Tim Clark, Strategy Director of ION Global (a Japanese tech consultancy) on Japan and Alex Kerr’s book “Dogs & Demons”
Reprinted without permission from the Japan Internet Report, Spring 2002

Japan’s long, slow decline
At the most basic level, what is the key driver of economic growth?
The answer, according to some people who think very hard about these issues, is very simple: population growth.
About such things, I know little. I am but a humble value-added typist for an Asia-focused Internet professional services firm. But the logic makes sense to me. When there are more people, they need more food, clothing, shelter, automobiles and cellular telephones that play “You’ve Really Got Me” when they ring.
That’s why projections that Japan will start experiencing negative population growth within a few short years are worrisome. The nation’s economy has been sputtering for a dozen years, and long-term trends, including negative population growth and the rapid aging of the workforce, point toward more economic problems.
But there is far more to the story of Japan’s decline than simple economics. The decline I sense around me every day seems cultural and environmental as well. When I try to put my finger on exactly what it is, I remember the first day I landed here, back in February of 1984.
While riding the train into Utsunomiya, about 100 kilometers north of Tokyo, I was subconsciously struck, almost to the point of nausea, by the profound ugliness of the bleak, cemented-over urban landscape I was witnessing for the first time.
I hadn’t expected pristine temple-like homes with Zen gardens and tile roofs, but I was completely unprepared for the tenement-like, undifferentiated houses, jumbles of telephone wire, lack of greenery, cemented-over river banks, and what appeared to be outdoor signage policies that would make a U.S. strip mall look like a walkway to the Louvre.
The terrible incongruence between what I was seeing with my own eyes and my preconceived image of Japan as a technologically-advanced, yet nature-loving society was so great that I probably would have been thrown into ontological crisis had I consciously recognized the gaping disparity between reality and my preconceptions, particularly since I was fresh off the boat and committed to living here for at least a year.
Only slowly, over the years that followed, did I start to recognize the malaise and decline that was evident to my unaccepting mind even on that first day in Japan.
Since, and particularly over the last six months or so, I’ve been trying to piece together exactly what this decline is, and the reasons for it. Now comes an extraordinary, illuminating book that explains much: “Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan” by Alex Kerr. I strongly recommend this book to everyone who has more than a passing interest in Japan. The content is controversial, and Kerr may overstate some of his points, but his basic theses – among them that Japan’s economy is sustained by unnecessary, even destructive “make work” construction projects that have literally paved the nation with cement – are, in my view, spot on. Here’s a sample:

“At 80 trillion yen, the construction market in Japan is the largest in the world. Strange that in the dozens of books written about the Japanese economy in the past decades, it is hard to find even a paragraph pointing out the extent to which it depends on construction. And even fewer observers seem to have noticed the most interesting twist: that from an economic point of view the majority of the civil-engineering works do not address real needs. All those dams and bridges are built by the bureaucracy, for the bureaucracy, at public expense. Foreign experts may be fascinated by Sony and Mitsubishi, but construction is not a sexy topic for them, and they have largely ignored it. Here are the statistics: In the early 1990s, construction investment overall in Japan consumed 18.2 percent of the gross national product, versus 12.4 percent in the United Kingdom and only 8.5 percent in the United States. Japan spent about 8 percent of its GDP on public works (versus 2 percent in the United States – proportionally four times more). By 2000 it was estimated that Japan was spending about 9 percent of its GDP on public works (versus only 1 percent in United States): in a decade, the share of GDP devoted to public works had risen to nearly ten times that of the United States. What these numbers tell us is that the construction market is drastically out of line with that of other developed countries. The situation is completely artificial, for government subsidy, not real infrastructure needs, has bloated the industry to its present size.”

Kerr goes on to point out the incentives that have kept this construction machine rolling for more than 40 years:

“Construction ministry bureaucrats share in the takings at various levels: in office, they skim profits through agencies they own, and to which they award lucrative contracts with no bidding; after retirement they take up sinecures in private firms whose pay packages to ex-bureaucrats can amount to millions of dollars… The secret behind the malaise of the Japanese economy in the 1990s is hidden in these numbers, for the millions of jobs supported by construction are not jobs created by real growth but “make work,” paid for by government handouts. These are filled by people who could have been employed in services, software, and other advanced industries.”

Kerr convincingly demonstrates the cultural and environmental impact of Japan’s construction-driven “modernization” and “prosperity” policies, and the social and emotional malaise resulting there from. As Andrew Nagorsky says, “Much of this book is provocative, and deliberately so – but Dogs and Demons is a product of tough love.” Like Kerr, I love Japan, and this will always be my second home. It is a place that still has much beauty. In detailing the sad reasons behind Japan’s long, slow decline, this book challenges all who care about this country to consider what the remedies might be.

More reviews on Kerr’s book:
NYTimes Review of books
First chapter of “Dogs & Demons”
Asian Review of Books
Christian Science Monitor
A review by Eugene Woodbury (I don’t know who this is.)
Other related links
Japan: A Case Study for a New Millennium Depression by Peter McKillop
Re-Establishing Japan’s Reform by Sir Hugh Cortazzi, The former English Ambassador to Japan

Wired: Cute Inc. Dec. 1999
I have asked Yamaguchi why so many cute Japanese characters have no mouth. At Sanrio alone, the muted legions include Hello Kitty, Pochacco, Cathy the bunny, Nutz, Chococat, and Cookie-Bau. Might this fit in with the helpless aspect of kawaii? If submissiveness is part of the appeal of cute, what better than to have no mouth at all?
“Kitty has a mouth,” Yamaguchi states flatly. Spread open on the table is an issue of the glossy magazine/catalog Kitty Goods Collection. I look again: The damn cat has no mouth.
“It’s hidden in the fur,” Yamaguchi insists.
“But -”
“She has one.”
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NYT: In Guatemala, a Rhode Island-Size Jade Lode
The exact locations of the outcroppings are not being given, to protect them. Leading archaeologists in Guatemala, though not directly involved, are applauding the finds. Héctor Escobedo of the Universidad del Valle called the jade discovery “one of the most significant” in decades of investigating the Mayan past and said the new deposits probably account for “all of the sources for Mesoamerican jades.”
This is so cool. Can you imagine being one of these archaeologists and finding this 3 years ago?
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NYT: Divers Discover Maya Relics in Caves That Became Rivers
By far the largest of the submerged river systems is called Ox Bel Ha (pronounced OHSH bel hah; the name is Mayan for “three paths of water). Its labyrinthine passageways, an estimated 200 miles, wind their way underground within a triangle, embraced on the surface by the resort city of Cancún, the late classic Maya coastal trading center of Tulúm and the inland classic Maya site of Cobá.
We visited Coba on our Yucatan trip. We stayed at a cheap diver’s motel in Tulum where these cave divers generally stay. I think it’s really cool what they’re doing but cave diving is generally considered one of the most dangerous sports.
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NYT: How About Lunch, Dear? Bring Everyone
But the truth is, it’s surprising how little you do need to do to make everyone, including yourself, relax. Believe me, there are ways of inviting your friends over, even en masse, without hating them for having the brutal inconsideration to take you up on your hospitality. Make it lunch, make it light, and make them work.
I’ve never seen Nigella’s show since I don’t own a TV, but I think I would enjoy it more than any other cooking show. She seems to be pretty down-to-earth and sensible. I don’t want a “personality” showing me how to cook.

THE TOP 100 VIDEO GAME ENGRISH OF ALL TIME
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LAT: Mother Love and the Bento Box
As time went on, I reacquired my taste for Japanese food. I would find out what other people had brought to school for bento and report back to my mother. There was a boy in class who didn’t have a mother. Every day his father would fix him a gigantic rice ball wrapped in seaweed; it looked like a shotput. The ball and three dried sardines were thrown together in a plastic bag. I would watch him eat the rice ball out of the corner of my eye. I grew to like this boy because he never seemed to mind or to envy other people’s fancy bento. He just ate his rice ball and the three sardines from head to tail.
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LAT: An Earlier Warning
This onset is much earlier than in previous generations: Malignancies once thought to take 20 to 30 years to become noticeable are being removed from the faces, backs and necks of what one dermatologist described as “remarkably young” patients.
I burned myself in Mexico for the first time in decades. I do remember getting a lot of sun as a kid, but I’m Asian so I think I am a bit better adapted for sunshine than the pale white actress in the news article.