History shows that hegemonic powers endure for roughly 200 years. Japan’s prolonged stagnation does not stem from its industries or people, but from political and media failures that despised the stock market and blocked capital circulation. By mobilizing even a fraction of its ¥1,500 trillion in personal assets, Japan can once again rise as a global financial and economic power alongside the United States.

2016-04-08

Hegemonic powers traditionally last for two hundred years.
To say that Japan’s era is over is utter nonsense.
Japan must continue to prosper for another 170 years as a super economic power standing alongside the United States, or complementing it.
Why has Japan experienced major stagnation over the past twenty years?
To put it harshly, the media and politics, stuck at a mental age of twelve, have failed.
Japanese companies, exposed daily to innovation and competition, refining world-class technologies across all fields and holding large global market shares, are outstanding, diligent, meticulous, and supported by a highly educated workforce, making Japan an industrial nation with the world’s largest personal assets totaling ¥1,500 trillion.
Yet money generated by this society and market has not been returned to the market, instead stagnating as a petty mass of egoism offering compound interest higher than banks, leaving over ¥500 trillion trapped in postal savings.
[Omitted.]
There may have been some economic effect, but it is no exaggeration to say that nothing was returned to the market.
Japan self-deprecates by calling its superb mobile phones “technological Galapagos.”
China, however, is a Galapagos as a nation, yet by leveraging its population of 1.3 billion, it has continued a weak-currency policy as a state, declaring that it does not care about globalization.
[Omitted.]
What Japan must do even now is to utilize its ¥1,500 trillion in personal assets, returning to society the wealth born from society itself—the fruits of diligent and capable workers who supported Japan as an industrial nation.
The true cause of Japan’s two decades of stagnation is that a capitalist country continued to despise the stock market, the very foundation of capitalism, and thus was exploited.
Among my classmates, not a single one went into a securities company.
Stocks were derided as “stock-peddling,” yet in the United States, Harvard’s top graduates go to Goldman Sachs and become successive Treasury Secretaries.
The yen becomes a safe-haven currency and repeatedly appreciates because over 95 percent of Japan’s government bonds are financed by these personal assets, making Japan a rare nation in the world.
If just 1 percent—¥10 trillion—of personal assets were directed into the stock market, Japan would instantly become a massive market rivaling the United States, a global financial powerhouse.
[Omitted.]