I first visited Japan as a young member of the UK Parliament in the early 1980s. Yukio Satoh, an ambitious and forward-thinking diplomat who would later serve as Japanese ambassador to the UN, had recently been posted to the nation’s London embassy.
Recognizing that the political dialogue between the UK and Japan was dominated by an older generation, Satoh sought to foster connections with a younger cohort of British politicians.
To this end, Satoh invited several newly elected lawmakers, including me, to visit Japan and engage with our Japanese counterparts.
Our two week trip included a weekend in the constituency of a Japanese Diet member. My host’s constituency was centered around the spa town of Hanamaki, famous for its noodles.
That visit sparked my longstanding enthusiasm for Japan, which led me to return to the nation dozens of times over the years, in various capacities — lawmaker, Cabinet minister, last British governor of Hong Kong and European commissioner for external relations.
More recently, I visited Japan as an international adviser to the Praemium Imperiale, a prestigious award commemorating the centennial of the Japan Art Association’s founding.
Established under the patronage of the Japanese Imperial family and supported by a generous commercial grant, it has been likened to a Nobel Prize for the arts.
The Praemium Imperiale is an essential component of Japan’s soft power. Over its 35-year history, it has been awarded to celebrated artists and architects from Japan and around the world.
Japan’s contributions to the visual arts, film and architecture have left a lasting impression on me, but for many, the most impressive thing about the nation is its extraordinary economic success.
Japan’s post-World War II boom is often described as an “economic miracle.” While I am skeptical of this term, there is no denying that the nation experienced a remarkable transformation between the late 1950s and 1990s.
This can be attributed to several key factors — relative political stability, effective policymaking, and substantial investments in education, job training and public health, as well as the ability to capitalize on opportunities created by increasingly globalized markets. I witnessed these dynamics firsthand during my tenure as governor of Hong Kong.
To be sure, the miracle did not last. After decades of rapid GDP growth, especially between 1973 and 1991, the nation entered a prolonged period of economic stagnation and deflation, often referred to as the “lost decades.”
Japan’s post-1990 economic stagnation was triggered by efforts to cool an overheated property sector through interest rate hikes and a strong yen intended to address US trade concerns.
These measures were largely a result of the 1985 Plaza Accord, which boosted the yen’s value and undermined the competitiveness of Japanese exports.
Given his antagonism toward allies of the US and his threats to launch a trade war, US president-elect Donald Trump’s second term poses the most serious challenge to Japan’s economic resilience in decades.
One can only hope that Japanese policymakers confront Trump’s proposed protectionist tariffs with the same resolve their predecessors demonstrated in countering former US president Ronald Reagan’s trade restrictions and currency manipulation.
Fortunately, Japan finds itself in a relatively strong position, with recent data underscoring its remarkable resilience in the face of the twin shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and the global energy crisis.
Admittedly, economic growth is slowing once again — the IMF projects GDP to rise by just 0.3 percent this year, down from 1.7 percent last year — and Japan has been overtaken by Germany as the world’s third-largest economy, but it remains a prosperous nation with an exceptionally high life expectancy.
A visit to Japan reveals the source of its resilience — a strong democratic society firmly rooted in the rule of law — but what impresses me most is the nation’s ability to navigate the tension between identity politics and globalization without succumbing to the divisiveness that currently plagues many other liberal democracies.
While Japan faces several daunting challenges — not least a rapidly aging and shrinking population — it retains a profound sense of national identity that seems to grow stronger, not weaker, in an increasingly interconnected world.
Japan’s self-assurance has endured the pressures of a globalized economy, which is why I remain confident that it can weather whatever the future might hold.
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner for external affairs, is chancellor of the University of Oxford and the author of The Hong Kong Diaries.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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