Distributing Cures To The Developing World: Japan's Barrier Breaking Global Health Coalition

You won’t hear of a Walk for Chagas Disease. There is no Leprosy Awareness Month. Malaria is the distant scourge of adventurers and jungle explorers.

While almost relics of a bygone time to many in the first world, these diseases nonetheless continue to wreak havoc in impoverished communities throughout the world. Back in April, the Japanese government took a giant step toward addressing this issue by establishing the Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (GHIT) in conjunction with various domestic pharmaceutical companies and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Global health coalitions are nothing new. What sets the GHIT apart is its merging of the public and private sectors in an effort to bring the theoretical realm of drugs and technologies together with the more practical world of implementation and deployment. In doing so, it aims, in part, to provide a model for pharmaceutical companies seeking to expand their business abroad.

As Kiyoshi Kurokawa, one of the speakers at today’s Japan Society event, GHIT Fund: Unlocking the Secret of Global Health Victories, explains, “Japanese pharmaceutical companies… now see R&D partnerships for global health as another way for them to become more engaged with the world.”

We covered global-minded Japanese entrepreneurs in a previous post. Just as companies like LIXIL and UNIQLO view overseas markets as being necessary not just for growth, but, indeed, for survival in the current economic climate, pharmaceutical companies must see the value in cooperating with organizations like the GHIT in order to remain viable.

Using funding from the government and other sources, including about $60 million dollars over the past five years from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the GHIT stands in a prime position to not only develop new technologies to combat disease, but also to successfully bring these technologies to the people who need them. It is this latter stage of the battle, implementation and deployment, rather than the development of drugs themselves that often poses the greatest challenge.

Take the fight against malaria as an example. Given the changing nature of the disease, efforts toward prevention and treatment have taken a multi-pronged approach, including the development of anti-malarial drugs, insecticidal sprays, and even a mosquito-zapping laser. However, it has been the simple mosquito net more than any other tool that has become the spokesperson for the global health campaign.

First-world nations can be guilty of touting simplistic solutions to complex problems in the developing world. Just a year ago, the long battle to bring Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony to justice became tantalizingly winnable by dint of merely watching and re-posting/blogging/tweeting a video. 3.7 million people suddenly became crusaders against Kony. In the case of malaria, the tagline became Send a Net. Save a Life, as seen on the page of Nothing But Nets, an offshoot of the United Nations Foundation aimed at “ending malaria deaths in this generation.”

While organizations such as Nothing But Nets could be said to be engaging the first world the only way they can, the results of these efforts have proven mixed. The nets themselves are susceptible to wear and tear, and, being treated with the same class of insecticide, they have a limited shelf life as mosquitoes develop resistance. And that’s only the nets that do get used. Many do not, or at least, not for their intended purpose; several news outlets have documented cases of nets being used to catch fish or as wedding veils.

As such, the eradication of diseases, especially those affecting the poor throughout the world, will require more than research funding. Ann M. Veneman, a GHIT Fund Board Member and one of the speakers at today’s event, will discuss what she sees as an opportunity for pharmaceutical companies to partner with organizations that might have a better understanding of regional issues with deployment, be they logistics or education.

Global health cannot and should not work in a vacuum wherein drugs developed in one country never leave its shores, or where a promising new drug is developed without regard to its distribution and affordability. Kurokawa himself of the GHIT credits America for providing Japan with the means to combat tuberculosis, which he contracted as a child. With the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the founders of the GHIT, introducing companies in the private sector to a model for product development, one that calls for action on the basis of simple business sense, those diseases that we see as myth could one day become just that.

--Andres Oliver

Once a Thing of the West, These Dishes Are Now As Japanese As Sushi

Mmm: Matcha Marble Castella Cake (plus recipe)! Via.

Few bite into a Taco Bell burrito under the impression they are enjoying an authentic Mexican dish. McDonald’s fries do little to suggest French cuisine. And that California Roll next to the seaweed salad? Need anyone say it: not Japanese.

The U.S. has elevated the Americanization of foreign food to almost an art, with grocery aisles and fast food chains its most enthusiastic exhibitors. Yet many might be surprise that an equally thorough appropriation of Western food has been taking place half a world away.

Japanese versions of Western dishes have been around for over a century, making up a cuisine known as yōshoku, or “Western food.” Arguably the most famous of these adaptations is Japanese curry. This week at Japan Society, culinary writer Harris Salat and Chef Tadashi Ono delve into the history and varieties of the dish with examples from their book, Japanese Soul Cooking.

In addition to curry, yōshoku covers a variety of foods, with everything from Portuguese cakes to Italian pasta. Below we take a look at three standouts from this branch of Japanese cuisine.

Castella


Purportedly introduced to Japan by Portuguese traders in the 16th century, castella has become a staple of both dessert and omiyage, or gift-giving, culture. One can see why: not overly sweet, unlike many Western confections; packed in a rectangular box, allowing for small bites. The Japanese have even added their own touch to the dessert, which originally called for only a simple mixture of flour, sugar, and eggs. Castella fans can now enjoy varieties in chocolate, cheese, and matcha (green tea), among other ingredients. Especially popular is the castella of Nagasaki, where the Portuguese would have conducted the bulk of their trade several centuries ago.

Oddly enough, “there is no actual cake called castella in Portugal,” writes the Japan Times. In an article on the dessert, they discuss how Paulo Duarte, a Portuguese native who studied how to make castella in Nagasaki, and his wife Tomoko, a Japanese expert on traditional sweets, took it upon themselves to introduce castella into Lisbon. The wheel of history turns once more.

Naporitan

Sometimes a dish is so changed from the original as to appear heretical. Many Italians would surely think so upon hearing that Naporitan, a Japanese take on Italian pasta, uses ketchup as a sauce. As if this weren’t insult enough, the pasta is allowed to sit after cooking and then reheated. In the dichotomy of mortal and venial culinary sins, ketchup and reheated pasta surely fall into the former category.

Believed to have been invented in the postwar era at Yokohama’s Hotel New Grand, Naporitan reflects little of the place from which it takes its name; the pasta is soft and includes no seafood. That being said, the dish has become a staple of Japanese bento boxes and restaurants. As with castella, it took a group of non-natives to introduce the phenomenon to its purported country of origin. In 2012, the Nippon Naporitan Gakkai, or Japan Naporitan academic society, held a tasting in Naples. In a display of either true appreciation or a diplomatic touch, Mayor Luigi de Magistris graced the dish with a simple, “Good.”

Curry

In another ironic historical twist, Japanese curry owes more to a British take on the dish than to the original Indian staple. After a British company called C&B began manufacturing the Indian import garam masala, someone had the idea to combine it with Western roux. The result, a thicker curry than that of India, caught on quickly almost 200 years later in Meiji Japan. It even boasts its own political incident, the curry powder scandal of 1931, during which dealers were discovered to be selling low-grade domestic curry at prices comparable to that of the far finer C&B brand. The dish also became a favorite of the armed forces due to its being both nutritious and easy to prepare.

You can find curry rice and its variations at almost any casual dining establishment in Japan, and, increasingly, here in New York, with Curry House CoCo Ichibanya being one of the more famous places to focus on the dish. Customers have complete control over their choice of sides, portion size, and spiciness. With spiciness ranging from 0 to 10, those unable to handle even the slightest hint of heat should stick to amaguchi, something like sweet-mouth, while those with a death wish can try their taste buds at the highest level.

--Andres Oliver

Flirting With Japan, Donald Richie's Mistress Muse

Richie smitten in Tokyo in the 50s. Via.

Donald Richie, the noted critic of Japanese culture and film, compares the experience of the expatriate to a man in an affair. First, infatuation: everything is wonderful and new. Later, disgust: everything is terrible, no different from the place he left. At last, a middle ground: everything is no more wonderful or terrible than anywhere else.

But in Japan, Richie found his most enticing and enduring mistress. He made it his life’s work to chronicle her moods and caprices, but also her refinements—how good she looks on screen! he might have said—and her hidden charms.

On the occasion of Japan Society's ongoing film series tribute to Donald Richie, who passed away earlier this year, we take a look at three of his most well-known works on his chosen muse: The Inland Sea, a not-quite-travel-book; The Japan Journals, a frank record of friendships, lovers, and insights spanning over half a century; and A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, Richie’s definitive take on the cinema and its masters that he so loved.

The Inland Sea

Donald Richie takes up the mantle of noted 19th century Japan enthusiast Lafcadio Hearn as he goes in search of a fading Japan in The Inland Sea. Like Hearn, who wrote his Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan while in the "provincial backwater" of Shimane Prefecture, Richie takes his search not to Tokyo, already a glittering hubbub in the late 60s when Richie was composing the book, nor to Osaka, its eccentric Southern cousin. Rather, he turns to the Seto Naikai, the island-dotted "inland sea" that lies between the three main islands of Shikoku, Kyūshū, and Honshū.

If there is one word to describe Richie’s writing in this work, it is unapologetic. He doesn’t hesitate to pass judgment as an interested observer, with lines like: "High places excite the Japanese. Jumping from a height remains a favorite form of suicide," or "I know of no more people lacking the religious sense than [the Japanese].They love the rituals of religion in the same way they love the ritual of the tea ceremony…"

Yet, his is not the voice of a foreigner bemused by quirks. If Richie is sometimes seized by the incongruity between the natural and modern Japan, the former now almost a thing of myth, it is because he recognizes the same within himself.

The Inland Sea of ancient fishermen is fading. The islands pierced through by new bridges, Richie writes in the epilogue, one can no longer cross the sea by boat. Only by the no-stops, look-out-the-window bus, tour bus. But this is only "the prelude, the overture." This leg done, he turns south.

My search is for the real Japanese, the originals. The ur-Nihonjin. In this I am no to be put off by doubts, by fears, nor by such reasoned observations as that private remark by one of the most popular writers on Japan: The soul of the Japanese is like the heart of the onion; you peel off layer after layer, then expectantly, hopefully, you peel more, finally you reach the center, the heart, the core: the onion has none.

Somewhere—somewhere near the sea, I believe—I will find them: the people the Japanese ought to be, the people they once were.

The Japan Journals

In 1970, a year before the publication of The Inland Sea, Richie was asked by the Japan Times to write a piece on the death of Yukio Mishima, a man with whom he had enjoyed a long friendship. In an essay on the subject that would draw on previous entries from his own journal, Richie writes of a conversation with the author:

'Japan,' I remember his [Mishima] saying, last summer, ‘Japan is gone, vanished disappeared.’

‘Is there no way to save it?’ I wondered. ‘No,’ he said, ‘there is nothing left to save.’

Richie never stops saving. In over half a century of not-quite-daily or even yearly entries, faithfully edited by Leza Lowitz from Richie’s journals, we see a man eager to make sense not so much of that place called Japan that he made his home but of himself. Richie writes with wit—de-worming, and its ensuing digestive calamities, becomes a metaphor for the American Occupation—heart, and the occasional doubt.

An outsider to both Japan and America, Richie becomes an in for the giants of both. He goes to the gym with Mishima and takes him to visit "every Saint Sebastian hanging in New York" (read Confessions of a Mask for the reference). Gone to greet Truman Capote at the Tokyo airport, Richie is met with a dour, "All I can say is that you certainly wouldn’t know they’d lost the war."

Most often the observer, Richie grants us a look behind the curtain: liaisons with men, a troubled marriage, a romantic sensibility (crowds in Shinjuku like "Edo street scenes of Hokusai").

In The Japan Journals, Richie stands shoulder to shoulder with giants, and sees keenly.

One of those days. I run off the track. I can see, when I look back, the plodding footprints in the desert behind me. Just where do I think I am going? Here I am a novelist who writes few novels, a critic who usually can’t even criticize himself, a husband who prefers sleeping with men. Yet, somehow all those unwritten novels were supposed to appear; my criticism was to strike every target; and marriage was to save me. But no, not at all—and marriage is killing me.

The reluctance to find oneself—the evasions. And the burden of it. No wonder I wanted someone to share it. But one does not drop one’s history any more than does the plodding turtle drop its shell."

A Hundred Years of Japanese Film

Neophytes to the world of Japanese cinema, even those familiar with contemporary masters like Hayao Miyazaki and Takeshi Kitano, can do no better than Richie’s Hundred Years of Japanese Film. In his sprawling, if selective, analysis, Richie takes us from the era of benshi, or silent film narrators, to the modern days of manga and anime (he even brings up Osamu Tezuka near the end). In the process, he not only introduces a variety of works and cinematic techniques but also provides some historical context behind the masterpieces.

In one section Richie discusses the differing ways in which filmmakers responded to calls for jingoistic propaganda during the war years. On one hand, Yamamoto Kajiro, mentor to Akira Kurosawa, went along wholesale with government policy in films like The War at Sea, which recreated the bombing of Pearl Harbor with such accuracy that Occupation authorities later mistook it for footage from the actual event. On the other, Yasujiro Ozu of Tokyo Story fame managed to please the censors while doing nothing to advance their agenda.

Ozu, as well as Kurosawa and Mizoguchi, feature prominently in Richie’s book. As a result, some have noted that "his history is largely the history of the studio A-list, and of the A-list studios," with Richie making no secret of his personal favorites. Then again, those who know him from The Inland Sea and other works will be unsurprised by his straightforward style, which, as always, makes no apologies for taste.

Kurosawa’s lack of accommodation to received ideas has allowed some Japanese critics to call him their ‘least Japanese’ director. The description is understandable in that he is ‘Western’ enough to be openly individual. Completely uninterested in the standard program film, and failing whenever he was forced to make one, he has gone beyond the accepted confines of cinematic language as the Japanese understood them and, in doing so, has broadened them. Consequently, perhaps, his films have been widely accepted in the West itself.

--Andres Oliver

Swallowing The "Disney Of Japan": Osamu Tezuka's Dark Descent

Tezuka's post-Astro Boy stamp of approval. Via.

The year was 1968. Faced with the end of Astro Boy’s run and declining sales, iconic Japanese animator and manga artist Osamu Tezuka, often called the "Walt Disney of Japan," realized he had to make a change or risk fading into irrelevance.

The result was anything but Disney.

Those who know Tezuka only as the smiling figure behind the likes of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion might be surprised to read some of his work from the late 60s and 70s, a period during which his study of the less savory and infinitely more complex side of humanity took him into a bleak realm of violence, passion, and alienation. 

Credited with establishing manga and anime as popular mediums in Japan, Osamu Tezuka (aka "God of Manga", "Godfather of Anime") established his career upon rich, largely kid-friendly stories like that of the not quite-human, not-quite-robot Astro Boy. In doing so he drew heavily upon Western sources, including Popeye, Betty Boop, and Disney’s own Bambi (Tezuka admitted to watching the film over 80 times in his youth). 

He also brought his own innovations to the medium. In Japanamerica, Roland Kelts, who appears at Japan Society this week to highlight some of Tezuka most influential works, describes Tezuka's frustration with the static nature of earlier comics, which “bore a greater resemblance to the staging of a play: one character enters stage left, exits stage right, and so on.” However, in manga such as Ayako and Swallowing the Earth, both highlights from Tezuka’s later years, we see a new and often disturbing contrast between his comic drawing style and increasingly adult themes.

Study in Black: Tezuka’s Gekiga Period

Today’s fans of Japanese manga and anime are likely to think little of commercialized violence. Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan), one of the most popular titles of 2013, shows no qualms about having its characters squashed, eaten, dismembered, and subjected to any number of physical and emotional torments. In the manga world of 1960s Japan, such graphic violence, even one of a far less extreme nature, was unheard of until artists working in a genre known a gekiga began to cater to darker tastes. Suddenly, manga went from being a childhood diversion to a mature exploration of society.

His once unshakeable base eroded by a generation of younger, edgier artists, Tezuka replied with Swallowing the Earth, a darkly comic tale excoriating the love of money that characterized postwar Japan, as well as the country’s troubled relation with the U.S.

It is telling that Tezuka’s hero in this story is a man who is able to avoid greed and temptation only through a singular pursuit of alcohol. In his essay "Dark Side of the Manga," Rob Vollmar of the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma describes the sometimes jarring relationship between Tezuka’s style and subject matter: “Tezuka retained a strange dichotomy in his work throughout his career, characterized by the juxtaposition of round, bouncy-looking figures engaged in progressively disturbing actions.”

A boozy, dizzying panel from Tezuka's Swallowing. Via.

While not remotely graphic or disturbing, the panels depicting Zephyrus, the enigmatic temptress out for revenge in Swallowing the Earth, nonetheless exemplify the development of a new sexual element that would grow progressively twisted—ingrown might be more to the point—as Tezuka plumbed the depths of human degeneracy.

Tezuka carried the theme of beautiful, amoral women to what could be called either its creative climax or its lowest point, depending on one’s view of his work, with the inarguably disturbing Ayako.

Ayako is kept in a cellar by her in-laws for over a decade after learning their family secret. While Jiro, the protagonist, provides an early glimmer of hope as the story’s redemptive element, his position as a spy for the Americans and his collusion in Ayako’s torment make him as guilty as any. Jiro and the rest of the cast signal Tezuka’s move away from a “dualistic worldview” of right and wrong. In shifting toward far darker and more adult themes, Tezuka carries the artistic baggage of his earlier years, resulting in an often unwieldy interplay between gags and an oppressive cynicism.

In his Japan Times review of the book, David Cozy uses the word "Naturalism" to describe Tezuka’s examination of moral corruption. The official website of Tezuka Productions calls the work a “social drama.” While these terms capture certain important aspects of the book, they fall short of conveying the full weight of Tezuka’s subject matter, not because Tezuka was the first to deal with family secrets and sexual violence—Fumiko Enchi’s Masks (1958) tackles both with mesmerizing narrative efficiency—or even with the legacy of evil in the postwar era, but because in Ayako and other works of the decade we see the man responsible for creating one of Japan’s most beloved children’s characters scrape the bottom of the barrel of transgression. 

For all the darkness of Tezuka’s works during the late 60s and 70s, many view this era in the artist’s life as a stage in his development, the same way scholars place Picasso’s early 20th-century paintings under the category of the Blue Period. This is not to say that Tezuka’s thematic and stylistic experimentations amount to nothing more than a passing whim. While Kelts makes note of Miyazaki’s opinion that “Tezuka took the themes of death and loss far too lightly,” both Susanne Phillipps and Vollmar argue that Tezuka’s gekiga titles served a key role in his growth as an animator.

“Far from allowing himself to be consumed by his disappointment and disapproval of his nation,” Vollmar writes, “Tezuka’s scope expanded to a more global perspective that allowed him to conceive of these shortcomings as human rather than specifically Japanese.” Meanwhile, Phillipps cites Tezuka’s transition toward a more realistic, anatomically correct drawing style as evidence of his maturation.

“Disney of Japan” indeed. While the comparison might, at best, give the uninitiated a small idea of the scope and influence of Tezuka’s work, those hoping to delve into his work should bring a flashlight; it’s going to get dark.

--Andres Oliver 

Thumper Bumper: Tezuka's epic, eight volume Buddha begins with a woodland creature's sacrificial self-immolation. Via.

Media Watch Japan: 'Celibacy Syndrome' And The Spectre of 'Herbivore Men'

An Osamu Tezuka-drawn crowd flees the latest trend.

Every couple of years (or even mere months) the mainstream media cycles a sensationalist Japanese trend piece usually linked to population, sex, food or fashion, highlighting Japan's "bizarre extremes", or, more underhandedly, perceived corruptions of American or Western normalcy.

Top of the recent "trends" were the perennial pop-up Herbivore Men. The rash of grass feeding fellas stole the world's heart-on from about 2006 to 2011, representing, in the words of Slate, the "nexus between two of the biggest challenges facing Japanese society: the declining birth rate and anemic consumption". They shunned corporate life (Reuters), subverted manhood (NPR), and led the way in sexless love (Guardian).

Jezebel was one of the few outlets with a more balanced take on the phenomenon. They considered it "a kind of rebellion" (pointing out that "half the point of a trend piece is to record and perhaps stir up terror at the trend's inevitable destruction of society") and a means to buck stereotype and find another way to be "manly".

Sound[s] a lot like what's happening in America. The recession and dwindling job security have made certain male roles — provider, consumer, progenitor — more difficult to step into. In Japan, men are responding by rejecting those roles. Maybe rather than trying to return to a bygone era of buying and babies, Japan and America should accept a more frugal, perhaps smaller population and new definitions of success.

But the groundwork the boys of ambivalence laid towards sexless love gave them a cameo in Japan's latest "looming national catastrophe": Celibacy Syndrome.

"Young people in Japan stopped having sex," blared the Observer headline a couple of weeks ago. "Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex."

The 2500+ word exposé leads with commentary from a sex worker-turned-therapist and weaves in testimony from disaffected locals, as well as pretty much every alarmist birthrate/demographic data point and relationship/intimacy study from the last few years.

As usual the media pickup/reuse/recycle came immediately and with gusto. TIME précised the more shocking figures and examples--the only original contribution an East v. West platitude: "with all our millennial whining about casual hookups and online dating, we might not have it so bad". The Washington Post goes so far as to say the trend is "endangering the global economy" (hm, just like hipster beards?) The BBC dredged up Japan's dreaded virtual girlfriends, asking if perhaps the whole lack of shebang is Japan's inimitable way of dealing with global overpopulation, or (there's often an "or" in these stories) "is it just time for Japanese men to grow up, have more sex and make more babies?" In one of the strangest spins, New York magazine posits that Japan's new "national crisis" stems from romantic trips to a parasite museum.

Though spotlighting the "bizarre demographic chill [that] has stolen over the Land of the Rising Sun", Slate's reaction added a little nuance to the story, touching on the inherent singlehood bashing:

Maybe Japanese young people are pioneering a deeply satisfying lifestyle in which love and sex have receded into the background—and the trade-off makes them perfectly happy. … Rates of psychological illness in Japan and the United States are comparable: 24 percent of Japanese adults and 25 percent of American adults have suffered some sort of mental health problem. So could a collective bias against singlehood be warping the way we see celibacy syndrome? Is it really a syndrome, or just an alternate (convenient, culturally exigent) mode of being? I find the notion of an intimacy-starved society as depressing as anyone, but maybe those are my reactionary, Jane Austen–informed values talking. At the very least, Japan’s new status quo might remove some of the stigma from living alone."

In a separate article, Slate was one of the first major outlets to directly say "no, Japanese people haven’t given up on sex", showing the spin tide had turned to balance itself. Bloomberg took the second wave further, noting that much of the data for these types of stories is "cherry picked" and the result of foreign journalists "traipsing into 'exotic Japan' and getting lost in a forest of stereotypes, fuzzy data and tarted-up headlines", but then they recontextualize the population problem as stemming from Japan's "exorbitant living costs, elevated stress and diminished confidence".

Finally, a full week after the Observer article, the UK Independent nailed the bigger issue: "These stories gain traction because they support a view of east Asia which is at best patronising and at worst overtly racist…"

as if to remind us what a disturbingly odd place Japan is, an alarming Japanese news story explodes online. Western media outlets clamber over each other in their haste to cover the story, with every report of bagel heads, snail facials or ritual head shaving [see also elder crime, cat cafés, monkey waiters, 'crazy' foods and flavors (esp. Kit Kats), virtual girlfriend/boyfriends, pillow paramours, odor-eating underpants, etc. --ed.] being used as further evidence of a unique Japanese weirdness. A lack of understanding (and, sometimes, basic fact-checking) means that entire stories are lifted, often without critique, and churned into dubious clickbait. Earlier this year, widespread coverage of a supposed eyeball-licking epidemic among Japanese teens that turned out to be a hoax left more than a few editors red-faced.

More urgent problems in Japan that don't get as robust coverage as sexcapades (or lack thereof): shut-ins, tragically high suicide rates, a nuclear crisis two and a half years ongoing,  flaring tensions in Southeast Asia.

Of course, there are broader (and more real) issues with Japan's population, from sex and fertility rates to demographic disparity. But while trends consistently point downward, a point only briefly touched on in the recent media maelstrom is that there is as much too much population as there is too little space.

Japan and the U.S are among the world's top 10 most populous countries, with some 320 million people in the U.S. and 128 million in Japan. In terms of pure landmass, it's well known that Japan would fit into Montana, or about 90% of California. But when comparing the difference in densities (Japan's 873 people per square mile to America's 90) to understand Japan's situation, the entire U.S. population would need to be squeezed into the states of California, Arizona and Nevada. Or, looked at another way, the U.S. would need grow nearly three hundred times to 900 million.

Given the island nation's land lack, a little population leveling may be natural. But how much, what's the precedence, are there ways to expand without zapping limited resources? These are stories that could be written with some depth (the Indepdent points out that the World Bank lists 15 countries that have fertility rates equal to or below that of Japan, including economic powerhouse Germany). And what about a non-faith based celibacy positive article or a 2500+ word exposé on the thrills and tribulations of choosing to be single?

Until then, the fear of sexlessness sells as much as sex, it seems, and we'll have to wait to see the headline:

Japanese People Have Sex, And If They Don't That's Okay Too

--Shannon Jowett

Vessel Across Time: Mariko Mori's Jōmon Jump

Sister Cisterns: Mori's Flatstone (right) mirrors a kaen-doki from 3,500–2,500 BCE.

She wears all white and a calm smile. Somewhere in her artistic wanderings, she’s traveled the universe. Seen black holes and white holes. Watched stars be born and die, spilling their insides onto the canvas of space.

Not what you’d expect from someone reaching back sixteen millennia in her art.

In her recently opened solo exhibition Rebirth, Mariko Mori combines a range of styles and beliefs: New Age spirituality, technological futurism, a little Buddhism, Shinto influences. Some will have no trouble tapping into the show’s meditative wavelength and sense of renewal. Others might get lost in the exhaust of complexity and primal energies. What no one can deny is the presence of the ancient, brought to light in 2013 from the memory of Jōmon.

Best known for their stone circles and intricate pottery, the people of Jōmon Japan lived roughly between 14,000 and 300 B.C.E. They were, as far as we can tell, the first to “[master] the technology of transforming pliable clay into hard and durable containers,” with contemporary scholarly debate centered on the practical and artistic relevance of these artifacts, according to Junko Habu's Ancient Jomon of Japan.

Mori began her study of the period with fieldwork at Jōmon archaeological sites like Ōyu, Sannai Maruyama, and Miwayama, home to several of the stone circles and spherical stones that have remained intact through the millennia. From this fieldwork, in addition to collaboration with Chief Curator at Aomori Museum of Art, Iida Takayo, came the initial exhibition, Mariko Mori Jōmon: The Fossil of Light “Transcircle” Exhibition, that prepared the way for the artist's current Rebirth.

Mori's Flatstone leads to Transcircle 1.1.

Merely viewing the separate pieces in Mori’s exhibit may puzzle some visitors. After all, a 5,000-year-old Jōmon vase and the LED-powered monoliths of Transcircle 1.1 don’t exactly seem like bedfellows. It’s only after reading more about the people of prehistoric Japan that the connection is made.

The fact that the Jōmon era is named after the cord markings adorning the pottery gives one an idea of how much these artifacts have come to represent the beliefs, lifestyles, and history of an enigmatic people. All can agree to their importance, but this is where the consensus ends. Whether the pots were used in religious ritual as an embodiment of animistic belief, or they are the tools of a society of hunter-gatherers is a matter of great debate. If the latter—and recent studies suggest the pots may have been used to store fish—it would upend the idea that clay pottery was impractical for a people constantly on the move. Then again, it takes no great effort of the imagination to see the designs as the “ripples and eddies on the surfaces of the salmon-rich river,” as Iida Takayo describes them, rather than the flames from which the pots, or kaen-doki, take their name.

Jōmon stone figurines and monoliths have proven equally difficult to explain. While some dogū, or figurines, call to mind the famous “Venus” figurines of Paleolithic Europe and Asia—both types emphasize the hips and breasts, suggesting ties to fertility—others defy classification. These oddities feature a combination of human and animal features, such as dogū with horns or a cat head. Some hold a secret inside; one figure discovered in Nagashiki, Kanagawa Prefecture, contained bone particles and teeth from a child.

Writing on the topic of dogū in 1974, Johannes Maringer traced a connection between the figurines and the Jōmon peoples’ belief in animals as “epiphanies of higher beings.” Other artifacts help us approach an idea of the Jōmon religious worldview. For example, Simon Kaner argues that the arrangement of bodies in burial grounds at Sannai Maruyama, one of the largest Jōmon settlements ever unearthed, suggests both a belief in the afterlife and a kind of ancestor worship.

While some have theorized that Jōmon peoples’ overdependence on ritual contributed to their downfall against the rice-based Yayoi civilization, Kaner contends it was these very rituals that allowed their successful assimilation. After all, he says, at the core of Jōmon religious practice is a belief in the power of the individual to transform.

By combining Jōmon art styles with modern techniques—one of Mori’s pieces, Flatstone, features an acrylic recreation of an ancient Jōmon vase at its center—Mori sets to capture the fluidity of life, death, and inspiration. Those people of millennia past are not so much an interesting historical subject as a living pulse. “My body contains genes inherited from our earliest ancestors,” Mori says in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, “and those genes can produce a strong reaction when they try to arouse that special consciousness which slumbers deep within me.”

In his essay, Kaner cites Kobayashi Tatsuo and others as setting forth the theory that the people of Jōmon Japan may have used ritual not to assimilate into the Yayoi, as he himself believes, but to resist them and the revolutionary agricultural lifestyle they represented. The idea is particularly intriguing when we consider Mori and her artistic transformation over the last decade, from pointed critic of consumerism and the super-modern to student of both prehistoric and New Age spiritualism. You almost wonder if Mori isn’t using her own ritual, her art, to mount a largely silent resistance against the strange times in which we live.

--Andres Oliver

Photos(clockwise): kaen-doki flame-ware vase, Middle Jōmon period (3,500–2,500 BCE), Earthenware, 11 5/8 inches high, 11 5/8 inches diam, collection of John C. Weber; Mariko Mori's Flatstone (2006), ceramic stones and acrylic vase; 192 x 124 x 3 ½ inches, courtesy of SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Tokyo and Sean Kelly, New York; FOREGROUND: Flatstone, BACKGROUND: Transcircle 1.1, 2004. Stone, Corian, LED, real-time control system, 132 3/8 inches diam., each stone 43 3/8 × 22 1/4 × 13 1/2 inches, courtesy of The Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Installation photograph by Richard Goodbody.

A Brief History of Social Media In Japan

GREE, just one cloud in Japan's perfect SNS storm. 

The social media battle in Japan has all the uncertainty, the early call-ins and punditry of an electoral race.

(Cue Wolf Blitzer-like commentary:)

“I have some numbers coming in here… One second… Let’s see—yes, I’m seeing 13 million for Facebook. Just 13 million. And that’s got to be disappointing.”

“Mixi ahead with 17 million. The young demographic proving pivotal here.”

“Twitter going strong with 30 million.”

“LINE still leading with an impressive 40 million. We’re predicting LINE will take this contest.” 
And that’s not even including GREE and DeNA, two other SNS (social networking services) that have enjoyed varying levels of success in Japan.

Just take a look at the headlines from recent years:

Mixi Skyrockets in Stock Market Debut (2006) 

Mixi Faces Challenges as Competition Grows (2009) 

In Japan, Facebook Wins the Most Users (2012) 

Facebook Users in Japan Losing Interest and Heading for the Exits (2013) 

Everyone trying to avoid being the “also-ran” in this metaphor.

Of course, services like LINE and Twitter provide a messaging/microblogging platform rather than a counterpart to Facebook’s and Mixi’s more fleshed-out, app-loaded social networks. However, in light of LINE CEO Akira Morikawa’s determination to establish LINE worldwide through the addition of new features, as well as the fact that many users view Facebook and Twitter as an either-or, rather than as a both-and, one can make a case for viewing these companies as being in direct competition with one another.

LINE may still far outstrip its rivals at the moment, but given the wild swings that have taken place in the social media landscape, it pays to take another look at the evolution of different services in the Japanese market. The timeline below picks up at 2006, the year that Mixi—Japan's perennial SNS powerhouse until recently—made its stock market debut.

2006

• September: Mixi debuts on the Mothers market at the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Thirty year old founder Kenji Masahara becomes an instant success as the bidding price more than doubles the initial public offering price of ¥1.55 million. Combining the connectivity of Facebook (it will be another year before Facebook breaks out of the college student bubble) with the intimacy of a blogging platform, the site is invitation-only and requires a Japanese mobile mailing address.

• February: DeNA comes onto the scene with Mobage Town (now Mobage), which will eventually combine mobile games with social networking features.

2007

• Yoshikazu Tanaka, founder of GREE and Japan’s youngest billionaire, brings the company into social network gaming with the launch of Tsuri-Sta (Fishing Star). Branching out from an ad-based focus, GREE starts drawing revenue from mobile gaming.

2008

• June: Mark Zuckerberg takes the stage at Tokyo’s Ayoama Diamond Hall convention center to announce the launch of Facebook Japan. The SNS faces strong competition from Mixi, which boasts over 10 million users, including more than half of all people in their twenties.

• Twitter launches a Japanese version of its service, its first non-English release, in collaboration with Digital Garage. Digital Garage CEO Joichi Ito predicts the service will appeal to Japanese accustomed to “murmur[ing], a kind of short blogging thing.”

2009

• May: Mixi CEO Kenji Kasahara announces that the company will see its first decline in growth since going public, despite the service remaining Japan’s top SNS. Kasahara goes on to publicize his plan open Mixi’s mobile and PC platforms to third-party developers.

2010

• December: Japan’s Federal Trade Commission investigates DeNA on suspicion of blocking Gree’s access to game developers.

2011

• January: Facebook Japan’s growth stalls at 2 million users, compared to over 20 million each for Mixi, Gree, and DeNA’s Mobage Town. Some blame the low numbers on Japanese user’s reluctance to disclose personal information on the Web (most Mixi users use pseudonyms).

• March 11: On the day of the Tohoku earthquake, Tweets jump to 1.8 times the average, totaling 330 million. The microblogging service allows the public to stay informed of developments and counter government misinformation. In one instance, a group of Tokyo hackers take to Twitter to post their own Geiger counter readings.

• June: NHN Japan, a branch of the Korean NHN Corporation, launches its LINE smartphone app. Developed in the wake of the 3/11 disaster as a way for NHN employees to communicate despite toppled phone lines, LINE offers both messaging and social networking and allows users to send each other “stickers.”

• July: The recently rebranded Mobage makes its worldwide debut on the heels of Isao Moriyasu’s June appointment as president.

• August: Mixi unveils public pages for companies and individuals, including Disney Japan. As with public pages on Facebook, Mixi’s allow access without login information.

• November: Gree files a lawsuit against DeNA, claiming the company interfered with its business despite an earlier order to desist from the Federal Trade Commission.

• December 9: Japanese Twitter users rack up the highest number of tweets per second ever recorded during a broadcast of Hayao Miyazaki’s classic film, Castle in the Sky. Following a tradition begun on messaging board 2chan, users tweet “balse,” a magic spell spoken by the film’s protagonists, a whopping 25,088 times per second.

2012

• February: Data from Nielsen ranks Facebook number one for growth in unique visitors among Japan’s social networking services. The company’s success is attributed partly to its convenience as a job-hunting tool for young graduates and the popularity of 2010 film The Social Network.

• October: In a direct counter to messaging service LINE, DeNA rolls out Comm, a free messaging application with stamps and other features. Users are required to use their real name and date of birth.

2013

• January: LINE tops 100 million users only nineteen months after its debut, about a third of the time it took Facebook to reach the same number. CEO Akira Morikawa states his intention to expand into the U.S.

• April: Japan’s National Diet enacts a bill allowing political candidates to campaign online for the first time in history. The party of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hands out iPad minis to all its candidates to encourage them to promote on social media.

• April: GREE announces its first profit decline since going public in 2008. Growing numbers of smartphone subscribers—37 percent of all contracts as of March 31—and new games from Apple and Google begin to cut into GREE’s traditional social gaming base.

• September: According to a Reuters Asian markets data dump, LINE boasts 240 million users in 230 countries.

--Andres Oliver

A Star Is Reborn: Mariko Mori Expands Through Inner And Outer Space

White Hole shatters negative space and thoughts. Photo by Richard Goodbody.

When you Google Mariko Mori, you come face-to-face with images of a living doll—literally. The artist's 1994 piece Play With Me had her stationed outside a Tokyo toy store in anime-esque garb, with baby-blue pigtails and a plastic breastplate over a short, metallic dress. In another work from that year, Mori rode the subway in character as an alien visitor just arrived in Tokyo.

Today Japan Society Gallery launches Mori's first solo exhibition in New York in more than 10 years. A divergence from her work of centuries past (well, the 90s), Rebirth: Recent Work by Mariko Mori brings the focus on nature, conveying both its power and serenity.

The show “has a very urgent message about reconnecting with nature, which is not just an issue that’s being talked about by artists. It is a global concern right now,” says Dr. Miwako Tezuka, director of Japan Society Gallery, who curated the exhibition. “We’ve been experiencing such harsh weather. Everybody’s concerned about what’s going on with nature.”

Just a year ago this month, the brightest city in the world went dark for weeks when late-season Hurricane Sandy eliminated electricity from the bottom half of Manhattan. Polar bears swim for days. Mori’s home country will long feel the effects of the March 2011 tsunami.

While once Mariko Mori represented pop aesthetics and the subculture of Japan, her recent work has brought her back to basics: as in the beginning of it all.

“She’s going back to the roots," says Tezuka. "Not the cultural roots of Japan like she was doing before, but even farther back into a prehistoric period where there really were no cultural differences in the world. Where people didn’t have electricity or machines and really lived closely, intimately with nature.”

Unlike her past work, the pieces in Rebirth were born from Mori’s personal research, often from her travels to places like Egypt, Brazil, and Scotland, where so much ancient architecture still stands.

The show is full of light and shapes, a pale, shifting exhibition reminiscent of the sun rising over a young Earth again and again. Depending on one’s perspective, personal associations could range from the Book of Genesis to the opening sequence of Star Wars to whatever Terrence Malick’s been up to. Rare will be the attendee who doesn't spot Stonehenge.

The centerpiece of the show is an installation called White Hole (pictured above): the opposite of space's terrifying black holes of childhood fascination and nightmares. A domed enclosure built in the south gallery, White Hole starts as a pitch-dark space and gradually illuminates with the projection of swirling light.

Tezuka explains: “It’s based on the theory of a white hole--the antithesis of a black hole. Everything that was killed by the black hole shapes together as a renewed energy and emerges from the white hole. It’s an astrophysics theory that Mariko has been very interested in in recent years.”

Another celestial piece (though firmly fixed to the gallery floor) is Transcircle 1.1 Nine pillars made of stone and an industrial acrylic polymer synchronize with the position of the nine (yes, nine!) planets in our solar system. Their individual pastel colors pulsate at speeds reflecting the planets' orbits around the sun.

Rebirth is an ethereal picture of prehistory, astronomy, geology, ancient religion and technology, showing how they all mix in the world around us.

When asked how to sum up the show in a sentence, Tezuka said “pure” and then laughed, realizing she didn't need half a dozen more words to convey its Zen-like ambiance. “A lot of things are white”—Mori’s signature color—“and the basic concept is pure and simple: be aware of the presence of nature.”

Though the galleries proper are on the second floor, visitors will get a taste of this pure simplicity when they are greeted by Ring, hanging against the waterfall of the Society's indoor bamboo garden.

“Mariko placed it in an environment that symbolizes nature, where there’s water, earth, plants and light from above,” Tezuka says. The piece is a prototype for a large-scale version that will be hung above a Brazilian waterfall in the near future.

From sunset each evening through Sunday, Mori’s latest video work Ālaya lights up the building just above the Society’s entryway for not only gallery-goers but passersby on the busy streets outside. The title alludes to the fundamental consciousness all sentient beings share in Buddhist philosophy.

It’s worth coming in to escape the masses, as Tezuka notes: “New York life is so busy all the time. You are surrounded with noise and different crowds. Rebirth will calm you down. Instead of going to yoga, come see this exhibition!”

Rebirth: Recent Work by Mariko Mori is on view at Japan Society through January 12, 2014.

--Marisa Rindone

Mariko Mori's Ring. Photo by the author. Via.

Who Swings the Pendulum? Japan's Youth in the Pit

Once lonely at the top, Japan's elderly can expect company. Via.

Sexagenarians arrested for shoplifting. A population hardest hit by Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami. An August ministry report stating Japanese people aged 65 or older have surpassed 30 million for the first time. Japan is clearly experiencing a crisis among its elder demographic. But what of the youth, many of whom find themselves as vulnerable as their aging counterparts?

"Recall, for inspiration, that young people made the last Japanese Spring," a 2012 Japan Times article declares, citing youth participation in the Meiji Restoration as a counterexample to all the doom and gloom surrounding Japan's young. With Prime Minster Shinzo Abe unveiling a plan Tuesday for both a ¥5 trillion stimulus package and a 5 to 8 percent rise in the consumption tax, it is the 20-somethings as much as the elderly who must wait to see the real results of Abe's great experiment.

On the one hand, the sales tax could ultimately benefit both groups by mitigating runaway social security expenditures, a problem that a raise in the minimum age for collection of benefits to 61 earlier this year has apparently been unable to curb. On the other, the tax hike comes at a time when pensions earn "close to zero interest," with no rate increase planned for at least a few years, and when companies are reluctant to implement a much-needed increase in wages. In other words, both pensioners and younger workers stand to suffer from a rise in prices without a commensurate rise in income, whether in the form of social security or wages.

While part of Abe's plan provides ¥160 million in tax breaks to companies that raise wages by 2 percent, some in New Komeito, the junior coalition partner of Abe's LDP (Liberal Democratic Party), see this as nothing more than "wishful thinking." The results of the recent Reuters Corporate Survey seem to support the party's doubts. Of 266 companies polled as to what action they will take in response to the expected tax increase, only 13 percent planned to increase wages. Given this depressing response, Abe's call for a vaguely philosophical "virtuous circle of rising jobs, profits and wages" might prove shortsighted in the long run.

Take another part of Abe's plan: ¥110 billion in tax breaks and up to ¥300,000 in cash handouts for homebuyers. How will this affect Japan's working youth? Certainly, some kind of stimulus is needed. A 2012 government white paper showed the number of homeowners in their 30s to have dropped over 10 percent between 1983 and 2008, with a dramatic drop of over 50 percent for younger individuals. At the same time, the report blamed falling income for a rise in the burden of housing loans.

A topical look at Japan's housing development statistics paints a sunny view: increases in housing starts of 31,462 units a year for the past three years; booming business for Sekisui House Ltd., the nation's second-biggest home builder. But consider the example of Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, where a fifth of apartments stand empty, and the land ministry's grim prediction that a similar fraction of all residential areas will become ghost towns by 2050. Suddenly, the housing boom starts to look much more like a housing nightmare, reminiscent of the kind of superficial newness that Murakami writes of in A Wild Sheep Chase:

"What a view! Instead of ocean, a vast expanse of reclaimed land and housing developments met my eyes. Faceless blocks of apartments, the miserable foundations of an attempt to build a neighborhood… Everything brand new, everything unnatural." (107)

Part of the problem of vacant housing stems from years of youth migration away from rural areas to cities, where they might hope to find more opportunities for work. Though young graduates have seen their fortunes improve somewhat since 2008, employment numbers still illustrate an uneven recovery. A recent report by Japan's education ministry showed 1 in 5 university grads coming into the market in the spring unable to obtain secure employment.

Nature reclaims vacant housing in Japan. Via.

Five and a half percent of those surveyed fell under the NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) designation. Though this number represents 30,770 people, only recent graduates were included in the report. If we look at an earlier study from 2009, which tallied the total number of NEETs at 640,000, we can see the grim reality: many of those unemployed graduates won't see improvement in their fortunes moving forward.

Even those who do manage to land full-time jobs face difficulties in a market with a glut of eager workers and a scarcity of positions. Recently, the term burakku kigyo (black companies) was coined to describe companies that demand as much as 100 hours of uncompensated overtime a month from their young employees. The overworked Japanese salaryman became something of a stereotype even during the golden age of bubble Japan. However, Ayako Mie of the Japan Times believes today's abuses stand apart due to the economic climate. Citing Haruki Konno of the NPO Posse, Mie writes, "exploitative companies hire new college graduates en masse, assuming most won't be able to survive the harsh conditions and will eventually resign. Then they just hire more."

With over 45 percent of college graduates employed in the service, entertainment and education industries leaving their jobs within three years, according to a 2012 health ministry report, one wonders whether the earlier 1 in 5 number for graduates without secure employment really tells the whole story.

A revolution in youth employment will require more than stimulus, such as Abe's ¥10,000 yen cash allowance for low earners. Writing on the topic of a youth-led Japanese Spring mentioned earlier, Roger Pulvers recognizes that companies themselves are "struggling to keep up not with the Joneses but with the Wangs and the Kims," illustrating the dwindling figure of the Japanese economy next to that of neighboring China and Korea.

Even inspiring efforts like that of Yujin Wakashin, who aims to establish a self-titled NEET Corporation for business-minded, iconoclastic NEETs, seem more like standouts than the start of a movement. The real rise or fall of Japan's youth will hinge not only upon the results of Abe's economic vision, but also more broadly upon a change in thinking.

Former Prime Minister Yoshiko Noda spoke at Japan Society yesterday on topics ranging from the Senkaku Islands conflict to social security reform. Prominent throughout his speech and his responses during the question and answer session was a call for Japan to become a nation that can make decisions in the present for the generations to come. His admonishment seems particularly relevant for a society and government that must decide whether to abandon its youth, and, by extension, its children of tomorrow, or to age into oblivion. The solution Noda calls for may require less of what he called the "two types of leaders: politicians and statesmen," and more of what he deems his own goal: the political reformer.

--Andres Oliver

From LIXIL To LINE: Japanese Companies Look Outward Despite Uncertainty

LINE's Brown and Cony take on the world. Via. 

Japan's economic uncertainty seems to be provoking a domestic response not unlike that seen in the U.S of late. Just as the war-weary, financially ailing American public recently made clear its unwillingness to take on another international conflict, many Japanese are responding to the current climate by turning inward.

Earlier this year, several thousand rallied in Tokyo to protest Japan’s entry into negotiations surrounding the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would bring the country into "one of the largest free trade areas in the world." In addition, Japanese companies have come under fire for insular vision, with the trade ministry’s Global Human Resource Development Committee dubbing management’s reluctance to hire foreign talent, among other shortcomings, paramount to "waiting to die."

Is Japan sounding the retreat, closing in on itself to return to the isolationist policy of centuries past?

Hardly.

The success of several Japanese companies in bringing their business, and, more importantly, their vision abroad, speaks to a continued understanding of the importance of international involvement. Most recently, LIXIL, Japan’s biggest housing material maker, with products including plumbing fixtures and toilets, secured its place in the German housing equipment market with a $4.13 billion buyout of Grohe, Europe’s premier shower and faucet maker. The move signals LIXIL’s final overseas acquisition for the time being, said LIXIL CEO Yoshiaki Fujimori at a news conference in September, and comes on the heels of two other significant acquisitions: ASD Americas Holding Corp., parent company of American toilet maker American Standard, and Italian architectural contractor Permasteelisa SpA, for a total price of over $1 billion. Fujiomori clearly intends to establish LIXIL as a household name outside of his home country, with a goal of $10.2 billion in overseas sales.

Fujimori's talk at Japan Society on October 2nd comes at a critical time in Japanese history. Already suffering from a sluggish economy that has persisted for the past two decades, Japan continues to work toward recovery from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Now, the country waits to see whether Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s aggressive plan to combat deflation will reestablish Japan’s place on the global stage—how long since the days of Made in Japan!—or whether it will prove to be nothing more than "voodoo" economics.

Any discussion of current expansion into the foreign market by Japanese business leaders must include Akira Morikawa, chief executive of popular messaging service LINE. Allowing users to send messages to each other on their smartphones with the addition of stickers like Brown the bear and Cony the rabbit, LINE is currently installed on 71% of iPhones in Japan. The bulk of the company’s revenue comes from its games, which are free to download but provide the option of in-game purchases. However, a 92 % rise in sales in the first quarter of 2013 and booming business in Japan are not enough for Morikawa, who seeks nothing less than to establish NHN Japan Corp., the company behind LINE, as the top Asian SNS (social networking service) provider.

If LINE’s success in expanding into areas ranging from the Middle East to Spain are any indication, the company could possibly pose a challenge to Facebook, which has long since lost its appeal as youth-only hangout. Then again, LINE’s 240 million users in 230 countries as of September is less than a quarter of Facebook’s whopping 1.15 billion, and the service may find its toughest rival not in the American behemoth, but in the South Korean SNS KakaoTalk. Providing users with a similar array of cute stickers, KakaoTalk even features its own bunny emoticon, the plump Molang.

Another company that is seeking to make further inroads into the global market is Japanese retailer UNIQLO (full disclosure: I am currently employed by the company). Founded by Tadashi Yanai, who has emerged as Japan’s richest man after transforming his father’s tailor shops into Asia’s biggest clothing retailer, UNIQLO has certainly found success abroad. The company currently boasts stores in fourteen countries, including over two hundred in China alone and a prominent location on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Perhaps even more surprising than Yanai’s personal success story is the fact that a Japanese retailer has emerged as such a challenger to ailing giant Gap, which has traditionally been known for basic, functional clothing. Yet, maybe it is precisely UNIQLO’s focus on high-quality constants, such as sweaters and shirts in basic colors and designs, along with its affordability that have so appealed to global consumers. The company seems to have learned this lesson for good after attempts at branching out into more fashion-oriented items in 2010 resulted in plunging sales. Since then UNIQLO has bounced back with plans to open ten new American stores this fall.

Back in 2008, the Japan Times wrote of Japan’s "recent trends toward isolationism—even xenophobia," citing an environment hostile to foreign investment. The nation’s minister of economic and fiscal policy, Hiroko Ota, worried that Japan was no longer a "first class" economy; sure enough, China surpassed it as the world’s second largest only two years later. This was followed, of course, by the devastation of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, with costs of up to $235 billion.

Five years later amid echoes of those "recent trends", companies like LIXIL, LINE, and UNIQLO stand as evidence of the persistence of a globally minded cohort, one that sees participation in the international market as a path to growth rather than an obstacle to it. What people must ask now is whether the next few months, during which Prime Minister Abe continues to press his economic reforms, will prove these companies to be the exceptions to, or the leaders of, Japan’s fortunes.

--Andres Oliver

[UPDATED 10/3/13]