An uncompromising critique of Japan’s urban economy and social decline through the lens of Ginza and Umeda as the nation’s only true super-prime locations. From the explosive success of Yodobashi Umeda to the destructive intervention of the Japan Football Association and mass media, this essay exposes how labor ethics, democracy, youth livelihoods, and national competitiveness have been systematically undermined.

In Japan, There Are Only Two “Super Prime Locations”: Ginza and Umeda
2010-07-19

It goes without saying that in Japan there are only two places that can truly be called super-prime locations: Ginza and Umeda.
Long ago, when the whole of Japan was in deep recession, the former JNR Settlement Corporation first sold the site of a Railway Administration Bureau in the Kita-Yard district. Yodobashi Camera outbid Mitsukoshi, purchased the land, and opened its Umeda store. That store now records the highest sales of all Yodobashi locations nationwide.
From the moment it opened, Nipponbashi—once Japan’s largest electronics district alongside Akihabara—rapidly declined. At that time, our company owned a parking-equipped building at the south exit of Nankai Namba Station, and the parking revenue from a major electronics retailer, which had been a substantial source of income, suddenly collapsed. That is how tremendous the underlying power of Umeda truly is.

The daily passenger volume of Umeda Subway Station ranks among the highest in Japan. Hankyu Umeda Station is one of the busiest private railway terminals in the country. Hanshin Umeda Station is of course also a terminal.
Above them stand the Hankyu and Hanshin department stores, and above the JR Osaka Station—which is virtually another terminal—stands Daimaru.
Now, the building under construction above the southern side of the station is dramatically expanding, while the building on the northern side will house Isetan–Mitsukoshi. In the office tower above it, Itochu Corporation has decided to move its Osaka headquarters from its birthplace in Honmachi.
As a terminal commercial district, it is unquestionably number one in Japan, and in terms of sheer drawing power, it even surpasses Ginza.

And yet, into this location—what can rightly be called the single greatest diamond in Japan—Orix, a company that upholds “half-price, then half again” as its creed and is in some respects Japan’s most powerful usurer, plunged the city into turmoil. Seizing upon that turmoil, the Japan Football Association suddenly emerged. Just who on earth do they think they are, behaving with such outrageous arrogance?

Nearly twenty years have passed since the J-League was established, yet Japan’s GDP has not increased by even one yen—it has rather declined.
The Japanese people ought to realize that there are now over ten million young people who, even at the age of thirty, have no stable employment and can scarcely even consider marriage, earning less than two million yen a year.

When the real estate company I once led was on a trajectory that could have reached public registration within ten years, and we had more than thirty employees, I used to tell them this all the time.
Surrounded by rows of apartment buildings, I quoted the late Tsuruoka, former Nankai manager, who said, “Money is lying on the ground of the field—train harder than anyone else to grab it.”
And I told them, “Other companies post once a week at most. If you post in this impregnable fortress three times a week, your income will double or triple. While you’re young, it’s all about physical stamina. Even with ordinary ability, if you work harder than anyone else, you can surpass the income of elites guaranteed ten million yen a year.”
In fact, our employees’ salaries were higher than those of young staff at the major trading companies.

When I wrote earlier, “Good young people are gathering in such places…,” that is exactly what I meant.
Soccer is, at its root, a class society sport. In Europe, where the son of a butcher remains a butcher forever, it functioned as an outlet for the frustrations of the working class—one of the two means of transcending that class, the other being to become a world-class rock band.
In South America, it was also the sole means of escaping the extreme poverty of the slums.
That is why fouling, falling, and cunning tricks are considered “important skills” in the sport.

Some twenty years ago, when the “turntable of civilization” began to rotate in Japan, there was an occasion on NHK when an insider, with his face hidden, spoke of the secret of Japan’s strength.
Between a country that takes three-hour lunch breaks and a nation that works without sparing even the time to eat, it is only natural that an enormous gap should arise.

Europe, as individual nations, could absolutely not compete with countries like the United States or Japan. The gap had grown that wide.
That is why Germany and France—ancient enemies who had fought repeated wars, including over Alsace—joined hands to give birth to the EC.
Japan was that strong. And what supported that Japan was a society in which people worked diligently under a lifetime employment system, with security and peace of mind about the future—a “100-million middle-class” nation.

I believe the Football Association possessed great power in destroying these Japanese characteristics and in copying a tragic society resembling Europe’s class-based despair or the slums of South America, where more than ten million people have no stable jobs and earn less than two million yen annually.
The Football Association is a textbook example of “when one general succeeds, ten thousand bones wither.”
And the mass media—especially television—that fawns over this, standing at the very opposite pole from workers who shed sweat, blood, and tears through daily productive labor, degenerating into performers of shallow knowledge, momentary tricks, and event-loving revelry, even inventing that nauseating phrase “Thank you for the inspiration,” has, I believe, greatly contributed to the progressive dulling of the Japanese people.
While they place beauty-contest-like women beside them and comfortably earn annual incomes exceeding ten million yen, just how much do those young people called “supporters” actually earn?

The fundamental and grave defects of the Japanese mass media will be discussed later.
But that a former Mainichi Broadcasting announcer like Hiramatsu—so obscure that one barely recalls he even existed—became mayor of a city that is, in substance, Japan’s second-largest metropolis, and committed crimes of the worst and lowest order in history as seen in this case… Instead of such idiocy, he ought to have applied for special economic zone status for Kita-Yard and worked to bring Osaka-born major corporations back to Umeda.

To block Ginza’s Fourth Avenue with a soccer stadium—causing, as already stated, future tax losses exceeding one trillion yen—and call that “a great chance for Osaka to be reborn” (Asahi Evening Edition, July 17) is the very pinnacle of idiocy.
To prevent such people from becoming mayors, we must change the very nature of how elections are conducted. If we do not, the nation will only decline.

All candidates should be required to submit full thesis papers, disclose how they have contributed to Osaka and to the nation, what problems they recognize, and what solutions they propose. The highest local intelligences should then assemble to judge and select among them. Without such a system, events like this cannot be prevented.

For several years now, I have said as a warning: “Your single vote can ruin the nation.”
Thinking one’s duty is completed merely by casting a vote is precisely what leads to ruin. Democracy is the constant act of watching and the constant act of making proposals.

If today’s mass media is to be called the voice of democracy, then I must categorically refuse that notion.
In the next installment, I will clearly and concretely explain why Japanese mass media is fundamentally flawed. At a very deep level, it has not changed at all from sixty years ago—a terrifying fact I have only recently realized, and one that has left me chilled.

(274) John Lennon – Help Me to Help Myself – YouTube