Why has this happened? Nakafuji doesn’t give a single clear answer, but does put forward a range of reasons. But it is falling prices, not rising suns, that are the bigger political challenge facing Tokyo. A veteran of the Imperial Japanese Navy, carrying a rising sun ensign, leads a group into the controversial Yasukuni Shrine.
The reasons so many prices are so low is because Japan is increasingly a nation of poor people – the line between “cheap” and “poverty” is blurry. But Daiso does great business in Japan because the country is stuck in a perpetual cycle of low salaries and low prices. This may put smiles on the faces of overseas visitors. But only in Japan can goods be bought for 100 yen, or the local equivalent. There are 1,365 operating in South Korea, 120 in Thailand and 44 in the United Arab Emirates. Of course, many goods now actually cost 200 yen, 300 yen or more, but the idea is firmly grounded: Shop here for cheap stuff.Īccording to recent figures, Daiso has 2,248 stores in 26 countries and regions overseas. Or why not go shopping? One Japanese global retail success of recent years is Daiso – noted for its plethora of cheap goods.ĭaiso’s concept stems from the “100-yen store” where everything is priced at 100 yen ($0.87). If family entertainment is your thing, Japan offers the lowest entry price among all Disneylands. It’s all an astonishing decline for a country that 30 years ago was the world’s most expensive.ĭespite Japan’s reputation as a high-price destination, if you’re visiting from a wealthy country, you will find many things incredibly low-priced.Ī luxury hotel room that might cost you US$1400 in the US a night is available for $700 in Japan. You can get a delicious beef bowl for 300 yen ($2.61) or a cheap Big Mac for 390 yen ($3.39) – slightly more than half it would cost ($5.74) in the US. Nakafuji argues that Japan is on course to becoming a poor nation, dependent on tourism, where the young and brightest minds leave the country for better jobs with better pay and working conditions. On the macro level, Japan is becoming a “cheap” country in terms of, not just its prices, but also its human resources. It has abysmally low starting salaries for graduates, and – exacerbating existing labor shortages – is facing a brain drain. The book, by financial reporter Rei Nakafuji of the Nikkei, paints a dismal picture of present-day Japan, where multiple measures to provoke some inflation have failed, to the point where some prices have fallen to the level of those in emerging economies. The high price the world’s third-largest economy is paying to be “cheap” is the subject of one of this year’s most talked-about vernacular bestsellers, Cheap Japan: Stagnation Indicated By Prices (Nikkei Publishing Inc, March 8, 2021).