Solving Social Issues

A year and a half ago, we could not have predicted the COVID-19 pandemic that has developed to date. Under these circumstances, various social issues have been brought to light.

Looking back on the past, major shocks always expose fundamental issues in society. That goes for the collapse of Japan's economic bubble in the 1990s, the global financial crisis of the 2000s, the Great East Japan Earthquake in the 2010s and now the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2020s. In each case, these crises brought renewed focus on social issues that were already apparent, but difficult to solve.

The bursting of Japan's economic bubble made clear the reality that the structure of Japan's economy both financial and real that had been streamlined to catch up with developed countries needed to be changed in order to compete on a level playing field with US and EU economies. The global financial crisis showed how developments in the rapidly integrated international financial markets had significantly diverged from real economic activities in some cases, and how that caused immense damage to the overall economy.

The Great East Japan Earthquake, meanwhile, again shed light on the importance of infrastructure that enables people to lead safe and secure lives in a disaster-prone country. And it goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has made us aware of how Japan lags behind in digitization and how slow the social decision-making in response to a crisis is.

In addition, through the events that have occurred over a period of more than three decades, Japan has also been on the path to growing disparities in various areas, and those disparities tend to act in a socially divisive manner, a phenomenon we share with the Western countries. On top of that, Japan's population is aging at the fastest speed among developed countries, and that brings with it a host of issues of its own.

Amid this bevy of social issues that cannot be easily solved, the negative tone about Japan's inability to change stands out. But if you asked whether Japan is a failure in the eyes of the world, it is by no means so.

For more than 75 years, Japan has not become embroiled in a single war, and its economy, which quite literally rose from the ashes, is the third largest in the world, despite being overtaken by China. Even in terms of nominal GDP per capita, Japan's is about four time that of China, which has made remarkable progress, making Japan one of the most fortunate countries in the world. Certain there are many difficulties before us, but we are still in a position in which efforts to address them begin with this advantageous starting point.

However, it is clear that things will not go well if we persist with the same mindset and the way of doing things as before. We are no longer staying in an era where it is fine to simply learn from the example of our seniors.  We need to reinterpret the wisdom of the past within the context of a new era before moving forward. To achieve this, senior generations need to show humility by not dismissing new ideas and patterns of behavior simply because they differ from their own times. At the same time, younger generations need to have depth of thought that clarifies why they need to do things differently, understanding at the same time how things came about with a different rationale in the first place.

For an organization made up of members of various ages to overcome the major changes that await us, it will be crucial to communicate based on thinking that demonstrates humility and depth. In the future, I think we will also see the increasing development of frameworks that enable individuals, not just organizations, to tackle social issues. Even for individuals in seeking solutions, progress cannot be made without mutual understanding among various stakeholders.

Solutions to the difficult social issues we are now seeing will take the combined effort of all generations. With an awareness of diversity, I hope we can boldly move forward from our different positions and stations. When you look around today's world, you can hardly say that Japanese society is seriously lacking the conditions for moving forward.