CONVERSATION IN ENGLISH

俺：Accusations to Kuroda, the top of BOJ, who remarked that Japanese people are accepting the price hikes, are boiling mainly on twitter. There may be some interesting influence on the coming upper diet election on July 10th at which Jimin had expected to win overwhelmingly. Companies hiked prices starting from June. It has incurred people’s anger which the government didn’t fully anticipate. I’m interested if this accusation would jump at Shinzo Abe who has been positive on the massive monetary easing. ジョンさん：Do you know Japan’s inflation rate compared to America? I wonder. 俺：Of course I know the US is under far sheerer inflation than Japan. But Japan’s labor efficiency is far less than the US's. And, the Japanese economy has been sluggish for almost 30 years. People’s labor wage has not increased alike. Under the circumstances that the companies flee their manufacturing facilities from Japan and focus their resources onto the market abroad, the Japanese labor market has been shrinking. Indeed, people’s incomes are decreasing substantially. In other words, the Japanese are becoming poorer. Of course the US is under a difficult situation, but the US economy is far more vigorous than Japan and it is economically growing, entailed by wage hike. Albeit the salary gap between the rich and the poor is tremendous and many people are uncomfortable, the US is richer than Japan after all. Japan’s Gini coefficient indicates that Japan’s income gap is near the line under which social disturbance would take place. I’m afraid I don’t have sufficient statistics. But Japanese people have had much malaise about economic sluggishness in the last 30 years. ジョンさん：The American inflation rate is one of the highest in the developed world over 8% while Japan is one of the lowest at around 1%. American wages have not increased to keep pace with inflation. Believe me, the American middle class is inexorably being destroyed by Biden’s regime. Japanese society is also much more stable and safe. Since Biden took over we are afraid to go near big cities the crime rate is so high. Illegal aliens gather at our southern border by the hundreds of thousands and Biden doesn’t stop them. I’ll take Japan any day, regardless of who is in power. 俺：Yes. Japan is a safe archipelago while the US is a continent adjacent to the Southern part of the large land. Without the knowledge on economics, I would feel relaxed with Japan’s future. But I know Japan will face difficult situations in the near future. As you know, Japan is a socialismistic system country. What the outcome of such a country is likely to be is widely accepted among those who know history as you know. ジョンさん：Japan might well be economically stagnant、 but capitalism results in peaks and valleys as well as stagnation. Essentially, and most importantly, Japanese society will remain stable, despite economic fluctuations, because unlike America, it remains largely a homogenous nation of shared cultural values. Neither left nor right seems to promote the kind of whole scale radical changes that the American Left does. The American left wants to completely and radically change America’s demographics, culture and society. They threaten the very existence of what has been hitherto accepted as the American norm. This is why the USA is divided worse than it has since the Civil War. Japan will probably never face this kind of dilemma and existential crisis. The existing order is under siege in America far more than it ever will be in Japan, regardless of economic fluctuations. 俺：Japanese are very good at modifying strange thoughts, culture and even religions, and assimilating them. And Japan’s politics seems to manage to keep balance between the Left and the Right. But it might be just postponing the problems which should have been addressed no sooner than it had been. ジョンさん：I think the essence of Japanese society is maintaining harmony and social cohesion. This is essentially agreed upon by most people. Of course, in the 1960s-1970s The Nihon Sekigun and Rengo Sekigun threatened this harmony, but they only represented a tiny fringe group. There is no longer any consensus in America. The divisions are deep and pervasive and I think permanent because the elite class has sold out the common man to the mob. 俺：It might not be appropriate, but I recalled 「The American democracy」by Alexis de Tockville. ジョンさん：Haven’t read it since college. Basically forgot his main point. But as a foreigner, not sure he spent enough time in America to form opinions native born Americans would share. I think another Frenchman, Lafayette, has a better sense of what America is, since he fought to establish its existence in our war of independence. De Tocqueville got it completely wrong about the “tyranny of the majority”. In contemporary America it is a tyranny by an oligarchic elite which oppresses the majority of average Americans. The majority has been leveraged out of power by elites and their media organs. Trump represented a revolt of the “silent majority” against this elite. 俺：It must be an upside inside out case of America, but Koh-ichi Toyama was screaming the tyranny of the majority. Yes, he is a minority and not accepted by Japanese society. But he can get along with his cohorts and live along. Yukio Mishima warned Japanese society of its sucking to life. Detesting to the persistence to life of Japanese society, he sought after the mental tension which was strongly connected to death. Mishima was deeply lamenting about how Japanese are mentaly slucking rapidly. He thought after WW2, whatever kind of faith is permitted by Japanese society as long as it allows a life. Japanese society is unconsciously ruled by ideology. Only if he/she is sticking to life, will it be accepted. But Mishima unveiled its hypocrisy and warned the Japanese. His thoughts were narrowly a philosophy as long as he was stuck to death. I gradually understood the US is not a state of dream, and Japan is not a bad place to live. ジョンさん：Believe me, America has been wonderful in the past, but not anymore. Japan, despite economic fluctuations, remains essentially a safe and stable country to live in. You do not see the radical social disruptions that we in America do. And that, is refreshing and comforting.