Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
16
treaty between Tokyo and Washington. In
1952, the occupation ended and in 1956
Japan joined the United Nations as an
independent country.
American Dow) fell a gut-churning 63%
from its 1989 peak, and the country was
rocked by one political scandal after
another. Public confidence was further
eroded in 1995, first by a major earth-
quake in Kobe that killed more than 6,000
people and proved that Japan's cities were
not as safe as the government had main-
tained, and then by an attack by an
obscure religious sect that released the
deadly nerve gas sarin on Tokyo's subway
system during rush hour, killing 12 people
and sickening thousands. The nation had
another scare in 1999 when an accident at
a nuclear power plant only 113km (70
miles) from Tokyo exposed dozens to
radiation; two workers subsequently died
from the radiation. But the worst blow of
all was in 2001, when a knife-wielding
man stormed into an elementary school in
Osaka Prefecture, fatally stabbing eight
children and wounding 15 others. For
many Japanese, it seemed that the very
core of their society had begun to crumble.
Since 1999, Tokyo has been led by out-
spoken governor Ishihara Shintaro, a
nationalist writer who, together with for-
mer Sony chairman Morita Akio, penned
the 1989 best-selling
The Japan That Can
Say No.
His election was regarded as a clear
rejection of the status quo and a belief that
change in Japan must come from within,
with Tokyo clearly at the forefront. In
2001, that desire for change ushered in
long-haired, 59-year-old Koizumi Junich-
iro as the new prime minister, long consid-
ered a maverick for his battles against the
established power brokers and his cries for
reform.
While Koizumi instigated policies that
helped decrease the number of bad loans
at major banks—once considered a finan-
cial time bomb—to half what they were in
2002, public opinion polls eventually
turned sour over his achievements. In
addition, relations with Japan's closest
neighbors, China and North and South
Korea, hit rock bottom, with disputes that
POSTWAR TOKYO
Perhaps unsurprising in a city trained in
natural calamities, Tokyo was so adept at
rebuilding that a decade later not a trace of
wartime destruction remained. Avoiding
involvement in foreign conflicts, the Japa-
nese concentrated on economic recovery.
Through a series of policies that favored
domestic industries and shielded Japan
from foreign competition, the country
achieved rapid economic growth. By the
mid-1960s—only a century after Japan
had opened its doors to the rest of the
world and embraced modernization—the
Japanese had transformed their nation
into a major industrial power, with Tokyo
riding the crest of the economic wave. In
1964, in recognition of Japan's increasing
importance, the Summer Olympic Games
were held in Tokyo, thrusting the city into
the international limelight.
As their economy continued to expand,
the Japanese sought new markets abroad;
by the early 1970s, they had attained a
trade surplus, as Japanese products—cars
and electronic goods—attracted more and
more foreign buyers. By the 1980s, “Japan,
Inc.” seemed on the economic brink of
ruling the world, as Japanese companies
bought prime real estate around the globe,
topics flooded the Western market
expounding Japanese business principles,
and Japan enjoyed unprecedented finan-
cial growth. With the exception of a top
tier of the very wealthy, virtually everyone
in Japan considered him- or herself a
member of the middle class.
In 1992, recession hit Japan, bursting
the economic bubble and plunging the
country into its worst recession since
World War II. Bankruptcies reached an
all-time high, Tokyo real-estate prices
plummeted 70% from what they were in
1991, the Nikkei (Japan's version of the
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