Apologizing to Japan

By Di on 9月 27 2018

This is an op-ed—meaning it is the author's personal view—from The New York Times.

For nearly the last two decades, Japan has been held up as a cautionary tale, an object lesson on how not to run an advanced economy. After all, the island nation is the rising superpower that stumbled. And Western economists were scathing in their criticisms of Japanese policy.

In January 1990, Japan's stock market crashed. Property values fell 87%. The Bank of Japan lowered the interest rate from 6 percent to 0.5 percent by 1995, but it didn't revive the economy

These days, I often find myself thinking that we ought to apologize.

The West has, in fact, fallen into a slump similar to Japan’s—but worse. And that wasn’t supposed to happen. In the 1990s, we assumed that if the United States or Western Europe found themselves facing anything like Japan's economic slump, we would respond much more effectively than the Japanese had. But we didn't, even though we had Japan's experience to guide us.

Teaching notes

In January 1990, Japan's stock market crashed. Property values fell 87%. The Bank of Japan lowered the interest rate from 6 percent to 0.5 percent by 1995, but it didn't revive the economy because people had borrowed too much to buy real estate during the bubble. The government also tried increasing spending on highways and other infrastructure to stimulate growth, but it just created a higher debt-to-GDP ratio. Shinzo Abe has been implementing policies—referred to as Abenomics—that are beginning to have a positive effect. But now the ageing population along with a string of natural disasters threaten to pull down the economy no matter what policies are in place. Most students should be familiar enough with Abenomics to be able to discuss it. If not, move on to the more general questions.

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Discussion
This op-ed is written in response to Western governments' reaction to the global financial crisis in 2008. Do you think the GFC is similar to Japan's crash in the 1990s?
What is the writer's point of view? Do you agree with it?
Do you agree that Western countries should apologize to Japan for criticizing its response to the recession?