Debt and Denunciation in Post-bubble Japan: On the Two Freeters

The IMF Occupation of Japan

Japan's third-largest weekly magazine, Shûkan Shinchô, published its 2005 annual summer vacation issue on June 30 with the theme "near-future Japan"—shinmirai Nihon. In past summer vacation specials, the celebrity-focused weekly tended to feature consumerist topics more appropriate to kick off summer vacations in the former center of postmodern capitalism. For example, its 2004 theme was "cool Okinawa," which was pitched as the new groovy vacation spot for twentysomethings with disposable wealth: "Your parents forced (kyôsei shita) you to go to Hawai'i when you were a kid. Now go on the kind of vacation more suitable for your hipper lifestyle." This made it all the more surprising to find out that the theme of near-future Japan would have nothing at all to do with the sex, fashion, and travel predilections of beautiful celebrities and powerful politicians. Like the plots of much Japanese commercial animation, Shûkan Shinchô's 2005 theme was apocalypse or, to be more precise, apoco-ellipsis—one apocalypse trailing off into the next.

Referencing the bestselling 2005 book by the economic journalist Moriki Akira, Nisen hachinen IMF senryō (The IMF Occupation of Japan, 2008),¹ the magazine's introduction begins with a rhetorical question: Can things get much worse for Japan? (2) and then enumerates the myriad ways the socioeconomic situation in Japan, having been mired in recession and crisis for more than a decade, already qualifies as an apocalypse—with more to follow. The first is the much-commented-on population crisis, a type of inverted Malthusianism. Although classical Malthusianism assumed constant population increases in "civilized" nation-states, Japan leads the trend among advanced, postindustrial societies to decrease its population. Accordingly, Shûkan Shinchô states that the average number of births per Japanese female is 1.28, the lowest in the developed world.

The effects of the 1.28 birthrate are presumed to be multiple. The collapsed real estate market will deteriorate even further. Domestic and international consumption will necessarily fall as a percentage of gross national product (GNP). However, the most important effect of the declining birthrate will be the way it strains the retirement pension system (nenkin seidô). As the Japanese baby boom began in 1946 and 1947 and the corporate retirement age in Japan is sixty, 2006 will supposedly mark the beginning of an apocalyptic drop in the ratio of workers to pensioners. "At no time in the past have so many people been born together and at no point in the future will so many people turn sixty together" (21). The magazine tells its readers that in 2005 there are four workers for each retiree. At the present rate of population decline, the ratio of workers to retired pensioners in 2050 will be 1.5 to 1, "maybe even 1 to 1" (21). "The impact on society," claims an unnamed expert, "is incalculable." Shûkan Shinchô informs its readers that the consequences of a situation where one young worker must pay for one retired person will be intergenerational conflict making the pitched street battles of the 1960s seem like a family softball game. It will be difficult for Japanese to avoid a historically unprecedented shift from the so-called Japan Inc. of the 1980s (where the synecdoche for the Japanese nation-state was an abbreviation for a capitalist corporation: Inc.) to what I will call a "Japan Shrink" of the 2010s and 2020s.

This economic reality will lead to another apocalypse in 2008, when major payments on the massive government debt come due. Shûkan Shinchô reminds its readers that the developed world has never before seen as high a percentage of government debt to GNP; its $6.2 trillion represents 150 percent of Japan's GNP. Building on the inverted Malthusianism of Japan Shrink, 2009 is deemed the year of the "idiot student" (baka daigakusei) because the approximately seven hundred thousand places in Japan's universities and colleges will exactly match the number of applicants. The system won't have the luxury to turn even one prospective student away; any "idiot...