High Debt. Low Growth. Are We All Japanese Now?
Asia’s second-largest economy holds lessons for the rest of us as the Covid-19 pandemic destroys jobs and rocks whole industries
Photographer: Shiho Fukada for Bloomberg Markets
Cocooned in the mountains of Nagano, Japan, employees at Ina Food Industry Co. begin the day by tidying the garden around their office and factory buildings. The smell of freshly cut grass perfumes the summer air as loudspeakers pipe out the company song: “… surrounded by the green of pines, showered by the happiness of the morning sun, the gathering of our comrades. … ”
As usual, the company’s patriarch, Hiroshi Tsukakoshi, who turns 83 in October, greets his employees, reinforcing the sense of community and security he’s created over more than six decades of running the business while never cutting a single job. And he doesn’t plan on doing so now, even as the Covid-19 pandemic causes the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.