Japan: Century 21 - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 351

In post-war Japan, raw materials were cheap and, with its
own low-cost labor force, this meant that Japan could
easily compete in world markets.
Conditions changed in the 1970s with labor short-
ages, increased oil prices, and a slowdown of global
shipping. As Japan now depended on more costly oil for
70 percent of its energy needs, the government decided
to reduce the cost of hydroelectric and nuclear power
and to subsidize unprofitable coal mines.
By the 1980s, older heavy industries were reaping
the effects of overcapacity and competition from emerg-
ing tigers such as South Korea. Factory closures led to
rising unemployment. Japan reacted to these changes by
diversifying into light industries such as electronics,
cameras, and appliances. Another venture was robotics—
the building of mechanical devices to do the work of
humans. Robots became widely used in the auto in-
dustry . However, their use has been cut back in recent
years because they have proven to be very expensive.
At the end of the 1980s, Japanese corporations began
investing more overseas. First, they bought out foreign
mineral suppliers and then they built factories in other
countries. After major investments in the United States
and Britain to establish auto plants, they turned to South-
east Asia where economies were stimulated by the infu-
sion of Japanese capital. In Japan, industries that lost jobs
to cheap labor overseas were said to be hollowed out .
By the mid-1980s, Japan expanded its investment in
cheap labor and assembly-line factories by moving re-
search and design facilities overseas as well. It also built
on its relationship with China, especially in China' s
northeast. By the early twentieth century , most Japanese
multinationals such as Sony , Hitachi, and T Toshiba and
automakers such as T Toyota, Honda, Mazda, and Nissan
were operating in China. But recent economic crises be-
ginning in the 1990s are proving that all is not well in
Japan Inc.

have gone bankrupt. They have been forced to terminate
long-term workers just to stay afloat. The factory sector
has been particularly hard hit, as more and more employ-
ment has shifted to overseas locations where labor is
cheaper. Migrant workers can also be employed at low
wages to cut costs. Companies in traditional industries
such as steel production and shipbuilding have gone
bankrupt altogether because of competition from South
Korea, China, and Taiwan.
For Japanese employees in general, the promise of a
guaranteed job for life has all but disappeared. Many
workers face unemployment or moves downward to infe-
rior occupations at lower wages. Likewise, recent college
graduates, once accustomed to having a choice of jobs,
struggle to find any employment at all and are often
forced to settle for part-time work without benefits. More-
over, a new class of young workers called freetah has
emerged. They eschew the “rat race” of full-time employ-
ment and instead go from one part-time job to another in
accordance with short-term financial needs and personal
inclinations. T To lower the cost of living, many freetah de-
lay or avoid marriage and live at home with parents long
after the usual age of striking out on one' s own.
There are many explanations for the malaise, includ-
ing the troubling assessment that Japan' is economy is
chronically inefficient with redundant employees and
outmoded business practices. A look at virtually any
construction site or inside any bank shows the excess of
workers, many of whom seem to do nothing but drive up
the cost of business. Every road repair site, for instance,
seems to have a bevy of traffic control assistants with
flashing light batons to wave vehicles and pedestrians
around the obstruction, whether they are needed or not,
as well as what seems like an inordinately large number
of workers and supervisors.
The bad economy is also blamed on Japan' is financial
institutions because of the many poorly secured loans
they made to cronies during the bubble. Many loans were
for dubious investments such as speculative real estate.
The national government has recently had to bail out
several large companies with special loans and tax
breaks. This has caused critics to point to Japan' s cozy re-
lationships between politicians and businessmen as still
another flaw in the nation' s economy .
The influence of the construction industry is seen
everywhere in Japan. Not only does the country have
some of the longest tunnels and bridges in the world, such
as the tunnel to Hokkaido and the bridge to Shikoku, but
it also has countless other more ordinary tunnels, bridges,
and highways built at great cost across the nation' s difficult

AILING TIGER
Despite Japan' s generally high standard of living and
great wealth in comparison to other parts of Asia, all is
not well in the country . After the unprecedented prosper-
ity of the 1970s and 1980s, the economy went into a
painful slump in the 1990s, so much so that the decade is
now being called the “Lost Decade.”
The more recent crisis, beginning in 2007, has
struck Japan hard. Countless companies, including sev-
eral major banks, well-known supermarket and depart-
ment store chains, and once prosperous manufacturers,