海外が驚く戦後日本経済の復活【外国人が驚く歴史】

海外が驚く戦後日本経済の復活【外国人が驚く歴史】

the salary man, dude. Like the symbol of Japan. He kind of is like Superman in some way. He helped Japan rise the ranks towards economic stability and economic prosperity, right? Getting rid of zyots. Whoa. But it seems like in Japan like it’s like it’s like you have like very very like you just kind of like go up like slowly like this. And that sense of stability I think was essential to this miracle that Japan experienced after the war. This. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. That’s a lot to say. That’s a lot to say. Whoa. People often talk about Japan’s quote unquote postwar miracle, right? And I want to lean into the word miracle. What’s a miracle? Uh, me being quiet, dude. Impossible. Yeah. Nearly impossible, but it came true, right? [Music] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, um, as a bit of a disclaimer, I’m by no means an economic historian. I did not specialize in economic history when I was in graduate school. I did cultural history and labor history. So I don’t know all like the economic terminology and all the histography that goes along with economic history but I think uh what I want to try to do with this it’s more like what cultural aspects of this recovery that I find kind of interesting from my Canadian messen kind of Oh, nice. [Music] Let’s find out. Fixing Japan’s hyperinflation of 700%. 700% inflation. 700%. Until 1948 or so, Japan’s economy hit hyperinflation and had a 700% increase in the cost of food. Oh my god. And then imagine Gakun was like sand. I would be living. I would be living. So basically like if you think about the context of the time, right? Japan just was defeated in a war. Its industries and cities were completely destroyed. It’s very very unproductive country. So cost of goods and stuff like that obviously skyrocketed. And so thanks to what was called the Dodge Line, named after this guy named Joseph Dodge, the Dodge Line implemented a series of economic policies and what limitations to kind of get the Japanese economy to move in a direction towards productivity once again kind of thing. Yeah. So what’s the dodge line? After the war ended, Japan was in economic ruin. Its cities were physically bombed to right? Co was flattened. You ever see dude? Oh my god, dude. Yeah. Tokyo was destroyed. K was destroyed. It major industries were destroyed. Um, its economy for many, many years was devoted towards war making and building materials for war, right? But now that the war is over, where is the economic stimulus coming from? Right? And the people were suffering horrible poverty conditions, right? And so after the war ended, um, MacArthur, right, and the GHQ, they occupied Japan and they set out to quote unquote rebuild Japan and democratize Japan. So much of Japan’s industry, so much of Japan’s economy was devoted towards war building, war making, right? So a lot of the main industries, like you know, Mitsubishi for example, they they were ship builders, right? And they wanted to build munitions factories and stuff like that, right? they weren’t necessarily devoted towards consumer goods, right? But now that the war is over, that need to build war related materials obviously goes to zero, right? And so these people go out of work and that, you know, cascading effect, I don’t know, the economic calculations or whatever causes prices to go up over time. Of course, it’s it’s a lot more complicated than that, but from what I read, one of the main reasons is because, you know, production basically just grinds to a halt, right? Just making things more expensive over time. And obviously that caused a lot of problems right among regular Japanese people. So the Supreme Allied Command um MacArthur and the boys, they hired a uh financial analyst guy named Joseph Dodge out of Detroit. Long story short, he temporarily flattened out the inflation. He solved like the big inflation issue. And so in the long term, this had very very damaging consequences. But in the short term, it worked out really really well. I think they call it the the Dodge squeeze. The Dodge squeeze. So, here’s a five-point plan that the Dodge plan um outlined to fix the economy. Okay. And I think um the the most important thing here is fixing the exchange rate to 360 yen to the US dollar to keep Japanese exports like prices low, right? Oh, yeah. So, to to incentivize more exports, I guess, right? Because Japan’s a you know, they produce a lot of things, right? And so in order for to make um what Japanese products more attractive and for the Japanese government to sell more things abroad, they made the this exchange rate flat and or fixed. And they fixed this exchange rate into until the 1970s, I believe. Dang. I should have exchanged in the 70s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and I think again this kind of goes in with more of like a global context situation, right? Like Cold War was starting to ramp up. The US kind of want to keep eyes on the Soviets and they want to have an ally in the Pacific, right? And whereas after World War I, I think the Allies kind of learned the the lessons of World War I, right? Because after World War I, they punished Germany. so badly, right, from the lessons that the Allies learned in World War I, they want to instead of punishing Japan, they think they want to democratize Japan and bring Japan up to make it a close ally with the US. Right? In the short term, the Dodge line stabilized the Japanese economy. It kind of kickstarted the economy in a sense that Japan that Japan started to export things again, right? But like I said, the Dodge squeeze happened and Japan fell into a bit of a recession. But what happened in the 1950s? Another war happened in the 1950s. Another war. Korean war. Could the Korean War? Yeah, the Korean War often forgotten unfortunately. I think it’s overshadowed by Vietnam on one side and overshadowed by World War II on the other side. But I think the Korean War is is really really important to Japan’s recovery because I think there’s I saw a quote somewhere that the Korean War breaking out was kind of like rain from heaven coming down onto Japan. It was such a gift to Japan because hold on. It was a gift in the sense that because the US was fighting Korea as well and they were using Japan as a base. The US dumped $2 billion worth of contracts into the Japanese economy. What? to build things like steel manufacturing, textiles, and other things to fund the war effort in Korea. Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. Oh wow. Holy crap, dude. And after the war end, it’s not like they can do Modoa and get it back to the US. They remain in Japan. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So they Yeah. Cuz the US doesn’t really have any like industries there, right? They have Japan there. That’s about it. And so they dumped all this money into Japan and Japanese countries were like, “Thank you, Kamisama.” is what is like the the story that I read some again the economy is kind of based on war making again I don’t know how I feel about that but thank you thanks to the Korean war I suppose Japan got a really really big economic boost and I think that’s when things really started to get better for Japan Mhm. Right. Right. Yeah. The the San Francisco treaty happened and then the occupation ended. Getting rid of zibat. What’s zibatu? Yeah. Exactly. Well, from what I understand of of is that like they’re very much vertical company structures. Let’s say that that’s kind of owned or what like a family-owned company or business is at the top, right? And then a cascading series of companies kind of fall underneath, but they all have to report to this one family-owned business at the top kind of thing, right? And so let’s say a company down here, they can’t necessarily do business laterally. They have to do business vertically up through the chain that’s attached to this one family company, let’s say, right? So um a similar thing was happening in the US. Teddy Roosevelt at around the turn of the century was called like the the trustbuster, right? and he implemented all these antirust laws to break up these basically the American zatsu. Yeah. I mean these monopolies that kind of controlled significant parts of the economy, right? And by by disrupting these monopolies, they improved competition amongst other companies and to make them more equal amongst each other and to have more diverse economy. Right. Right. Right. And so these zybatsu, they’ve been around since like well before World War II. And these like major what four companies, right? Mitsubishi for example is what’s called a zyatu I guess, right? And these big companies kind of controlled huge parts of the Japanese economy for so long basically all from Miji up until the end of World War II. Mhm. Jesus. [Music] which is crazy. Yeah. Monopolies, huh? What? As if a company can just do that. Like that’s crazy. [Music] And so part of the economic recovery plan the US wanted to implement in Japan was to get rid of these zibatu, right? To because Japan at the time was not being productive at all, right? And if these big companies are still hold have like their grip on the Japanese economy, how can you push the Japanese economy towards productivity again if these companies are still kind of controlling what moves in the economy, right? And so they got rid of these companies and slowly not got rid of them but they broke up the structure let’s say and the economy moved from zibatu to what to au right this ketu right and so while ketsu still has elements of zibatu there’s still some like hierarchical structure to it ketu it’s more like equal like there’s more cooperative relationships between companies that have to work with each other kind of thing right instead of instead of having to go vertically through this chain of command. Let’s say so for example like um let’s say company A has control of a bank that has control of a car manufacturer that has control of a car parts manufacturer that has control of a garage manufacturer right and so the garage manufacturer has to do business with this company’s car manufacturer who has to do yeah who has to do has to have contracts with the car parts manufacturer right but after kitu was established this garage manufacturer can go to company B’s um car manufacturer instead and so that puts more more balance in the economy instead of having these like big pillars vertical hierarchal structures right another big part of this story is the establishment of the ministry of international trade and industry wa a totally separate government ministry was created specifically devoted towards economic development right and so I think a part a lot of the what economic development pre-war it was built for with war making or preparing for war and like just general industrialization right but as a Japanese economy shifted from war materials to consumer goods they had to change their mindset of how the economy was going to function right so they created this new thing called the Ministry of International Trade and Industry right and so as a concrete example the MITI model they allocated what 83% of its loans like from the central bank 83% of its loans to key industries such as electric power, ship building, coal and steel, right? And so these things can be used for consumer goods and middle class developing the middle class in some way, right? And as you know the the Korean war is happening, these these were the main industries that got a big boost from the US’s big dub of $2 billion in the economy, right? And so I think this is a really really interesting thing from my eyes, right? Because like the government is like made a whole separate ministry to handle this issue, right? Yeah. And Canada and the US never really had a war on our territory, right? Our cities weren’t necessarily destroyed. So we didn’t have to have like a fundamental reimagining of how the government should behave in some way. Correct. Yeah. And so it’s kind of interesting to see like to what degree to what extent the Japanese government decided like okay we actually need to fix this right let’s make a whole new division group of people and dedicate them to specifically towards economic development. That’s really cool. That was a major power move for sure. It’s like how do we solve the problem? Problem is not going to solve itself. We need to devote people to actually think about it and how we can build ourselves back up as a country. Yeah. For sure. Exactly. Yeah, totally. It just really shows that they move really fast, right? If they want to tackle a problem, they don’t wait for it to solve itself. They really take action into their own hands. This is really impressive. Yeah. Like uh one like analysis that I read was like other countries like the Soviet Union when they implement these like five-year plans like Stalin had a series of five-year plans to kickstart the Soviet Union’s economy kind of thing or shift the Soviet Union’s economy. That was a very much top down type of command, right? We’re going to do this kind of thing, right? Exactly. But with um with this MITI model, the government basically just dumped a bunch of money in these key industries and let the companies that exist in those industries do with the money what they want, right? Not what they want, right? But like they emphasize more cooperation with the government and with each other as opposed to a top down like you just have to follow orders kind of thing. Yeah, that’s cool. which which I think is kind of like a big feature to this economic miracle. It’s not so like heavy-handed from the top. It’s more like bottom up. Let’s all rebuild this thing together is kind of the sense that I got from this whole thing. Yeah, that’s that’s genius. Getting rid of copies to innovation. Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean? What do you mean? Are you talking about his catchphrase that Japan making uh can do 0 to one but one to 100? Uh perhaps I am trains. I might be actually bucking that uh that stereotype here. Historical context here. I love historical context. It’s so important. Yes, I love historical context. Okay, so a big theme in these history videos have been like to what degree has Japan taken ideas from the west and kind of made it their own, right? Mhm. And throughout historioggraphy and I think to like the American public specifically, I think they saw what was happening in Japan and they like to kind of like make fun of Japan in a way and brand them as like copycat as a copycat economy, right? They don’t actually make anything themselves. They just take things and kind of fix it to make it new in some sense. Right. I mean, they’re pretty good, right? They’re pretty good. Yeah. The title that I mentioned a second ago, from copies to innovation. It’s like this post-war miracle that Japan was going through kind of showed the world that we’re not just copycat people. We don’t just copy things. We actually know how to innovate and actually make things that are native and unique to us kind of thing, right? And um an example of that is, you know, Toyota’s Kaizen philosophy, right? I believe Paul I wish Paul was here. he’d be able to explain this a lot a lot better than me. But from as far as I I I can understand the the Japanese economy was, you know, it was it was going at a pretty pretty good pace, let’s say, right, after the war, especially from the 60s onwards. But Toyota adopting this kaizen philosophy, it was like a worldview change for Japanese manufacturers, right? And when I say worldview change, I mean like the emphasis or the essence of a Japanese company went from just just pure production and efficiency, but to actual improvement. The whole purpose of a Japanese company is to improve over time and to make the company better kind of thing, right? And obviously every single company has its goal is to make more money and to be more profitable and blah blah blah. But I think the the whole Kaizen philosophy isn’t just money but it’s like about efficiency improving the livelihood of workers and improving you know its impact on Japanese society and any any aspect aspect that you can think of in which like a Japanese company has influence in society. we want to kaizen that is kind of like the philosophy they had, right? And so a specific example is like in Toyota’s um they had they had a plant in West Virginia, right? West Virginia mama, right? And um and so they had this um they had this problem where like one of the parts on their production line like constantly made like this rattling sound, right? It was like having a problem. There was some issue that wasn’t like some bit wasn’t like put in place properly. it was a consistent problem they were going through, right? And so instead of just kind of like fixing the problem as it goes, the because of Kaizen, let’s say this is a bit of a silly example, but because of Kaizen, they took a step back and they re-engineered the whole manufacturing process to fix this problem, right? Yeah. And so it wasn’t just like pinpointing an issue. It’s like a series of things manufacturing process led to this problem happening in the first place, right? Mhm. So instead of just kind of dealing with the symptom, you have to deal with the disease patient zero. In that way, like if Japan was truly just a copycat economy, they would just kind of fix the symptom, right? Right. They would just kind of fix a thing. As long as like the the end product was like similar enough to what they were trying to copy, then you know, everyone’s satisfied kind of thing, right? But because of this Kaisen philosophy, they took a step back. They realize the whole system needs to be redesigned in some way to fix these issues kind of, right? And so through this stepping back, through this different worldview change, they actually open the doors for true innovation to actually occur, right? Because if you if you kind of take a step back and look at the big picture, it’s like these things aren’t moving right, right? What do we need to do to fix this? And if they were copy economy, they would just be like just forget it. Yeah. Yeah. And so by having this philosophy they realize okay how can we make not just our companies more profitable but more efficient using less time and less manhour and stuff like that right so I think that’s what led to as part of this whole this miracle is that I think a lot of companies started to adopt this kaizen type of mentality and so that you know big companies have adopt this thing and the whole kind of country kind of gets pulled up in some sense right what’s that term like the the tide that raises all ships innovation [Music] Thank you. [Music] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm. [Music] What? Well, that you can still trust Japanese engineering. Wow. That’s yeah, I think that’s why it’s really cool, right? This this whole theme of just like went from like, you know, copying things but to actually making things that are respected or whatever, right? Is like Canada isn’t really a productive country in the sense that we don’t really make a lot of things ourselves, right? We like to take our natural resources and send them abroad kind. That’s kind of like where historically and even now our economy is kind of stuck in that mentality, right? And so it’s cool to see a country actively trying to break away from things that they’re used to, right? Cuz it’d be very easy for Japan just to be like, “Yeah, we have the we bought these like transistors or whatever and let’s just analyze them.” Yeah, we’ll just kind of make them for the Japanese market. Right. They took they could have taken the easy way out. Yeah. But no, nothing steps Japanese spirit. Huh. Exactly. And so I mean for as a Canadian like it’s kind of like I wish Canada would like go take like take some action and move their economy in in a way that’s that’s more productive or more like innovative, right? Cuz it’s like it’s possible. It’s clearly possible from like a war torn country to achieve levels like that Japan did and Canada’s a rich country. Why can’t we do it? But I mean who knows? That’s a bit different that’s a different story. But like it’s like I said the whole theme of this video is from like my perspect our perspective why these things are interesting. This is one of them right this like philosophy of changing things right that’s that’s so cool from copies to innovation. Yay. Rise of the salary man. What the heck? This is planet of the apes. What’s going on dude? Rise of salary man. Rise of the salary man. They’re taking over the salary man. Dude like the symbol of Japan. I have put this in here as a joke because I was like salary man, right? Because I feel like salary man, especially amongst like foreigners who live in Japan, they like to kind of like not poke fun, but the salary man is kind of like a butt the butt of all jokes in some way, right? It’s kind of like, you know, the stereotypical salary man is kind of like this middle-aged guy who gives who has his wife take care of all the finances in the household, blah blah blah. These are stereotypes. I’m not saying everyone is this way, but these are stereotypes, right? But in a real way though, I think the salary man system, the salary man culture, the salary man identity, he kind of is like Superman in some way. Yeah. He kept the family together. He That’s right. He helped Japan rise the ranks towards economic stability and economic u prosperity. Right. through. I’ll put I’ll put forward two points, two main points why I think this is true. Point one, lifetime employment at a company. Lifetime employment. Yes. It seems to me that not a lot of Japanese people just kind of take it for granted. It’s like, yeah, it’s a kind of thing, right? They kind of think it’s like a a course. It’s this is how it is, right? But in Canada and I think especially in the US at the same time like during the 1980s now especially you can be fired at a moment’s notice in America even if you are like if you have a permanent full-time contract with a company you could just be cut anytime right you could go you could show up to work and they’d be like sorry we’re going to have to let you go and then you have to leave right there no warning nothing what did they call it at will employment at will at will employment yeah at will employment but I I think you Another reason why like this whole lifetime employment thing is so important is that it gives the average middle- class Japanese person like job stability, you know, financial stability and a very very clear and well- definfined plan of career progression within a company, right? And it’s like seniority based, right? So you spend five years as a regular employee and you go to Kacho, right? And then you spend five years as Kacho, then you go to Bucho, right? And then BHO you do you do that you do your time there and you go up to sea level employee uh executive or something like that right I feel like this is a very not common but like this is a path that people have taken since like you know the post-war period it seems like right and then but in like Canada US it’s so your promotions are it they feel so apolitical and b like it’s very like skillbased right and I’m I’m sure there are elements of that in Japan too don’t get me wrong I’m not saying it’s like just purely seniority. But if you stay with a company for long enough, like they will train you out of graduation, they’ll mold you to become a perfect company employee and then eventually you can, you know, you learn the rules and you climb your way up if you just stay there a long time and it gives you like, you know, regular salary in increases, right, in in the best situation of course, right? But I think because of this stability and this clear progression through a company, imagine if all the companies in Japan are doing that, everyone is kind of raising their salaries at a kind of an even rate it seems like. Right. Yeah. Right. Instead of in the in the US like you could be making 200 grand a year at Google and fired and making zero, unemployed for 6 months, get a job at Whole Foods at minimum wage and then back up to Amazon or something like that, right? These things do happen, right? But it seems like in Japan like it’s like it’s like you have a very very like Jojo like you just kind of like go up like slowly like this. And that sense of stability I think was essential to this miracle that Japan experienced after the war. Yeah. And then you can control your progression by how high you compile people at your company. Yeah. Right. It’s like oh I’m kajou now. Now my cup can go this higher than my buas. Yeah. Mhm. [Music] [Music] Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah, right. My god. Oh my gosh. because of this mentality it’s you know the Japanese economy like in in small steps managed to become the way it is now so for your service thank you thank you salary man for your service rise of the salary man rise of the salary man [Applause] Ah, thank you. Thank you. Oh, man. No. Wrap up summary this. Okay. Okay. To put in some real words, real numbers. Okay. The the Japanese economy during like the the post-war period in the ‘ 50s and I think the ’60s, the Japanese economy was developing at a rate annually at 9.6% year-over-year. This is 9.6%. That That’s an insane growth rate. 9.6%. Compared to, you know, the past few years, the Japanese economy is growing at less than one. It’s like.5. Yeah. Yeah. 9.6%. Year-over-year. Oh, man. That’s a lot. Like this number looks extreme, right? And if you look at on the graph, it it visually is extreme. But everything that we’ve talked about or that I’ve read about, nothing they’ve been doing is extreme, if you know what I mean. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Do you know what I mean? That it’s very consistent. But the consistency lies in the way their ability to uh improve. Right. Right. Like I mean obviously Japan got a lot of help from like the you know the occupation and then the Americans intervention and stuff like that. Right. And so in in some sense it is extreme from like a personal feeling um aspect. But compared to say Stalin’s 5-year plans when he was trying to shift the Soviet Union’s economy from agrarian society to an industrial society I think they they achieved similar level. I think they they achieved like six around 6% or something like that. You were you during seven or five year plans but at what cost? a lot of human suffering, let’s say, during uh Stalin’s reign. But, you know, the Kin was doing great, so I mean, who cares, right? But but I think what what makes the Japanese situation unique is that it was like peace meal like a little bit here and there Kaizen, right? Like they’re doing a little bit of little bit of change here and there, slowly slowly moving towards productivity to get a really really big result at the end. And it wasn’t just like it wasn’t just like pure numbers like the pure economy like lifestyle lifestyles were improving what the HDI the human development index was going up like everything was going up even though they weren’t doing anything necessarily like crazy right which is which what I think is so incredible about this. That’s why I think it’s called it miracle. [Music] That’s my sense of it too, right? Obviously like other countries have have achieved similar, right? Right. But like it usually comes at a very very high cost of something, right? Whether human cost or you know whatever. That’s what I’ve been thinking the whole time. YouTube [Music] Yeah. Yeah. So I think yeah the the whole the whole theme of this topic just feels like little bit at a time slowly working your way towards the top kind of thing right like the taus in the hair that thing that whole that whole parable parable slow and steady wins the race kind of That’s kind of the sense I get from this whole year thing. So, yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess not. Yeah. Nothing. Byebye. [Music]

＜登録お願いします＞
Twitter:https://twitter.com/MrFUJI_0t0
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mr.fuji0t0/
TikTok:https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSe7Acy15/

＜サポートお願いします＞
Patreon:
https://patreon.com/mrfuji0t0?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=creatorshare
　・EDに名前を載せます
　　※登録後、EDに記載したいお名前をPatreonのメッセージで送付お願いします。
　・非公開動画が視聴できます

#海外の反応 #経済復興 #歴史