『今の日本に学ぶものは少ない』～マハティール元首相の直言とフォーゲル博士の悲観～

マレーシア、マハティール元首相の直言

かつて『Japan as NO.1』を書いたフォーゲルは、今や日本に関して悲観論へ。

辛口批評が特徴のワシントンポストですが、フォーゲル氏の論評が印象的でした。

『A declining Japan loses its once-hopeful champions』

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/a-declining-japan-loses-its-once-hopeful-champions/2012/10/27/f2d90b2e-1cea-11e2-9cd5-b55c38388962_story.html

Now a pessimist

Japan optimism became a mainstream movement with the 1979 publication of “Japan As No. 1,” an international bestseller that described the way a country the size of Montana had come to make cars as well as the Germans, watches as well as the Swiss and steel as well as the Americans — in more efficient plants. Japan’s people worked hard, its government guided the economy, and its streets were clean and crime-free.

“Japan has dealt more successfully with more of the basic problems of post­industrial society than any other country,” wrote author Ezra Vogel, a sociologist at Harvard.

But Vogel, who has lived for several periods in Japan, and has traveled here at least once a year since 1958, says he, too, has become a pessimist.Most Japanese still have a comfortable life, he says, but the political system is “an absolute mess,” juggling prime ministers almost every year. The youngest generation, its expectations sapped by years of deflation, “doesn’t have the excitement about doing things better.”

Even the promise of lifetime employment and tight cooperation between government and corporations has backfired, leaving a bureaucracy-enforced status quo that makes it hard for established companies to reform and for smaller, more creative companies to emerge.

“What I did not foresee is that the slowdown would be such a challenge — that many of the things that worked so well on the way up . . . would be so difficult on the way down,” Vogel said.

Vogel, still a professor emeritus at Harvard, says he has switched his focus in the past five years to China.

参考までに。。。文明の衰亡について

悲観論ばかりではアレなので、日本が再生する方略を考えてみました。