PESSIMISTIC NIPPON

My 6-week visit to Japan, with Toyoko, from August to October was a spate of more than 50 encounters — with friends, family, former colleagues and new contacts. Almost everyone I met was pessimistic. Business was bad and getting worse. My successor at the bank had had to drastically reduce loan exposure in Japan, on Head Office instructions. ‘They ordered me to cut back sharply, within a week after you left,’ he told me.

‘Uncle’ Nozomi in Nagoya, the company president who had substituted for Toyoko's late father at our wedding in 1959, had lost his job because of ‘large losses’. He said: We Japanese are pitiable. We can't find a way out. There are hard times ahead.’ Bleak words for a man guided by Zen stoicism.

Official unemployment was still in the 2 to 3% range, but much higher in reality, as the figures didn't include housewives, part-time workers, recent graduates and older persons ‘ashamed’ to collect unemployment pay. They all depended on family for support, thus reducing overall buying power.

A thoughtful Japanese lawyer I knew well ventured a prediction that extended beyond the shores of Japan. We’ve just seen the end of the 2nd Industrial Revolution,’ he said. ‘Future economic recoveries will be minimal. We’ll have to get used to 1 or 2% growth rates. Our lifestyle will become sober, our toil once again hard, like it has been throughout history.’ Then he added kindly: ‘Please come back to Japan. It's the best place for you.’

I was not so sure. In fact, all the gloomy talk was having an effect on me. Travelling repeatedly on the Odakyu Line between Shinjuku and my mother-in-law's leafy suburb, a 40-minute trip, I was depressed to see how congested the trains were, at all hours. The salaried worker's lot is hard, I thought. Even company executives couldn't avoid these long commutes on public transport as the roads were too congested to travel by car. Middle class people must pay 30 or 40 million yen for a small house of 100m2 floor space on a tiny scrap of land, an hour's commute from work.