Japan was never normal – and it’s not going to be now
The Liberal Democratic Party needs to rethink decades of small-business policy for an era of far bigger problems.
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Comments by politician Ryosei Akazawa may imply that Japanese capitalism needs an overhaul, but the writer argues that thinking in “new normals” is the wrong way to form business policy for Japan, whose history resists many definitions of normality.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Leo Lewis
To lose one century-old, Sendai-area producer of leaf-shaped sasakamaboko fishcakes may be considered a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness. Lose three in quick succession, as Japan has done in the past 12 months, and people start talking about a “new normal”.
But should they? If ever there were a moment for Japan, for those that engage with it and those that invest in it, to embrace the certainty of a new abnormal, that time is surely now.