Japan Inc. doesn't collapse

MrHola

Banned
Remember the 1980's when Japan was going to eat the US alive? Well, then the real estate bubble bursted and Japan got in a recession that it has never gotten out of to this day.

What is the best POD to make it so that recession was short or never happened? I've been thinking about it, and given the nature of Japanese politics and the broad trends from the 1960's on, I can't come up with anything.

However, I did found out that the the problems with Japan are inherent in it's current cultural and political structure. The collectivist and conformist nature of Japan causes a great degree of inflexibility. Not "rocking the boat" is more important over many other considerations. This is not to say competition is frowned upon, far from it, as many of us are away of, but its a conformist competition.

So, can anyone suggest a decent POD?
 
Japan had a couple incidents in the early 80s where corruption became obvious and there was a wish to split up the locked relationship between commercial banks and the companies they work with. Best idea is to find a way to separate the industrial corporations and the banks, so the banks aren't able to play with the big companies as much.
 
See my timeline, Avoiding Lost Decades, as long as you skip over the issue of Hong Kong which derailed it (I will get back to it or a modified version, I swear).

One thing to keep in mind is that throughout the '90 even as Japan's GDP growth was zero or negative, most people were employed at decent jobs and companies generally still made some money (keeping in mind that Japanese corporations usually make about half the profits of comparable American corporations because making money as compared to employing people is viewed badly in Japanese culture).

To put it another way even as American corporations did whatever they could in terms of profit, Japanese corporations preferred to care about other things. Did that hurt them? In some senses, yes, but the Japan of the post-bubble remained a pretty darn good place to live.

(Yes, Japan has certain structural problems, and the government hasn't yet had the guts to tackle some of them—although they have fixed portions—but overall if one were living through an economic downturn Japan would be by far preferred location.)
 
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