Negative Aspects Of Japanise Economic Wealth

Japan had its industrial revolution at the end of nineteenth century and became a first country in non-Western world that started a rapid economic development. According to Hasegawa (1995), in the 1870s, Japan's per capita income was only between $20 and $40, but by 1991, it had increased to an average of $27,000, ranking second in the world. Now, Japanese economy is one of the strongest one in the world. Despite such economic wealth of the nation, there are some individuals that criticize the pace of development in Japan because the population has suffered from issues such as air pollution, traffic jam etc. In addition, people in Japan have to work so much that they do not even have a free time for their families. In this argument I stand on the side claiming that the path to economic wealth of Japan has brought a lot of harm for its population, so in this essay I will highlight some examples of such harm as an evidence of my point.

First of all, Japan has suffered from various kinds of pollutions. According to Miyamoto (2014), air pollution with toxic substances produced by manufactory increased during the high economic growth in the middle of 20th century, leading to diseases, such as chronic bronchitis and asthma, in many individuals in the 1960s that got limited in their activities of daily living because of problems with breath. After more than 60 years the percentage of victims of air pollution-related diseases stood at 43% at the end of March 2013. According to Yoshida, Fumikazu (1999), it has been evident since the late 1980s that high-tech industries became a reason of serious pollution, especially of groundwater, by organic chemical substances (pesticides) such as trichloroethylene. The first case of pollution was discovered in Taishi City in 1984 from the plant where the compounds were used to clean pipes. In following years there were 6 more cases of such pollution that did lots of damage to soils and water and made them non-usable for people.

Second of all, Japanese have to maintain high economic level by working much more hours than people in other countries that causes karo jisatsu or overwork suicide. According to Asgari, Pickar and Garay, death by overwork (Karoshi) in Japan has significantly risen to 45% in four years (2011 to 2014) among employees of 29 years old and younger – additionally among women, growing up to 39%. In 2010 the 24 years old manager hanged himself that was determined by Kumamoto District Court as a cause of overwork, because he had worked an average of more than 190 hours overtime monthly, in last seven months prior to his death. Additionally, overworking causes not only suicides, but does mental and physical damage to employees.

According to Toru Maruyama’s (2017) research that investigated causes of overwork among medical workers, Japanese physicians working in general hospitals are exhausted and have poor mental health. The research showed that the majority of physicians who overworked 80 hours or more had such disorders as chronic fatigue, dissatisfaction of job, the burden of work, regular stress and depressive symptoms that lead to Burnout syndrome – disorder that has negative effect on physicians’ working effectiveness, quality of their work with patients and colleagues, and activity of entire healthcare system. It is obvious, that this can lead to death of a patient.Finally, due to high prices for land, transport and cars caused by high living standards in Japan, there is an increasing number of poor people that lost their means for survival immediately. There is a misconception that in Japan low poverty rate and the country has been experiencing an increasing living standard, because poverty was largely ignored by the government until 2009. According to Miyuki Inaba (2011), when the government announced a poverty rate for the first time in 2009 (15.7% for the year 2007), the nation was shocked.

Poverty is now widely discussed and observed in Japan, and Japanese policy makers need to formulate and implement strategies to help the poor. Consequently, the Japanese government did not ignore this issue and, for example in 2002, the government created the ‘‘Law to Promote the Independence of Homeless People’’ to provide the homeless with first needs, support to find a job, counseling, skill development, housing, medical care and daily life. Therefore, even though Japan has a very strong economy, there is still a significant amount of poor people that do not have an opportunity to have a normal life. Increasing poverty rate is connected with another issues such as economic recession, increasing unemployment, increasing breakdown of family support systems, an aging population.

In conclusion, I will declare that a country can be as wealthy as Japan without having such problems that Japan does. Germany is a good example of that. Germany also have a problem with aging of population, but in contrast with Japan, it invites migrants to get cheap labor force, so they will develop the economy of the country and the country will not get into stagnation. According to World Regional Geography (2016), in 2010 all but 1 percent of the population was ethnically Japanese, so in future they will not have enough employees because of negative population growth, so I believe they need to “open the doors” for foreign workers. Also, countries, in order to get rich, should not have to make people work more than 8 hours a day like Japan does, because it causes a lot of cases of suicide, mental illnesses, exhausting and dissatisfaction of life of population. Taking into account all that, I believe that a country does not need to get wealthy “at any cost” and make a population suffer, because there are ways to get rich with avoiding the issues that Japanese economy has.