Japan Looking Forward

Located at the confluence of several major tectonic plates, Japan gets earthquakes. Being the most homogenous industrialized society on Earth, Japanese culture is more susceptible to cultural seismic shifts as well. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 is often cited as one such shift in Japan's history.

Many historians point to the Kanto Earthquake as the moment where necessity catalyzed massive modernization of infrastructure and industrialization, and with it, the Japanese nationalism responsible for their participation in the Second World War.

Pan-societal tragic events are a major theme of the past century of Japanese history. No living generation has escaped the horrors of war, natural, and nuclear disaster. At each turn, Japan's social cohesiveness has allowed the nation to bounce back, and even to capitalize on such moments.

In the US, different elements of society react to tragedy in different ways. After 9/11, some people became more nationalistic and inward-focused, while others saw that moment as a call to embrace Western pluralism. The cultural changes resulting out of tragedy are often canceled out by opposing forces in American society. Japan's history of uniform reactions to tragedy can manifest themselves as in unimaginably good and bad ways.

But this time for Japan, it is uniformity itself that will have to change. To rebuild, Japan will need foreign labor and capital. In a global economy, Japan cannot afford to mobilize its own citizens to clear debris and pour concrete. Second, Japanese debt levels, largely sustained by their own citizens' investments in national bonds, cannot continue.

Pressures on the national budget in health and pensions were bad enough before the disaster. Now more than ever, Japan must retain its comparative advantage in capital-intensive markets like electronics and pharmaceuticals if it is to have any economic future. East Asia stands ready with boundless human resources primed to work on infrastructural recovery. East Asia is also a vast market for services that an educated, outward-looking Japanese workforce can and should provide. After centuries of fairly justifiable animosity towards Japan, China's eagerness to offer assistance is a leading indicator of how Japan's relationship with its neighbors is about to change.

If an aging workforce, debt, and economic pressure were not good reasons to trigger social change, this moment is. The very characteristic that has been responsible for the nation's dynamism is now a major long-term threat to their prosperity. This time, Japan cannot do it on their own. Japan needs diversity, and not just to repair itself, but also to rejuvenate itself, and to open new markets to new products.

Japanese society will never be the same again.