Countries around the world now dread falling into “Japan-style deflation.” This article argues that its true cause was not economic miscalculation but a deeply ingrained mindset shaped by Asahi Shimbun. From economic policy to diplomacy, this distorted thinking damaged Japan’s economy, honor, and credibility on a global scale.

2016-02-01

Today, nations across the world refer to the prolonged deflation into which Japan had fallen until quite recently as “Japan-style deflation,” and they dread falling into it as if it were a venomous curse.
As a country that has produced countless great figures throughout history, why did Japan end up in such a state?

I realized that uncovering the answer to this question is something worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Why?
Because it is a truth no one had noticed before.

The fact that deflation was created by Atsushi Yamada of the Asahi Shimbun’s economic desk—that is, by Asahi Shimbun itself—was known to me because I spent my life as a businessman in the real estate industry.

As I continued writing about this, I suddenly came to a realization.
Every single person involved in managing Japan’s economy had grown up reading Asahi Shimbun and believing Asahi Shimbun’s way of thinking—its ideology—to be the correct one.

The criticism that Yoshiko Sakurai directs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, introduced below, is something most Japanese people had failed to notice until now.
I, however, recognized it immediately.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was suffering from the same disease.

They too had grown up reading Asahi Shimbun, and once they entered public service, that influence must have become even stronger.
They had come to believe that the arguments of Asahi Shimbun and the so-called cultural figures who echoed it were correct.

As a result, not only did absurd failures beneath even kindergarten-level reasoning occur, as Sakurai points out, but rampant fabrications and lies were allowed to spread unchecked.
In doing so, they severely damaged the honor and credibility of Japan and its people.

They gave profound insult to all Japanese men who had reached adulthood during the century of war.
In particular, they reduced to “meaningless deaths” the sacrifices of countless ordinary men—no different from you or me—who died for their country, and trampled their honor in the most unforgivable manner.
Worse still, this was done entirely on the basis of fabrications and falsehoods, making it an outrage beyond belief.

Sakurai’s essay will be introduced in the following chapter.