This article exposes why countries worldwide fear falling into Japan-style long-term deflation, describing it as a terminal illness for any nation.
The author critiques Japan’s inability to escape deflation before Prime Minister Abe's return, blaming elites molded by the Asahi Shimbun’s worldview.
Bureaucrats, central bankers, and politicians all consumed its narratives without question.
The piece suggests that intellectual conformity and media bias paralyzed Japan’s policy response—and claims that this insight alone is worthy of a Nobel Prize.
A powerful reflection on economics, media influence, and national failure.
What countries around the world abhor like poison is falling into the same prolonged deflationary trap as Japan.
March 16, 2024
Originally written on January 29, 2016
As I’ve continued writing, I’ve come to realize the following.
What countries around the world now dread more than anything—what they abhor like venomous snakes and scorpions—is falling into the same kind of prolonged deflation that plagued Japan.
That is why, the moment they detect any sign of it, they immediately take steps to avoid it.
Why?
Because the Japanese-style prolonged deflation is, for a nation, a terminal illness.
I have mentioned time and again that Japan is a country that has produced countless great minds throughout its recorded history.
So why, then, was such a nation completely incapable of defeating this illness—until the emergence of Prime Minister Abe (more precisely, until he overcame his own illness and returned to power)?
It is because every single member of the elite who shaped Japan’s policy had grown up reading Asahi Shimbun.
Bureaucrats in Kasumigaseki, the officials under the Bank of Japan’s governor, members of the Liberal Democratic Party—every one of them.
Until August of the year before last, not a single one of them had any real understanding of what Asahi Shimbun truly was, and all of them read it thoroughly, believing it was fitting reading material for the elite.
The so-called “intellectuals” who aligned themselves with Asahi were no different—none of them realized they were merely people who had been raised on Asahi, and not only that, they continued to respect and praise their words.
I am convinced that even this single essay of mine would be worthy of an award equivalent to the Nobel Prize, if such an honor existed in Japan.
(To be continued.)
