I. Shenwu Jingqi
In 1974, an old man named Gu Zhun was lying on his deathbed, and after a lifetime of working in the economy, he knew that his days were numbered, and said to his student Wu Jinglian, who was visiting him, "You have to believe that China's 'Shenwu Jingqi' will surely come. "
Gu was referring to the first cycle of rapid economic growth in Japan after World War II.
1955, Japan has just come out of the shadow of the war, without the burden of armaments, Japan's full development of the economy, the state to guide the funds into the field of infrastructure, to promote the development of electric steam, transformation of the old pre-war industrial equipment, industrial and agricultural double line take off, industrial growth rate of even more than 90%, the Japanese economy appeared in the first big boom.
The Japanese media proudly proclaimed, "This is the best era since the founding of the country by Emperor Jimmu!"
Until the late 1970s, Japan continued to lead the world in economic growth. Japanese-made automobiles and household appliances swept the globe.
Particularly in 1973, the oil crisis, so that large-displacement U.S. car sales were cold, known for fuel-efficient Japanese cars to take advantage of the opportunity to capture the market, beat the U.S. local car companies are retreating, once a prosperous "Motor City," Detroit turned into a ghost town.
Inside Japan, it was a different story: a solid industrial chain was formed in the coastal cities, with strong productivity exporting production capacity to the world, and even the poorest island of Shikoku saw the emergence of a cluster of cities engaged in foreign trade.
Japanese students studying in the United States have regained their self-confidence, and they are not looking forward to the riches of American life, but to graduating soon and returning to their home country to start their own businesses.
Mr. Masayoshi Son, who founded Japan's SoftBank Group and was also studying in the United States at the time, said, "When I stayed in the U.S., I didn't care about academic performance, but I was more concerned about emerging industries in the U.S., which are opportunities for me to return to Japan to start my own business."
On the other hand, Yasushi Miejono graduated from the law faculty of the University of the East and joined the Bank of Japan.
Starting from the smallest planning bureau clerk, he worked his way up through the ranks, and after multiple experiences at headquarters and local levels, he joined the Bank of Japan's Supreme Council in 1978, becoming a core member in charge of Japan's economic development.
Two, the Americans struck
The Japanese and our Chinese are the same, are hard-working and enduring people, so that the nation as long as you give a little opportunity to rise.
Japan's post-war economic miracle, seriously harmed the interests of the "sovereign" Americans.
The collapse of the U.S. home appliance and automobile industries caused a lot of unemployed people, the unemployed marched to demand that the government solve the "Japanese problem", they wielded hammers and angrily smashed to the Japanese car, crying: "The United States was attacked by the second Pearl Harbor. "
In 1976, the U.S. Congress took the lead, passing the "Section 301" law, which stipulates that
If a foreign country's foreign trade policies or regulations infringe on U.S. interests, the United States can take unilateral action to impose sanctions without regard to WTO rules.
Japanese products bore the brunt of this, and the U.S. government immediately launched investigations into Japanese automobiles, electrical appliances, steel, telecommunications, semiconductors, and other areas, forcing a 25% tariff increase.
The U.S.-Japan trade deficit continued to grow, and by 1980, it had reached $36.4 billion. In the same year, Reagan, considered by the American people as their savior, was elected president.
Reagan's ass in the White House has not been sitting hot, IBM, AMD, Intel executives rushed into the office, "crying" Japan in the semiconductor industry on the "nonsense".
In the 1970s, the rise of electronic computers, semiconductors as the core technology of electronic computers by many powerful countries.
In 1974, the Japanese government launched the "ultra-large-scale integrated circuits program", lifting the country's efforts, convened a meeting of Fujitsu, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, etc., to integrate their resources to the semiconductor industry.
The efficiency of the Japanese united is very impressive, in 1980, Japanese companies have occupied 30% of the global semiconductor market.
The American high-tech company AMD suffered a huge loss of $11 million a year, and Intel was forced to lay off 2,000 workers -- the market was not competitive, and there was nothing we could do about it!
AMD and Intel executives painted a very scary picture to Reagan:
Semiconductor chip technology is the technology that will lead the future, and in the future, we will have to rely on these small chips to guide the missiles that we produce, and if we (AMD, Intel) go out of business, are Americans going to have to buy chips from the Japanese?
Reagan was scared out of his wits after hearing this, and immediately wielded the tariff stick, raising tariffs on Japanese electronics to 100%, and went even further in 1986, coercing the Japanese to give up the U.S. semiconductor market, with Japan still having to import 20% of U.S. semiconductors every year.
Three, the Plaza Accord
1980-1985, Reagan's administration, although on trade issues many times on Japan, but the trade deficit actually expanded from 36 billion to more than 150 billion.
In 1986, the Americans decided to solve the Japanese trade deficit problem once and for all. Lighthizer, a lawyer by training, came on the scene, and yes, he is also today the chief U.S. trade negotiator with China.
Lighthizer came to Japan at the head of an aggressive delegation. During the negotiations, the Japanese delegates were said to be mostly silent as they watched Lighthizer rattle off the U.S. position.
When he got excited, Lighthizer folded the documents filled with U.S. demands into a paper airplane and flew it to the side of the Japanese representative with a swoosh, got up and asked, "Yes or No?
The Japanese representative replied without hesitation, "Yes."
How can a country without full sovereignty say "No" when there are 60,000 U.S. soldiers stationed on the Japanese archipelago?
Japan acceded to all of the U.S. demands: it took the initiative to restrict exports, encourage imports, simplify customs procedures, and fully open its market to the United States.
September 1989, the United States and Germany, France, Britain, forced the Japanese to sign the infamous "Plaza Accord": the yen took the initiative to appreciate against the U.S. dollar, to reduce the pressure of the trade deficit.
Four, the miracle broke
"Plaza Agreement" after the rapid appreciation of the yen, the purchasing power greatly improved, the Japanese economy began to change from real to virtual, stocks, real estate, entertainment instead of manufacturing industry has become the hottest investment areas.
The Japanese stock market soared, with the average share price at 8,000 yen in 1983, swelling to 39,000 yen six years later.
This was when even big moms with no knowledge of stocks could win 500 percent of their profits by buying them, and the Japanese stock market accounted for 45 percent of the world's market capitalization!
Property was even crazier, with Tokyo land prices rising 23% year-on-year in 1987 and 65% in 1988. in 1989, the Japanese real estate bubble was blown up to 2,000 trillion yen, and the price of land in a single city of Tokyo could have bought the whole of the United States.
Japanese wages are surprisingly high, and while Tokyo prices are performing wildly, a ten-year salary is enough to pay the full price.
The Japanese buy 70 percent of the world's luxury goods, and the pleasure houses are crowded with white women coming from Western countries to work, intoxicated by foreign women as if it were a lifetime ago - 40 years ago it was the American soldiers strutting around with their arms around Japanese women, but now it's completely reversed.
Many senior members of the government saw the false economic prosperity, but no one wanted to talk about it. It wasn't until December 1989, when Yasushi Miejino became president of the Bank of Japan, that he realized it would be better to burst the bubble sooner rather than later, so that Japan could still lose less money.
Yasushi Mie began to raise the central bank benchmark interest rate, from 1% to 6%, coupled with the December 1989 U.S. troops in Iraq, the oil crisis broke out in January 1990, the Japanese stock market could not hold out any longer, the Nikkei plummeted by 70% in a month.
In 1991, real estate couldn't hold up either, and within six months, house prices collapsed, losing 70% of their market value - and didn't recover until 2019, with Tokyo house prices at 50% of their peak.
Yasushi Miejono's argument is that rather than wait for the bubble to burst for a "hard landing", it is better to take the initiative to burst the bubble for a "soft landing".
This kind of bravery is a characteristic of the Yamato people, who would rather commit harakiri than be beheaded by their enemies.
Fifth, and then build a "new Japan"
The stock market, the property market crash, the Japanese society did not appear to be in turmoil, although more than 30 years the economy has been in the same place, but is still the world's industrial powerhouse, the people also maintain the highest standard of living in Asia.
The reason for this is that the Japanese have a strong industrial base and a vast overseas market.
In the 19th century, the Americans opened the door, the Japanese sent a "Iwakura mission" to visit Europe and the United States, before and after the time of up to two years, a detailed study of the Western countries, the people's conditions, insight into the secrets of the West's power - industrialization.
Mr. Liang Qichao once described the world situation in the 19th century as "the Western powers dominating the world", which is true, and the Japanese found the know-how of the Western domination of the world, and began a vigorous industrialization process, and eventually transformed into Asia's first industrialized country.
The tragic war of resistance against Japan was a war in which our martyrs used flesh and blood to resist the attack of industrial mass murderers.
After the defeat, the industrial base was still there, and Japan shifted its military technology to civilian use, building a "new Japan" through trade.
Japan has the world's leading technological strength and industrial scale in automobiles, optical equipment, medical technology and high-precision machine tools. Honda's cars, Canon's cameras, and Sharp's robots have long been "in" the homes of ordinary people.
After the bursting of the bubble in the 1990s, Japan also through large-scale overseas investment, the transfer of funds to emerging markets (such as China, South Korea, Taiwan) and other places, and gained a staggering profit.
In 2017, Japan's net overseas assets were 1,000 trillion yen, ranking first in the world. Japan's overseas GDP is 1.5 times that of its home country!
Japan's land is limited, the power of capital is unlimited, Japanese capital has long penetrated the world, harvesting the dividends of the economic development of other countries, this is the second "new Japan".
These two "Japans" are the source of confidence for Mie Noyasu's decision to end the bubble economy and put Japan's economy back on a normal track.
After the end of the Japanese Miracle, the Japanese gave Yasushi Mishino the nickname "Heisei no Goki", which is not entirely derogatory in Japanese, but also has a meaning of bravery in it.