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Post by jeffolie on Oct 7, 2012 20:04:12 GMT -6
Japan Dying: fails to Decouple w/EU, China Japan rebelled against the bully China and the bully Twaian regarding petroleum rich empty of people islands. Now the bully has beat on Japan: not buying their products, not vacationing in Japan " ... Mitsubishi Motors Corp. (7211) on Oct. 5 reported Chinese sales slumped 63 percent in September from a year earlier, while the Yomiuri newspaper said on the same day, without citing where it received its information, that Toyota Motor Corp.’s deliveries in China fell 50 percent from August. Japan now has another pain ontop of its EU pain. The impact of the bully's tactic are sufficient to hurt an already hurting Japan as Japan withdraws from nuke power resulting in a GDP painful experience and a balance of payments painful experience. Now Japan will have no Chinese buyers for many products ... can Japan add to the dumping on the American Xmas market at the same time China appears to have start cutting prices of its surplus products from the EU ongoing and getting worse Recession? Japan did not DECOUPLE FROM THE EU and suffers from a decline of 22% of its exports plus for the last month China WITHDREW FROM JAPANESE PRODUCTS AND TOURISM... see below DECOUPLING FROM CHINA hurts Japan & China: " ... China’s economy may also be adversely affected, as the unrest may prompt Japanese companies to accelerate the diversification of investment and trade in Asia away from the nation, the JPMorgan economists said. More than 5,000 affiliates of Japanese companies operated on the mainland as of the end of March 2011, employing 1.6 million people, according to a Japanese trade ministry report ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Japan’s China Row May Spur GDP Fall This Quarter, JPMorgan Says Oct 7, 2012 Japan’s territorial spat with China may cause the Japanese economy to contract this quarter and hasten a current account slide as exports decline and Chinese tourism to Japan drops off, according to a JPMorgan report. The dispute will knock 0.8 percentage point off Japan’s gross domestic product in the October-December period, JPMorgan Securities Japan Co. economists Masaaki Kanno and Masamichi Adachi wrote in an e-mailed note yesterday. They now estimate fourth-quarter GDP will contract 0.8 percent from the previous quarter, compared with a previous estimate of no growth. Anti-Japanese protesters are confronted by police as they demonstrate over the disputed islands, known as Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese, in Shenzhen, China on September 16, 2012. . The squabble over islands claimed by Asia’s two largest economies imperils a $340 billion trade relationship ahead of China’s power transition and a possible general election in Japan this year. Carmakers are hardest hit, with Mazda Motor Corp. (7261) deliveries in China last month falling 35 percent. “As its global role has increased, China has become much more important in Japan’s international trade,” Kanno and Adachi wrote. “While there remains a lot of uncertainty ahead and the risk of the dispute escalating cannot be ruled out, we assume that it will diminish in two quarters under the new governments in both countries.” JPMorgan joins Morgan Stanley and BNP Paribas AS in predicting Japan’s economy will shrink for two consecutive quarters through the end of December. The worst diplomatic crisis between the two countries since 2005 may also accelerate a deterioration in Japan’s current account surplus, the JPMorgan economists said, predicting the excess could disappear before the end of 2014. This compares with its estimate in January that the nation would begin posting a deficit in the first quarter of 2015. Exports Fall Japan’s exports fell 5.8 percent in August from a year earlier, the third straight monthly decline, with shipments to China, its largest trading partner, dropping 9.9 percent and those to the European Union slumping 22.9 percent. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. (7211) on Oct. 5 reported Chinese sales slumped 63 percent in September from a year earlier, while the Yomiuri newspaper said on the same day, without citing where it received its information, that Toyota Motor Corp.’s deliveries in China fell 50 percent from August. The dispute has caused cancellations of 40,000 seats on All Nippon Airways (9202) flights between the two countries, the airline said last month. JPMorgan said it is assuming a 70 percent decline in the number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan this quarter, compared with the average first-quarter figures in 2011 and 2012, lowering receipts by 67 billion yen ($852 million), or 38 percent of the expected decline in exports. China’s economy may also be adversely affected, as the unrest may prompt Japanese companies to accelerate the diversification of investment and trade in Asia away from the nation, the JPMorgan economists said. More than 5,000 affiliates of Japanese companies operated on the mainland as of the end of March 2011, employing 1.6 million people, according to a Japanese trade ministry report. www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-07/japan-s-china-row-may-spur-gdp-fall-this-quarter-jpmorgan-says.html
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Post by jeffolie on Oct 8, 2012 11:00:16 GMT -6
China's Demand For Japanese Cars Has Collapsed Reuters|Oct. 8, 2012 Lawmakers seek to block China's Huawei, ZTE inroads in U.S. Nissan to suspend night shifts in China car plants-Nikkei Toyota, Honda to cut working hours, slow line speed-Nikkei Report does not say how long production cuts will last Japan carmakers' plants operating again after China holiday (Adds Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Suzuki comments and background) TOKYO, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Japan's Toyota Motor Corp, Nissan Motor Co and Honda Motor Co plan to slash production in China by roughly half, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Monday, as a territorial row between Asia's two largest economies cuts sales of Japanese cars in the world's biggest auto market. Sales have plunged at Japanese car makers since violent protests and calls for boycotts of Japanese products broke out across China in mid-September over the Japanese government's purchase of a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea from their private owner. Nissan will suspend the night shift at its passenger car factories in China and operate only during the day, the business daily said. Nissan has two passenger car factories in China, in Huadu and Zhengzhou, with two lines each. A Nissan spokesman declined to confirm the report. Toyota and Honda plan to cut China production to about half normal levels by shortening working hours and slowing down the speed of production lines, the Nikkei said without citing a source. A Honda spokeswoman said she was checking the report. A Toyota spokesman could not confirm the details of the report, saying that plants in China were operating again as planned after the country's national holiday period last week and that production was taking placed based on market demand. Toyota's China sales fell about 40 percent in September from a year before to about 50,000 cars, a senior company executive told Reuters last week. The firm is set to officially release its September China sales figures on Tuesday. The Nikkei report did not say how long the output cuts would last. SLOWING GROWTH A spokeswoman for Mazda, which halted production for two extra days in late September before it shutdown factories during the holiday season, said plants in China were operating again but declined to comment on details. A spokesman for Suzuki Motor Corp, which in late September had stopped one of two shifts that it normally runs in China ahead of the holiday season, said production was now back to what it was prior to the holiday. Anti-Japan sentiment across China escalated last month amid a row over a group of uninhabited islets, known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu islands in China, whose nearby waters are thought to hold potentially rich natural gas reserves. T hey have been under Japan's control since 1895. Demonstrators vandalised properties of Japanese companies, including a Toyota outlet in the eastern city of Qingdao that was torched, in the latest flare-up in tensions that have smouldered since the end of World War Two. The latest production adjustments come on top of general cutbacks the Japanese automakers had been making before the protests, as the Chinese economy grew at its slowest pace in more than three years in the second quarter. But the dramatic drop in demand for cars made by Japanese brands, which had a combined share of roughly a fifth of China's passenger car market in August before the protests, has been an unexpected boon for foreign rivals. South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co's China sales climbed 15 percent to 84,188 vehicles last month, while Volkswagen's Audi boosted sales by 20 percent, BMW by 55 percent and Daimler's Mercedes-Benz by 10 percent. Read more: www.businessinsider.com/tag:reuters.com,0000:newsml_L3E8L813N#ixzz28jAsgOix
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Post by jeffolie on Oct 22, 2012 16:49:06 GMT -6
Japan: 20+ Years On, No Dice The lessons are right under our nose, yet we ignore them... TOKYO (AP) — Japan's trade deficit widened in September as exports plunged 10.3 percent from a year earlier, weighed down by Europe's debt crisis and a surge in antagonisms with China that have damaged close economic ties. .. With the risk of recession rising, the Bank of Japan needs to convince markets that it will do anything necessary to pull the economy out of its two-decade old malaise, said Matthew Circosta, an economist with Moody's Analytics in Sydney, Australia. Riiight. Like they haven't done more than any other Central Bank in history to "stimulate" the economy? They haven't dumped hundreds of trillions of Yen in zero and near-zero interest-rate "money" into the economy? They haven't done this for twenty years without effect? Why didn't it work? It didn't work because it can't work. Japan, like the US and other western nations, made promises it cannot keep. These promises would require ridiculous tax rates to fund. Rather than assess those tax rates the government "printed" the money, debasing the currency. Or so they thought. So why is the Yen at 80 instead of 120, where it was? Why has it strengthened? That's simple: Look at monetary base as credit and currency and then tell me what really has happened in Japan. Japan's "growth" was driven by an expansion of leverage, not output. The actual internal productivity of the economy was declining, and on a debt-adjusted basis GDP was failing to expand for a long time before the collapse came, just as is the case here in the United States. And just as here, in the United States, when the trouble showed up the government refused to allow those firms that had made bad bets to be forced by the market to eat them. As here, financial institutions had gotten so entrenched into the economy that they were considered "too big to fail" and were protected at the expense of everything -- and everyone -- else. But Japan had one ace up its sleeve we did not. It had both a favorable trade balance and decades of household saving that it could tap to hold down interest rates and shift the government "stimulus" and "rescues" from. Now that's gone; Japan's personal savings rate went from 15% in the 1980s to just 2% today, below ours. And remember that "personal savings" includes debt payments; it is simply computed as (income less spending.) So why hasn't Japan already gone "boom"? Primarily because Japan still managed to export about 3% of its GDP abroad as of 2010. But that's narrowing too. Japan's "miraculous" ability to continue to run huge fiscal deficits and cover it with ridiculous central bank policy is coming to an end. Both China and Europe are slowing; while there are plenty of people talking about things "getting better" in both places, the fact of the matter is that in Europe especially there has been zero done to actually address the problems that led to the mess there, just as our government is refusing to address the economic issues here. CAT's results this morning underline this; the firm is talking about CapEx having essentially collapsed, and they put forward a pretty gloomy forecast. On the other hand, in their appearance on CNBS they said they didn't expect "recessions" globally over the next year. Best of luck on that one folks; reality shows up in the earnings and once you've cut all the fat what's left is margin compression and actual slowdowns in operations, and both of those flow through directly to the bottom line. market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=212981========================================== Japan Exports Tumble 10% as Maehara Presses BOJ to Ease: Economy Oct 22, 2012 Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda talks about Japan's economy, implications of the yen's strength and the diplomatic dispute with China over islands claimed by both nations. Noda spoke with Bloomberg's Matt Winkler and Brian Fowler in Tokyo yesterday. (This report is a translation of Noda's remarks in Japanese. Source: Bloomberg) . Shipments slid 10.3 percent in September from a year earlier, leaving a trade deficit of 558.6 billion yen ($7 billion), the Finance Ministry said in Tokyo today. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of analysts was for a 9.9 percent export decline. Imports rose 4.1 percent. Economy Minister Seiji Maehara pressed the Bank of Japan for more action yesterday, saying the nation is “falling behind” in monetary stimulus and is at risk of another credit- rating downgrade. The BOJ today cut its view of eight out of nine regional economies while Taiwanese unemployment rose to a one-year high, underscoring weakness across Asia after China’s third-quarter growth was the slowest since 2009. “There’s a high chance that Japan’s economy will have two consecutive quarters of contraction through December,” said Yoshimasa Maruyama, chief economist at Itochu Corp. in Tokyo. “The slump in advanced nations is spreading to emerging economies.” The yen weakened 0.6 percent to 79.78 per dollar as of 5:57 p.m. in Tokyo on speculation that the central bank will expand monetary stimulus. The currency’s decline pushed the Nikkei 225 Stock Average to a 0.1 percent gain, reversing losses of as much as 1.5 percent, by improving the outlook for exporters. China Spat The decline in shipments, exacerbated by a spat with China over islands in the East China Sea, was the biggest since May last year, when the country was rebuilding supply chains wrecked in the March earthquake and tsunami. Shipments to China, the nation’s largest export market, slid 14.1 percent from a year earlier. Exports to the European Union fell 21.1 percent, while those to the U.S. rose 0.9 percent. Auto shipments to all markets dropped 14.6 percent. In a speech in Tokyo today, BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa vowed to conduct “seamless” monetary easing as the Japanese economy is “leveling off.” The banks’ quarterly regional report for October contained the most downgrades since 2009, with only Tohoku escaping because of reconstruction spending in the area hit hardest by last year’s earthquake. Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund’s Deputy Managing Director Naoyuki Shinohara said in an interview that the BOJ has room to ease further, adding international weight to calls for more action by the central bank. Global Easing Paul Sheard, chief global economist at ratings company Standard & Poor’s, said this month that the BOJ’s balance sheet has increased by about 36 percent since August 2008, compared with about 209 percent for the U.S. Federal Reserve and about 329 percent for the Bank of England. JPMorgan Securities Japan Co. and UBS AG expect the central bank to add to easing at its Oct. 30 board meeting. Taiwan’s unemployment rate increased to 4.3 percent in September, the statistics bureau said in Taipei today. In Australia, the government announced spending cuts to help deliver a budget surplus. Elsewhere in the Asia Pacific region, Hong Kong reported higher-than-estimated inflation of 3.8 percent for September, while economic releases around the world include inflation in Poland and retail sales in Mexico. Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) and Nissan Motor Co. (7201), Japan’s two largest carmakers, reported their steepest drops in China sales since at least 2008 in September, as today’s data showed that Japan’s auto exports to the country fell 44.5 percent. Contraction Seen The territorial dispute will knock 0.8 percentage point off Japan’s gross domestic product in the October-December period, JPMorgan said on Oct. 6. The brokerage, along with Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc., expects the economy to contract in the third and fourth quarters of this year. The trade deficit was the first in the month of September since 1979 and compared with economists’ median estimate for a 547.9 billion yen shortfall. The rise in imports was higher than a 2.9 percent gain estimated by economists as the country bought more oil and liquefied natural gas. “The reason behind the increase is very simple,” said Shohei Setoh, a Tokyo-based manager for a crude oil trading group at JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp. “Everyone rushed to pass customs,” before a tax increase on oil imports that began Oct. 1. The government last week said it would draw up spending measures to counter a slowdown. A yen around 5 percent from last year’s postwar high of 75.35 against the dollar is hurting manufacturers such as Sony Corp (6758), making exports more expensive and reducing the value of repatriated earnings. Assessment Downgraded Japan’s government this month cut its economic assessment for a third straight month, the longest streak since the 2009 global recession. Data earlier this month showed falling machinery orders and shrinking factory capacity use in August. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the world economy will grow this year at its weakest pace since 2009, saying Oct. 9 there are “alarmingly high” risks of a steeper slowdown. Economy Minister Maehara said yesterday that Japan needs more monetary easing and policy efforts to spur growth. “There are fiscal-easing moves worldwide, but on a monetary basis Japan is falling short,” Maehara said in an interview with Fuji Television. While “easing is not a panacea,” without that and policy moves “Japan’s sovereign credit rating may face a downgrade,” he said. Moody’s Investors Service cut Japan’s credit rating one level to Aa3 in August last year, citing a build-up in government debt since the 2009 global recession. S&P has had a negative outlook on the country’s AA- rating since April last year. Public support for Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda fell to 18 percent, the lowest level since he took office in September 2011, the Asahi Newspaper reported in Tokyo today, citing an Oct. 20-21 survey. www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-22/japan-exports-fall-at-fastest-pace-since-post-earthquake-slump.html
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Post by jeffolie on Oct 22, 2012 17:20:56 GMT -6
No, Soaring Deficits Do Not Mean Record Corporate Profits: In Fact Just The Opposite 10/22/2012 Over the weekend there appears to have been more confusion about pretty much everything finance related by aspiring CTRL-V majors-cum-'market experts.' In this specific case, the correlation between the soaring US deficit is magically supposed to imply the causation of surging corporate profits. Standalone this would be wonderful, because in a socialist utopia thought experiment, where one could hit infinite deficits funded by some magic MMT money tree, corporation would make, well, an infinite amount of profits, and would be an incentive for the government to spend itself to oblivion. And everyone would be happy right: infinite corporate profits means at least some trickle down wealth, and infinity even minus a big number is still infinity, meaning full employment for everyone. Hence utopia. Idiocy of this conclusion aside, the bigger problem with making the biggest rookie mistake in finance (and statistics), namely confusing correlation with causation, is that it is, as usual, 100% wrong when presented with one counterfactual. And when it comes to counterfactuals of soaring deficits, one always goes to the place that has "been there and done all of that" before. Japan. Why Japan? Because just like the US, Japan has seen its share of soaring budget deficits in both absolute terms and as a % of GDP. In fact, since the 1960s, the deficit as a % of GDP number has gone up, up, up. www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2012/10/Japan%20Budget%20Deficit.jpgSo how have corporate profits performed in Japan during this period of "deficit spending into oblivion" utopia starting in 1960 and ending, well, never? After all recall that Japan will surpass one quadrillion in sovereign debt this year, and well over 200% in debt/GDP. Well, as a paper by Jim Montier (which we dissected previously) showed early this year, corporate profits in Japan have done poorly to say the least. Below is the Bloomberg data for the ratio for Japanese profits to sales for all industries. www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2012/10/Japan%20Profit%20Margins_1.jpgIn fact when plotting the two on the same chart and inverting the corporate profits axis, we get... www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2012/10/Japan%20Deficit%20vs%20Profits.jpgIt should be clear to everyone, except for the most confused journalism majors, that if the correlation of soaring deficits did result in rising profits, than the trendline of the second chart above would be up. Not down. Alas, it is down. And as the third chart shows, in Japan, over the past 40 years, soaring deficits have actually resulted in collapsing profit margins. Which incidentally, is how one refutes amateurish correlation=causation CPM click magnets. But wait, there is more. Because the question still stands: why did Japanese profits decline for over 40 years during a time when the Japanese government was spending like a drunken sailor. We explained it previously in detail, but here it is again in a nutshell: •in an environment of soaring liquidity and free money, the hurdle rate on new investments collapses, as does the requirement to invest in CapEx, both growth and maintenance. In fact, as we have shown over the past year, the age of the global asset base has hit a record high across the world, both in the developed and developing countries, leading to record low return on assets! (and record debt encumbrance, but that's a different story). On record old assets. And since companies are forced to dividend cash to shareholders at a record pace (in lieu of fixed income in a ZIRP environment), there is less and less cash left to support CapEx spending. So why did cyclical (not secular) profitability in the US spike in the past several years? Two simple reasons: i) debt refinancings into an ever cheaper cost of capital, which however has now hit a floor as very little incremental balance sheet benefit is left for companies, both investment grade and high yield, and ii) SG&A reductions, as more and more companies lay off thousands, or merely replace their fixed cost structure with a cheaper employee base (converting from full-time to part-time workers is one example, and one we have documented extensively). Finally, as we showed last quarter, corporate profitability has already peaked, and at in Q3 will post its second consecutive quarter of Y/Y declines. In the meantime, we believe it is unnecessary to demonstrate that US deficit spending did not decline at all in recent months, and in fact has at worst kept up at the same pace. The key point is that it has been the Fed's easy money policies that have resulted in cyclical bouts of corporate profitability, whose end has usually coincided with the period of easy money. Now, however, the Fed has no choice but to keep ZIRP for ever, even as corporate profits have once again started declining, and there is no lever the Fed, or anyone, certainly not the US Treasury, can pull to push them higher. In other words, an absolute dead end, and not to mention record deficits do not drive record profits, which was the original idiotic contention. So instead corporates get a 2-3 year profit boost benefiting shareholders who get to cash out, while in return America has a record debt load to show for it. Sounds like a grand exchange... if only one lives in a socialist utopia, as taught by the Columbia school of journalism or comparable, and has no idea how every single instance of socialism ends when the other people's money runs out. www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-22/no-soaring-deficits-do-not-mean-record-corporate-profits-fact-just-opposite
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Post by jeffolie on Dec 17, 2012 8:57:50 GMT -6
Japan conservatives win landslide election victory December 16, 2012 TOKYO -- The conservative party that dominated post-war Japan is back in power after a three-year absence, in a landslide election victory Sunday that will result in hawkish Shinzo Abe returning as prime minister. Abe, 58, who served in the post once before, is likely to pursue a tougher stance toward China and prevent the nation from abandoning nuclear energy. The conservative Liberal Democratic Party was projected by NHK Television to win 291 out of 480 seats in Japan’s lower house, while its ally, the New Komeito Party, had 30. That would give them the two-third majority needed to overrule the upper house, perhaps breaking deadlocks that have long stymied Japanese governments. The Liberal Democrats held a near monopoly on power in Japan from 1955 to 2009, when they were beaten by the Democratic Party of Japan. This time around, the Democratic Party was projected to win only 56 seats. Prime Minister Yoshiko Noda resigned as head of the party Sunday night, hours after the polls closed, conceding the election results were a “disappointment.” The remarkable comeback of the conservative establishment reflects the high level of national anxiety about economic stagnation and falling behind China. “They're more experienced and are a better fit at leading,” said Takashi Yamada, 38, an office worker in Tokyo, explaining why he voted for the Liberal Democrats. Last time around he opted for a third party opposing nuclear power. The Liberal Democrats’ return could exacerbate tensions over contested islands that have become a lightning rod for nationalist outbursts in Asia. Abe supports revisions in Japan’s post-World War II constitution to loosen limits on the military and has promised a strong defense of Japanese sovereignty. “A good Japan-China relationship is in the national interest for both countries. Both sides need to recognize that. I think there is a problem that China lacks that understanding,’’ Abe told Japanese television after the polls closed. www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-japan-conservatives-landslide-election-20121216,0,5391869.story
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Post by jeffolie on Jan 8, 2013 11:32:02 GMT -6
[The Truth About Cars Blog] Japanese Cars Continue To Suffer In China January 7, 2013 Sales of Japanese car in the world’s largest car market, China, continue to be impacted by the war of words (and occasionally sledge hammers) over uninhabited rocks in the East China sea. Sales are inching up a bit after customers dare to come back to the showrooms of Japanese brands. Sales Of Japanese Carmakers In China December Full Year 2012, Units YoY Toyota -15.9% 840,500 -4.9% Nissan -24.0% 1,181,500 -5.3% Honda -19.2% 598,577 -3.1% Data: Companies via Reuters, Nikkei This is the way it looks in December. Sales are still down by the double digits for the month. Sales are down only slightly for the year, but this is because the trouble started in September, and before that, sales were good. The next months likely will look similar, with a slight uptrend. It will be a while until Japanese carmakers have regained trust and market share in China. Data as reported by Reuters and The Nikkei. In Japan, the numbers will look different. Japan is on a fiscal year, which goes from April through March. The current fiscal will be impacted by seven months of slow sales in China. www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/01/japanese-cars-continue-to-suffer-in-china/
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Post by jeffolie on Jan 8, 2013 16:58:05 GMT -6
China-Japan Dispute Takes Rising Toll of Asia’s Top Economies Jan 8, 2013 . “The spats have become increasingly costly as Japan’s dependence on China as an export market has risen,” said Tony Nash, a Singapore-based managing director at IHS Inc., which provides research and analytics for industries including financial companies. “Nationalism around the issue has resulted in lower demand for Japanese products in China and even Chinese firms sourcing products from Korean suppliers.” As China’s confidence in asserting its territorial claims has grown, and trade between the two nations has tripled since 2000 to more than $300 billion, the commercial cost of failing to resolve the dispute keeps rising. The latest flare-up came after property developer Kunioki Kurihara sold three of the islands to the Japanese government for 2.05 billion yen ($23 million) in September, a transaction Xi Jinping, the new head of the Chinese Communist Party, called “a farce.” The fallout from the sale may have cut Japan’s growth in the latest quarter by about one percentage point, JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimated. That would be enough to keep the economy in recession after two quarters of contraction up to Sept. 30. Gross domestic product may have shrunk an annualized 0.5 percent in the final three months of 2012, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. Output Slump The standoff over the islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China contributed to declines in Japan’s shipments to China for six months through November. Japan’s industrial output fell 1.7 percent in November, to the lowest level since the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake. With each round of political disputes, the economic effect has grown. When then-Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited a Tokyo shrine where war criminals are among those honored in 2005, Chinese people and politicians protested. Yet trade between the two nations rose more than 12 percent that year. Things got worse in 2010, when a Chinese fishing boat and a Japanese Coast Guard vessel collided in contested waters. China stopped granting export licenses to Japan for rare earth metals, necessary for automobile and electronics industries. The licenses were resumed about a week later after Japan released the detained captain of the vessel. Biggest Effect This year’s row has had the biggest effect so far, said Professor June Teufel Dreyer, a specialist in Chinese politics at the University of Miami in Florida. After the Japanese government bought the three islands, angry Chinese boycotted Japanese products and smashed Japanese shops in China. “This has really changed things, unquestionably; it is not a blip,” said Dreyer. “China will continue to push its claims to sovereignty until Beijing gets what it wants.” The islands offer the prospect of rich fishing grounds, potential oil reserves and a strategic military outpost in the sea between China, Japan and Taiwan. That’s overshadowed economic ties that Jesper Koll, head of equity research at JPMorgan in Tokyo, called “a match made in heaven.” “Japan has intellectual property, brands and capital, while China has people, markets and purchasing power,” said Koll, in an interview. Ishihara’s Offer The latest spat began in April when then-Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said he planned to use public money to purchase Kurihara’s islands. Ishihara, 80, is a longstanding critic of China, so the national government stepped in to buy the islands instead, in a failed attempt to defuse Chinese anger. China’s official Xinhua news agency on Dec. 2 criticized the U.S. Senate’s approval of an amendment to show the islands fall under a U.S.-Japan defense treaty, calling it a “disturbing message” to the world that the Senate is seeking an escalation of tensions between China and Japan. “The row has changed the landscape of China-Japan relations,” said Taylor Fravel, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in Chinese politics. “As a territory dispute, it’s prone to spirals of escalation.” The election victory of Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, which returned to power in a landslide victory in December, has further stoked the conflict. In its manifesto, the LDP proposed strengthening the nation’s military and said it would consider stationing officials on the islands, prompting an editorial in the China Daily newspaper on Nov. 26 that described the manifesto as “dangerous.” Two days before the election, China sent an 11-page report to the United Nations arguing that the geology of the continental shelf makes the islands a natural part of China. Lose-Lose “As Japan’s politics turn decisively to the right, more and frequent spats between Japan and China are expected,” said Liu Li-Gang, chief economist for Greater China at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. who used to work for the World Bank. “Both economies will lose in the end. Japan will lose a big market, and China will not be able to leverage on Japan’s technology and investment for growth.” Japanese automakers’ share of the Chinese market slumped to 14 percent in November from about 23 percent before September, Xu Changming, a director at China’s State Information Center, said on Nov. 29. Toyota Motor Corp. (7203), Japan’s biggest carmaker, said in November that output in China fell the most in at least a decade, while Nissan Motor Co. (7201) reported the biggest output decline since at least 2009. All Nippon Airways Co. (9202), Japan’s largest airline, had 46,000 seat cancellations on flights between September and November because of the dispute, spokesman Ryosei Nomura said. The carrier forecast the row will cut sales by about 10 billion yen. Uniqlo Closures Fearing attacks from anti-Japan protesters, Fast Retailing Co. (9983), seller of the Uniqlo casual wear brand, temporarily shut 60 of its 169 stores in China from Sept. 14-24, according to spokeswoman Yukie Sakaguchi. “We closed stores in areas that could have been dangerous, such as near the Japanese embassy in Beijing,” she said. Anti-Japan protesters attacked three department stores in Hunan province run by Heiwado Co. (8276), a supermarket operator based in Shiga prefecture, central Japan, forcing the company to close its stores there for more than a month and incur losses of around 500 million yen, according to spokesman Tomoharu Tsuda. “They smashed windows, broke shutters and wrecked products in the stores,” Tsuda said. “This could well happen again.” The islands were largely ignored from the end of World War II until 1969, when a United Nations commission said the surrounding seabed may be “extremely rich” in oil. That brought sovereignty claims in the following years by China, Japan and Taiwan. Oil Prize “As existing resources are exhausted, the importance of oil and gas resources in the South China Sea will increase and that’s one of the key reasons why this issue is not going away,” said Hao Hong, managing director of research at Bank of Communications Co., China’s fifth-largest lender by assets. China is “stronger than Japan militarily and economically.” Underlying the border dispute is a history of strained diplomatic ties between the two countries dating back to the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and atrocities carried out in the country by some Japanese troops. With political capital to be gained by both sides from courting nationalist fervor -- Abe visited the same shrine as Koizumi in October -- lawmakers may manipulate the row to fit their agendas despite the economic costs, said Ding Xueliang, a professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, who teaches contemporary Chinese politics. ‘Convenient Target’ “Japan is always a convenient target for the Chinese government to use to divert domestic anger,” Ding said. “Compared to the political values, the trade values with Japan are secondary.” China would be willing to accept a 30 percent reduction in trade with Japan before it would back down, whereas Japan’s pain threshold is about 20 percent, Ding estimated. One possible course follows the policy proposed by the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, said Martin Schulz, a senior economist at Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo. “China knows it will never get the islands, and Japan knows that China will never let go,” said Schulz, who has done research for the Bank of Japan. “Deng Xiaoping’s stance from the 1970s, to keep it quiet until joint economic cooperation in the area becomes possible, remains the only solution.” As the current stand-off pushes Japan and China to reduce reliance on each other, U.S. relations with both sides could benefit, according to Liu at ANZ Bank. Asean Market “The U.S. will become more important to both China and Japan and will play a big balancing role between Japan and China,” Liu said. “Japan may increase its investment in Vietnam and other economies” in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Exports from Japan to 10-member Asean grew nearly 50 percent in the decade through 2011, according to finance ministry data. “Japanese investors will accelerate their strategy of diversifying investments to the rest of Asia,” said Tao Dong, head of Asia economics excluding Japan at Credit Suisse Group AG in Hong Kong. “We see increased cases of Japanese investment in Vietnam and the Philippines and there’s lots more to come.” Pledged Spending Japanese companies have spent or plan to spend more than $10 billion since January 2011 on acquisitions in the Asean bloc, Bloomberg data show. In November, Kirin Holdings Co. bid $2.2 billion for Singapore-based Fraser & Neave Ltd.’s food and beverages unit. China, which also has disagreements with Asean nations over islands in the South China Sea, was warned last month by Vietnam not to apply economic force to settle disputes. “Japanese business influence in China will start to decline” as China invites more European and U.S. investment, ANZ’s Liu said in an interview in Tokyo. “Japanese firms’ space in China could be limited in the future.” Still, the legacy of decades of investment in China make it unlikely that Japanese companies will withdraw, said Nash at IHS. “This is not an either-or issue,” Nash wrote in an e-mail. “Firms will stay in China and they will invest in Southeast Asia and other places. It’s hard for Japanese exports to move totally away from China and it’s hard for Chinese OEMs to move totally away from Japanese components.” Japanese companies such as Nissan employed 1.6 million people at subsidiaries in China in the fiscal year ended March 2011, according to the Japanese trade ministry. As Richard Koo, chief economist at Nomura Research Institute Ltd., wrote in a Dec. 11 report: “No matter how unpardonable China’s behavior over the issue of Senkaku Islands may be, as a practical matter Japan needs to proceed carefully given the magnitude of its Japanese investments in the country.” www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-08/china-japan-dispute-takes-rising-toll-of-asia-s-top-economies.html
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Post by jeffolie on Jan 25, 2013 17:51:01 GMT -6
January 25, 2013 Yen Set for 11th Weekly Drop; Japan Records Largest Trade Deficit in History After a couple of headfakes higher on the daily charts Yen Set for 11th Weekly Drop. The yen headed for a record stretch of weekly losses against the dollar as data showing a decline in Japanese consumer prices added to the case for further monetary stimulus from the central bank. The Bank of Japan announced open-ended easing and a 2 percent inflation target this week. The Japanese currency remained weaker after touching a 2 1/2-year low as Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said he will make “considerable efforts” to reach the price target. The Dollar Index rose before U.S. data forecast to show home sales increased. Consumer PricesJapanese consumer prices excluding fresh food fell 0.2 percent in December from a year earlier, the statistics bureau reported in Tokyo today, the seventh decline in eight months. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office last month, has called for “bold monetary policy” to beat deflation and drive the yen lower. The BOJ on Jan. 22 doubled its inflation target to 2 percent and announced open-ended asset buying from 2014. BOJ board members said Japan’s economy is weakening and the central bank will continue with “powerful” monetary easing, according to the minutes released today of the December meeting when it expanded its asset-purchase program by 10 trillion yen ($110 billion). Shirakawa reiterated in remarks in Tokyo today that while the central bank is conducting aggressive easing, achieving the price-gain target isn’t easy. Japan Records Largest Trade Deficit in History The Financial Times reports Japan Records Largest Trade Deficit in History Japan’s trade deficit nearly tripled in 2012 to Y6.93tn ($77bn), an unprecedented shortfall for the traditional export powerhouse that could colour debate about the so-called currency wars as Tokyo pursues policies that push down the value of the yen. The sharp expansion of the deficit, from Y2.56tn in 2011, is a reminder of the increasingly complex challenges facing Japan’s economy and its new government, which has promised aggressive measures to end a two-decade malaise. The monetary shift was crystallised on Tuesday when the BoJ set a target of 2 per cent inflation, but has alarmed some of Japan’s trading partners. Germany, the UK and China have warned that efforts to weaken the yen could lead to a spiral of competitive devaluations among major economies – a so-called currency war. On Thursday Mr Abe said the government would continue to consider a possible revision to the Bank of Japan law to ensure the central bank keeps easing monetary policy. “Given the need for continued bold monetary easing, I want to keep in mind” the potential legal revision, Mr Abe said in an interview with Kyodo News. Thursday’s trade data highlighted just how sharply the country’s global trade position has deteriorated. In December, exports were down 5.8 per cent compared with the same month a year earlier, while imports rose 1.9 per cent. Exports to China, where some consumers have been shunning Japanese products amid an international dispute over control of islands in the East China Sea, fell 15.8 per cent, but shipments to Europe and the US were also down. Currency WarsWithout a doubt, currency wars have ramped up to a new high. It's hard to say when or where this stops, but those who thought Shinzo Abe was bluffing, need think again.However, and as I have said repeatedly, a weaker yen will not do Japan any good. There is every potential for the decline in the Yen to quickly get out of control, and I suspect it will. When it does, Abe may not be able to stop a devastating slide that is likely to harm consumers more than it helps Japanese manufacturers. Be careful of what you wish. globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/01/yen-set-for-11th-weekly-drop-japan.html
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Post by jeffolie on Feb 14, 2013 17:09:16 GMT -6
February 13, 2013 Japan Contracts Third Straight Quarter; No Escape Economists predicted an end to the recession in Japan. However, economists were wrong again as Japan fourth-quarter GDP shows economy still in recessionJapan's economy contracted for the third consecutive quarter in October-December, showing the country is struggling to escape from a mild recession and adding weight to the new government's push for radical policy steps to revive growth. Gross domestic product (GDP) fell 0.1 percent in October-December from the previous quarter, compared with the median forecast of 0.1 percent expansion, according to a Reuters poll. Economics Minister Akira Amari said while the economy was still showing some weakness, it was likely to resume moderate recovery helped by monetary easing, stimulus spending and an expected pick-up in global growth. On an annualized basis, the economy contracted 0.4 percent, Cabinet Office data showed on Thursday. Economists had expected a 0.5 percent annualized increase. Private consumption rose 0.4 percent from the previous quarter versus the median forecast for a 0.5 percent increase. Capital expenditure fell 2.6 percent, more than the median estimate for a 1.8 percent decline, marking the fourth straight quarter of decline. A $117 billion stimulus package is likely to pass parliament in coming weeks. No EscapeThose are not good numbers. Moreover, given Japan's massive debt-to-GDP ratio, there is virtually no escape for the predicament Japan is in. If you are looking for who and what to blame, the answer is simple: Keynesian and Monetarist stimulus foolishness Read more at globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/02/japan-contracts-third-straight-quarter.html#3lf7D1Owwzw81VM1.99
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Post by jeffolie on Jul 31, 2013 16:43:28 GMT -6
Japan’s Industrial Production Drops at the Fastest Pace Since the Fukushima Disaster 07/31/2013 Japan experienced a surprisingly strong decline in industrial production in June, which many view as temporary. www.financialsense.com/sites/default/files/users/u783/images/2013/Industrial-Production-2007-2013.jpgIndustrial Production 2007 to 2013 Japan Industrial Production (source: Econoday.com) The Japan Times: - Industrial production fell in June by the most since March 2011, when the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami struck, as automakers cut output after a gain the previous month. Output declined 3.3 percent in June from May, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said Tuesday, marking a steeper fall than any economist forecast in a Bloomberg survey in which the median of 29 estimates was for a 1.5 percent drop. In May, output climbed the most since December 2011. Production slid 4.8 percent in June from a year earlier. Tuesday’s report adds to the challenges facing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who must decide whether to proceed with the consumption tax increase even though it could slow down a rebound in the economy. Weakening production would undermine his calls for higher wages to bolster his reflation efforts after temporary boosts from monetary and fiscal stimulus. Indeed this adds to the concerns described earlier (see post). Japan's new government needs to improve wage growth in order to keep up with rising prices. Without stable pay increases - which have been declining for years in large part due to demographics and Japan Inc.'s approach to cost adjustments - reaching sustainable inflation rate will be difficult. Yet higher wages could also reduce the competitiveness of Japanese companies. That is why this sudden drop in industrial production, if not corrected in July, could become an issue. Update: This morning the report on July Markit Manufacturing PMI for Japan came out. Once again, the number was surprisingly weak. www.financialsense.com/sites/default/files/users/u783/images/2013/Japan-Manufacturing-PMI.jpgJapan Manufacturing PMI Source: Econoday Markit: - “After a promising Q2, Japan’s manufacturing expansion slowed in July. The decelerating growth of output and new orders, combined with falling employment, painted a less encouraging picture than that indicated by previous surveys. Nevertheless, July marked the fifth consecutive month of expansion in the manufacturing sector. “The weakness of the yen continued to act as a mixed blessing for Japanese producers; with exporters benefiting from improved international competitiveness, but importers suffering as their input costs continued to rise.”Now that we have some indications about July, maybe the drop in June industrial output wasn't just a temporary blip. The Nikkei dropped 200 points in response as investors begin to reassess the sustainability of the recent pace of growth. www.financialsense.com/contributors/sober-look/japans-industrial-production-drops-at-fastest-pace-since-fukushima-disaster
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Post by jeffolie on Aug 7, 2013 10:16:13 GMT -6
In this issue by Phoenix Capital Research on 08/07/2013 Japan is in a massive triangle pattern. Stocks on the edge of a cliff. What's coming our way? More! August 7, 2013 Japan Is Flashing a Warning For What is Coming Our Way The markets fell yesterday despite the Fed pumping over $5 billion into the system. The primary reason is that the Fed is once again talking about tapering QE. There’s also the uncertainty of who the next Fed Chairman will be (Larry Summers’ odds of filling the roll can be correlated to the dips in the market as Summers has been critical of QE in the past). Stocks are on the edge of a small cliff. It we take it out we could go to 1650 in a heartbeat. And it we take out 1625, then look out, we’ll likely wipe out several months of gains in a short period. gainspainscapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/sc-11.png?inf_contact_key=272b11afd000b9a81cf4555868ff9af5cccba1dd33eeba306c66f9e9314ae805Speaking of which, the Nikkei has formed a triangle pattern. Watch this formation closely. Japan is leading the US as far as markets are concerned. A breakdown here would signal a major correction in US stocks. gainspainscapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/sc1.png?inf_contact_key=a5d547d4ec7d1b96a8be59714e6d7b1965389fdd3b02f11af4322dc426b3ae34 In the US, the Fed continues to argue that money printing and QE can generate growth. There is literally no evidence of this in history. Japan and the UK have both engaged in massive QE programs to little or no effect. However, the Fed is terrified of losing control of the system, so it wants to continue doing anything no matter how futile in order to maintain the appearance of confidence. God forbid anyone figures out the emperor has no clothes… Folks, there is no other way to put this... the markets are in a massive bubble. And when it bursts, things will get ugly very FAST. www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-08-07/japan-flashes-warning-whats-coming-our-way
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Post by jeffolie on Sept 30, 2013 6:00:24 GMT -6
my jeffolie view: the TOP IS IN in Japan's boost by devaluing the yen as impacting the stock market in Japan ... the Japanese stock indexes lead the American indexes
================================================ Japan manufacturing slows, but trend remains good Monday - 9/30/2013 TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese manufacturing slipped in August, but the government said Monday that output is expected to accelerate in coming months. The overall improvement since late last year could lend support for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's proposal to raise the sales tax in April. Industrial output fell 0.7 percent from the previous month after a 3.4 percent jump in July, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. But the ministry also said manufacturing "shows signs of picking up at a moderate pace" and that it expected to jump 5.2 percent in September and grow more in October. The Japanese government has long planned to raise the sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent in April to reduce its massive debt and meet higher social security costs as the country's population ages. Abe's Cabinet is expected to agree formally Tuesday to move forward with the plan. The recovery in manufacturing is "a good sign of a sustained recovery and good enough (for) Abe to move ahead with the sales tax hike," said Junko Nishioka, chief economist at RBS Securities Japan. Any tax hike risks derailing the modest economic recovery that Abe has engineered with the Bank of Japan since taking office in December. The hope is that the economy will be strong enough to withstand a tax increase next year. In one encouraging sign, retails sales rose 1.1 percent in August from the same month a year ago, the ministry said. A key economic report, the Bank of Japan's quarterly "tankan" survey of business sentiment, is due out Tuesday before the Cabinet meets. Japan's economy, the world's third-largest, has generally been improving. In the second quarter, it expanded at an annual pace of 3.8 percent on higher spending on private and public investment. www.federalnewsradio.com/314/3468197/Japan-manufacturing-slows-but-trend-remains-good
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Post by jeffolie on Oct 20, 2013 15:14:41 GMT -6
Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex? What happens to a country when its young people stop having sex? Japan is finding out 19 October 2013 Arm’s length: 45% of Japanese women aged 16-24 are ‘not interested in or despise sexual contact’. More than a quarter of men feel the same way. Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means "love" in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did "all the usual things" like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Aoyama, 52, is trying to cure what Japan's media calls sekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome". Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" – and it's partly the government's fault. The sign outside her building says "Clinic". She greets me in yoga pants and fluffy animal slippers, cradling a Pekingese dog whom she introduces as Marilyn Monroe. In her business pamphlet, she offers up the gloriously random confidence that she visited North Korea in the 1990s and squeezed the testicles of a top army general. It doesn't say whether she was invited there specifically for that purpose, but the message to her clients is clear: she doesn't judge. Inside, she takes me upstairs to her "relaxation room" – a bedroom with no furniture except a double futon. "It will be quiet in here," she says. Aoyama's first task with most of her clients is encouraging them "to stop apologising for their own physical existence". The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) Although there has long been a pragmatic separation of love and sex in Japan – a country mostly free of religious morals – sex fares no better. A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way. Many people who seek her out, says Aoyama, are deeply confused. "Some want a partner, some prefer being single, but few relate to normal love and marriage." However, the pressure to conform to Japan's anachronistic family model of salaryman husband and stay-at-home wife remains. "People don't know where to turn. They're coming to me because they think that, by wanting something different, there's something wrong with them." Official alarmism doesn't help. Fewer babies were born here in 2012 than any year on record. (This was also the year, as the number of elderly people shoots up, that adult incontinence pants outsold baby nappies in Japan for the first time.) Kunio Kitamura, head of the JFPA, claims the demographic crisis is so serious that Japan "might eventually perish into extinction". Japan's under-40s won't go forth and multiply out of duty, as postwar generations did. The country is undergoing major social transition after 20 years of economic stagnation. It is also battling against the effects on its already nuclear-destruction-scarred psyche of 2011's earthquake, tsunami and radioactive meltdown. There is no going back. "Both men and women say to me they don't see the point of love. They don't believe it can lead anywhere," says Aoyama. "Relationships have become too hard."
Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. Japanese men have become less career-driven, and less solvent, as lifetime job security has waned. Japanese women have become more independent and ambitious. Yet conservative attitudes in the home and workplace persist. Japan's punishing corporate world makes it almost impossible for women to combine a career and family, while children are unaffordable unless both parents work. Cohabiting or unmarried parenthood is still unusual, dogged by bureaucratic disapproval.Aoyama says the sexes, especially in Japan's giant cities, are "spiralling away from each other". Lacking long-term shared goals, many are turning to what she terms "Pot Noodle love" – easy or instant gratification, in the form of casual sex, short-term trysts and the usual technological suspects: online porn, virtual-reality "girlfriends", anime cartoons. Or else they're opting out altogether and replacing love and sex with other urban pastimes. Some of Aoyama's clients are among the small minority who have taken social withdrawal to a pathological extreme. They are recovering hikikomori ("shut-ins" or recluses) taking the first steps to rejoining the outside world, otaku (geeks), and long-term parasaito shingurus (parasite singles) who have reached their mid-30s without managing to move out of home. (Of the estimated 13 million unmarried people in Japan who currently live with their parents, around three million are over the age of 35.) "A few people can't relate to the opposite sex physically or in any other way. They flinch if I touch them," she says. "Most are men, but I'm starting to see more women." Aoyama cites one man in his early 30s, a virgin, who can't get sexually aroused unless he watches female robots on a game similar to Power Rangers. "I use therapies, such as yoga and hypnosis, to relax him and help him to understand the way that real human bodies work." Sometimes, for an extra fee, she gets naked with her male clients – "strictly no intercourse" – to physically guide them around the female form. Keen to see her nation thrive, she likens her role in these cases to that of the Edo period courtesans, or oiran, who used to initiate samurai sons into the art of erotic pleasure. Aversion to marriage and intimacy in modern life is not unique to Japan. Nor is growing preoccupation with digital technology. But what endless Japanese committees have failed to grasp when they stew over the country's procreation-shy youth is that, thanks to official shortsightedness, the decision to stay single often makes perfect sense. This is true for both sexes, but it's especially true for women. "Marriage is a woman's grave," goes an old Japanese saying that refers to wives being ignored in favour of mistresses. For Japanese women today, marriage is the grave of their hard-won careers.I meet Eri Tomita, 32, over Saturday morning coffee in the smart Tokyo district of Ebisu. Tomita has a job she loves in the human resources department of a French-owned bank. A fluent French speaker with two university degrees, she avoids romantic attachments so she can focus on work. "A boyfriend proposed to me three years ago. I turned him down when I realised I cared more about my job. After that, I lost interest in dating. It became awkward when the question of the future came up." Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me." Around 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs after their first child. The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Japan as one of the world's worst nations for gender equality at work. Social attitudes don't help. Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or "devil wives". In a telling Japanese ballet production of Bizet's Carmen a few years ago, Carmen was portrayed as a career woman who stole company secrets to get ahead and then framed her lowly security-guard lover José. Her end was not pretty. Prime minister Shinzo Abe recently trumpeted long-overdue plans to increase female economic participation by improving conditions and daycare, but Tomita says things would have to improve "dramatically" to compel her to become a working wife and mother. "I have a great life. I go out with my girl friends – career women like me – to French and Italian restaurants. I buy stylish clothes and go on nice holidays. I love my independence." Tomita sometimes has one-night stands with men she meets in bars, but she says sex is not a priority, either. "I often get asked out by married men in the office who want an affair. They assume I'm desperate because I'm single." She grimaces, then shrugs. "Mendokusai."
Mendokusai translates loosely as "Too troublesome" or "I can't be bothered". It's the word I hear both sexes use most often when they talk about their relationship phobia. Romantic commitment seems to represent burden and drudgery, from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan to the uncertain expectations of a spouse and in-laws. And the centuries-old belief that the purpose of marriage is to produce children endures. Japan's Institute of Population and Social Security reports an astonishing 90% of young women believe that staying single is "preferable to what they imagine marriage to be like".The sense of crushing obligation affects men just as much. Satoru Kishino, 31, belongs to a large tribe of men under 40 who are engaging in a kind of passive rebellion against traditional Japanese masculinity. Amid the recession and unsteady wages, men like Kishino feel that the pressure on them to be breadwinning economic warriors for a wife and family is unrealistic. They are rejecting the pursuit of both career and romantic success. "It's too troublesome," says Kishino, when I ask why he's not interested in having a girlfriend. "I don't earn a huge salary to go on dates and I don't want the responsibility of a woman hoping it might lead to marriage." Japan's media, which has a name for every social kink, refers to men like Kishino as "herbivores" or soshoku danshi (literally, "grass-eating men"). Kishino says he doesn't mind the label because it's become so commonplace. He defines it as "a heterosexual man for whom relationships and sex are unimportant". The phenomenon emerged a few years ago with the airing of a Japanese manga-turned-TV show. The lead character in Otomen ("Girly Men") was a tall martial arts champion, the king of tough-guy cool. Secretly, he loved baking cakes, collecting "pink sparkly things" and knitting clothes for his stuffed animals. To the tooth-sucking horror of Japan's corporate elders, the show struck a powerful chord with the generation they spawned. Satoru Kishino, 31 ‘I find women attractive but I’ve learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated’: Satoru Kishino, 31. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner/Panos Pictures Kishino, who works at a fashion accessories company as a designer and manager, doesn't knit. But he does like cooking and cycling, and platonic friendships. "I find some of my female friends attractive but I've learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated," he says. "I can't be bothered." Romantic apathy aside, Kishino, like Tomita, says he enjoys his active single life. Ironically, the salaryman system that produced such segregated marital roles – wives inside the home, husbands at work for 20 hours a day – also created an ideal environment for solo living. Japan's cities are full of conveniences made for one, from stand-up noodle bars to capsule hotels to the ubiquitous konbini (convenience stores), with their shelves of individually wrapped rice balls and disposable underwear. These things originally evolved for salarymen on the go, but there are now female-only cafés, hotel floors and even the odd apartment block. And Japan's cities are extraordinarily crime-free. Some experts believe the flight from marriage is not merely a rejection of outdated norms and gender roles. It could be a long-term state of affairs. "Remaining single was once the ultimate personal failure," says Tomomi Yamaguchi, a Japanese-born assistant professor of anthropology at Montana State University in America. "But more people are finding they prefer it." Being single by choice is becoming, she believes, "a new reality". Is Japan providing a glimpse of all our futures? Many of the shifts there are occurring in other advanced nations, too. Across urban Asia, Europe and America, people are marrying later or not at all, birth rates are falling, single-occupant households are on the rise and, in countries where economic recession is worst, young people are living at home. But demographer Nicholas Eberstadt argues that a distinctive set of factors is accelerating these trends in Japan. These factors include the lack of a religious authority that ordains marriage and family, the country's precarious earthquake-prone ecology that engenders feelings of futility, and the high cost of living and raising children. "Gradually but relentlessly, Japan is evolving into a type of society whose contours and workings have only been contemplated in science fiction," Eberstadt wrote last year. With a vast army of older people and an ever-dwindling younger generation, Japan may become a "pioneer people" where individuals who never marry exist in significant numbers, he said.Japan's 20-somethings are the age group to watch. Most are still too young to have concrete future plans, but projections for them are already laid out. According to the government's population institute, women in their early 20s today have a one-in-four chance of never marrying. Their chances of remaining childless are even higher: almost 40%. They don't seem concerned. Emi Kuwahata, 23, and her friend, Eri Asada, 22, meet me in the shopping district of Shibuya. The café they choose is beneath an art gallery near the train station, wedged in an alley between pachinko pinball parlours and adult video shops. Kuwahata, a fashion graduate, is in a casual relationship with a man 13 years her senior. "We meet once a week to go clubbing," she says. "I don't have time for a regular boyfriend. I'm trying to become a fashion designer." Asada, who studied economics, has no interest in love. "I gave up dating three years ago. I don't miss boyfriends or sex. I don't even like holding hands." Asada insists nothing happened to put her off physical contact. She just doesn't want a relationship and casual sex is not a good option, she says, because "girls can't have flings without being judged". Although Japan is sexually permissive, the current fantasy ideal for women under 25 is impossibly cute and virginal. Double standards abound. In the Japan Family Planning Association's 2013 study on sex among young people, there was far more data on men than women. I asked the association's head, Kunio Kitamura, why. "Sexual drive comes from males," said the man who advises the government. "Females do not experience the same levels of desire." Over iced tea served by skinny-jeaned boys with meticulously tousled hair, Asada and Kuwahata say they share the usual singleton passions of clothes, music and shopping, and have hectic social lives. But, smart phones in hand, they also admit they spend far more time communicating with their friends via online social networks than seeing them in the flesh. Asada adds she's spent "the past two years" obsessed with a virtual game that lets her act as a manager of a sweet shop. Japanese-American author Roland Kelts, who writes about Japan's youth, says it's inevitable that the future of Japanese relationships will be largely technology driven. "Japan has developed incredibly sophisticated virtual worlds and online communication systems. Its smart phone apps are the world's most imaginative." Kelts says the need to escape into private, virtual worlds in Japan stems from the fact that it's an overcrowded nation with limited physical space. But he also believes the rest of the world is not far behind. Getting back to basics, former dominatrix Ai Aoyama – Queen Love – is determined to educate her clients on the value of "skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart" intimacy. She accepts that technology will shape the future, but says society must ensure it doesn't take over. "It's not healthy that people are becoming so physically disconnected from each other," she says. "Sex with another person is a human need that produces feel-good hormones and helps people to function better in their daily lives." Aoyama says she sees daily that people crave human warmth, even if they don't want the hassle of marriage or a long-term relationship. She berates the government for "making it hard for single people to live however they want" and for "whipping up fear about the falling birth rate". Whipping up fear in people, she says, doesn't help anyone. And that's from a woman who knows a bit about whipping. www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex
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Post by jeffolie on Oct 22, 2013 10:57:30 GMT -6
Japan's Sexless Youth Sexless Japan Here are some interesting points regarding social attitudes and demographics from a Guardian article by Abigail Haworth: Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex? •A survey this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way. •Population of 126 million has been shrinking for the past decade •Population projected to plunge additional one-third by 2060 •Survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship •Fewer babies were born in 2012 than any year on record. •Of the estimated 13 million unmarried people in Japan who currently live with their parents, around three million are over the age of 35. •Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or "devil wives". •Japan's Institute of Population and Social Security reports an astonishing 90% of young women believe that staying single is "preferable to what they imagine marriage to be like". Read more at globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/#4v1Gp2xEdCASGvoM.99
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Post by jeffolie on Jan 2, 2014 15:36:17 GMT -6
Japan's population logs record drop in 2013 January 1, 2014 Tokyo (AFP) - Japan's population fell by a record 244,000 in 2013, according to health ministry estimates released on Wednesday, highlighting concerns over an ever-dwindling workforce supporting a growing number of pensioners. An estimated 1,031,000 babies were born in 2013, down about 6,000 from a year earlier, the ministry said. On the other hand, around 1,275,000 people died -- up about 19,000 from the previous year, the highest annual rise since World War II. As a result, the natural population decline came to a record 244,000, the ministry said, beating the previous highest fall of 219,000 in 2012. Japan's population totalled 126,393,679 as of March 31, down 0.21 percent from a year earlier, according to a government figure. It has continually declined since 2007 by natural attrition -- deaths minus births. Japan is rapidly greying, with more than 20 percent of the population aged 65 or over -- one of the highest proportions of elderly people in the world. The country has very little immigration and any suggestion of opening its borders to young workers who could help plug the population gap provokes strong reactions among the public. The proportion of people aged 65 or over will reach nearly 40 percent of the population in 2060, according to a 2012 government report. news.yahoo.com/japan-39-population-logs-record-drop-2013-075006017.html
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Post by jeffolie on Jan 2, 2014 17:57:47 GMT -6
Japanese Population Plunges By Record In 2013 01/01/2014 Given that young people in Japan have lost interest in sex, with 45% of Japanese women 16-24 "not interested in or despise sexual contact," it is perhaps not entirely surprising that, as Japan Times reports, Japan's population fell by a record 244,000 in 2013. This further raises concerns over an ever-dwindling workforce that supports an ever-growing number of pensioners, with the proportion of people aged over 65 reaching nearly 40% by 2060. Via Japan Times, An estimated 1,031,000 babies were born in 2013, down about 6,000 from a year earlier, the ministry said. On the other hand, around 1,275,000 people died — up about 19,000 from the previous year, the highest annual rise since World War II. As a result, the natural population decline came to a record 244,000, the ministry said, beating the previous highest fall of 219,000 in 2012. Japan’s population totalled 126,393,679 as of March 31, down 0.21 percent from a year earlier, according to a government figure. It has continually declined since 2007 by natural attrition — deaths minus births. Japan is rapidly greying, with more than 20 percent of the population aged 65 or over — one of the highest proportions of elderly people in the world. The country has very little immigration and any suggestion of opening its borders to young workers who could help plug the population gap provokes strong reactions among the public. www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-01/japanese-population-plunges-record-2013
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