Japan’s vast private assets are being directed abroad rather than strengthening its own market,
revealing a deeply ingrained habit of national self-contempt.

2016-04-07
On the front page of today’s Nikkei newspaper, in its series titled “Market Dynamics,” the following passage appears.
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“Unprecedented attention is now being focused on Japan’s 1,700 trillion yen in household financial assets.”
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In my book The Turntable of Civilization, on page 15, I wrote that directing just 1 percent of personal assets, or 10 trillion yen, into the stock market would instantly make Japan a massive market rivaling the United States and a global financial power.
More precisely, this figure should be revised to 0.5 percent.
What I find utterly absurd in this article is that Japan’s enormous household assets, among the largest in the world, are not being used to strengthen its own market but are instead flowing toward foreign countries whose futures are far from certain.
One can only conclude that this is the result of people paying money to read Asahi Shimbun while persistently belittling Japan itself.
These assets were created precisely because Japan remains, in substance, the world’s second-largest economic power and a nation in which the turntable of civilization rotates as a matter of providence.
Yet people ignore, neglect, or even hold in contempt their own country, a country to which they owe an immense debt.
They then choose to invest in nations unlike Japan, nations whose futures are uncertain and whose rulers often govern solely for their own benefit.
Such behavior is nothing short of profoundly foolish.