Japan’s enormous household wealth continues to flow overseas rather than strengthening its own markets.
This chapter argues that such irrational behavior is the result of decades of internalized contempt for Japan fostered by Asahi Shimbun.

2016-04-07
In today’s Nikkei newspaper,
the front-page series titled
“The Dynamics of the Market”
contains the following passage.
[Omitted text]
“Japan’s household financial assets, totaling 1,700 trillion yen,
are drawing unprecedented attention.”
[Omitted text]
In my book,
The Turntable of Civilization, page 15,
I wrote that
“if just 1 percent of household assets—10 trillion yen—
were directed into the stock market,
Japan would instantly become a massive market rivaling the United States,
that is, a global financial superpower.”
I should now revise that figure
to 0.5 percent of household assets.
What I find utterly absurd in this series
is that Japan’s world-leading household wealth of 1,700 trillion yen
is somehow not used
to enlarge its own national market,
but instead is heading only toward overseas destinations
whose future is uncertain.
One can only say
that even their money
has followed Asahi Shimbun
in thoroughly despising Japan.
This wealth was made possible precisely because
Japan is, in substance,
still the world’s second-largest economic superpower
and a nation in which, by divine providence,
the turntable of civilization is rotating.
Yet the foolishness of ignoring,
neglecting,
or even despising one’s own country—
a country to which such a great debt is owed—
and instead seeking to invest in nations
whose future is uncertain
or whose rulers govern solely for their own benefit,
is truly absurd.