivity growth is equal to a rise in real wages.
Investment to raise productivity and fill labor shortages is exactly what raises real wages and enriches the people.
And yet, if under the influence of anti-growth theorists Japanese managers and politicians fail to increase investment and economic growth remains stagnant, then in the future our country will quite ordinarily be transformed into a vassal state of China.
In present-day Japan, the anti-growth theorists are beings so sinful that one could almost say it would be understandable even if they were deprived of freedom of speech.
The Japanese people need to understand this once again.
As long as the people possess the will to grow and continue expanding investment, economic growth will continue forever.