Improvement in today's Japanese society, many analyses are inseparable from the label of "low desire", including low marriage rate, low fertility rate, low material desire, etc. The famous Japanese scholar Daimae Kenichi once had a book called "Society of Low Desire".
In this book, Kenichi Omaemae sighed: "Young people in Japan have no desires, no dreams, and no motivation. Japan has fallen into a low-desire society."
The so-called low-desire society is probably manifested in that no matter how prices change, consumption cannot be stimulated, the economy has not grown significantly, the number of young home buyers is declining year by year, and most young people have little interest in buying cars and houses. Home culture is prevalent, and three meals a day are simple.
So, how did the social status of "not getting married, not having children, not buying a house" in Japanese society form?
Many people believe that this has a direct or indirect relationship with the collapse of house prices in Japan in the 1990s. During that big housing price collapse, people's lives have been changed invisibly regardless of whether they buy a house or not...
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To explain clearly the collapse of house prices in Japan in 1990, this matter has to start from after World War II .
After World War II, Japan was originally quite unrestrained as a defeated country internationally, but the United States was determined to build Japan, which was under its supervision, into its own puppet and achieve checks and balances in East Asia.
Since then, the United States has provided technical and economic support to Japan for a long time, and the Japanese have also performed very well. The number of advanced foreign technologies introduced has reached more than 15,000, which has allowed Japan to achieve technological achievements that have only been accumulated by developed countries in half a century in just 30 years.
By the 1980s, Japan was generally showing a positive and pioneering trend. The national consumption desire was strong, and various industries were developing rapidly. Japan's real estate industry also began to develop rapidly with the national economy.
In order to maintain the growth of domestic GDP, the Japanese government began to plan to stimulate domestic demand and stimulate consumption growth, and real estate and finance became the two best choices.
Under the intentional guidance of the country, Japan's domestic economy has been booming, which has led many companies to turn to invest in real estate. In addition, the wages of ordinary people have suddenly increased, and companies and individuals holding money have begun to focus on the hot land of real estate.
In addition, in the early 1980s, the US fiscal deficit increased sharply, and the foreign trade deficit increased significantly. The United States hopes to increase the export competitiveness of products through the depreciation of the US dollar to improve the imbalance of the balance of payments in the United States.
So, under the lobbying of the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany, with the French Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Central Bank of (G5 for short) held a meeting at the Plaza Hotel in New York to induce the US dollar to depreciate the exchange rate of to the main currencies in an orderly manner to solve the agreement on the problem of the huge trade deficit in the United States.
This is the famous " Square Agreement ", and it is this agreement that starts a "tragic journey" in Japan.
At that time, the trade relationship between the United States and Japan was relatively delicate because the United States supported Japan itself, and this "little brother" was more competent. Therefore, when Japanese goods were cheap and high-quality impacted the domestic market in the United States, the United States' own products lost their competitiveness.
In order to improve its competitiveness of products, the United States has come up with a way to depreciate the US dollar.
The specific approach is to sell the US dollar in the market. If the US dollar is regarded as a commodity, then more people sell US dollars on the market, their value will naturally decrease. In this way, the Japanese yen that the US dollar can be exchanged will decrease. When the yen value remains unchanged and the US dollar depreciates, it is equivalent to the automatic "discount" of American goods, which is of course conducive to the counterattack of US domestic products.
Since the signing of the "Platform Agreement", the US dollar has depreciated successfully and the yen has appreciated. In the eyes of discerning people, Japanese goods have become more expensive and international competitiveness has decreased, so exports have become difficult.
sees that exports are not working, so the Japanese government quickly considers what to do next. The things are to be sold when they are produced. Since exports are not working, then switching to domestic sales is also a way out. Therefore, selling them to domestic people is the ideal way out for these goods.
But Japanese people are not all fools, why should we buy more of these extra domestic products? In order to increase domestic sales opportunities, Japan began to cut interest rates, forcing people to spend money.
The so-called interest rate cut is central bank to let banks lower interest rates. Once the interest rate is lowered, the interest on depositing money in the bank will be lowered accordingly. In this way, everyone will see that saving money is too unprofitable, so it is better to take it out and spend it.
At the same time, in addition to cutting interest rates, the government also issued more currencies, which simply means increasing the amount of currency circulating in the market.
The Japanese government’s plan is very simple. In its vision, banks cannot get much money. After the yen on the market increases, the yen will depreciate accordingly, so people will not save money and will use it to consume it.
In this way, the real estate market and the stock market have become two windows to attract the people, especially the real estate market, which is specifically manifested as the rapid rise in housing prices and the strong desire for people to buy houses.
In 1991, the property market in Tokyo reached its peak, with an average of 2.72 million yen per square meter, while the city of Tokyo was as high as 14.5 million per square meter. In this way, the price of a house worth 50 square meter exceeds 50 million yen, equivalent to more than 3 million yuan. Even now, it is a considerable price, let alone the 1980s and 1990s.
Before the housing prices collapsed, the crazy Japanese real estate market caused the Japanese to fall into a "house speculation wave". Almost all new real estate projects had to be queued up to get lottery. The "house speculation" that has appeared in China today was actually already in Japan in the 1980s.
People take out a loan to buy a huge house, and then all they need to do is wait for it to increase the price. Ordinary office workers cannot afford a house at all, so they can only lie flat.
At that time, the crazy Japanese real estate market gave birth to many exaggerated statements. Some people said that 70% of high-end cosmetics in Europe were purchased by Japanese women, and some even said that by selling Tokyo's real estate, you can buy the entire United States.
In this crazy situation, if someone said that the Japanese property market would soon face collapse, he would probably be treated as a fool.
The Japanese at that time were roughly divided into two types: One was a person who tried his best to buy a house, and the other was a person who sighed with regret that he couldn't buy a house.
But no one expected that just a few years later, the situation of those who were proud of the spring and those who sighed and regretted had changed drastically.
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As the saying goes, if you want to destroy it, you must first make it crazy.
After a period of madness, Japan's manufacturing industry began to have problems. At that time, the third oil crisis of broke out. After the oil prices rose, many countries began to be unable to afford oil, including Japan.
At that time, Japan was rising due to the continuous increase in the value of the yen, and labor and raw material fees in the manufacturing industry were also rising. Under multiple crises, Japan's manufacturing industry had to go to the bank to borrow money, but at this time everyone discovered a fatal problem, that is, the bank had no money long ago.
Where did the bank's money go? A large part of it is of course borrowed from people to buy a house.
Enterprises that cannot borrow money and have no capital turnover have begun to go bankrupt one after another. The bankruptcy of enterprises has had a great negative impact on domestic production. Then the entire country was affected, and the government was in a hurry.
At this time, the country began to raise interest rates again in . After Mienoyasu took office as the governor of the central bank, he began his own interest rate hike journey, raising interest rates five times.
The interest rate of banks becomes higher, and the borrowers will naturally decrease, and people's desire to save money will also increase. The yen on the market begins to decrease, and banks get a certain degree of recovery, although the recovery level is not enough to make up for the loss of .
At the same time, no one has continued to invest money in the real estate market and the stock market. The real estate bubble was ruthlessly exposed. At that time, the houses bought for a lot of money began to fall wildly.
This is undoubtedly a catastrophe for those who bought a house at that time. It is said that after the house prices plummeted, a house that was originally worth more than 70 million yen could be bought for only about 100,000 yen.
lost all his money, which means that those who invested money in the real estate market could not get rid of the house they bought, and could not sell it, but could only be put into their hands. Due to the recession of the times, many people faced unemployment. Although the houses depreciated wildly, their debts were still there, so they were heavily in debt.
Many people have been tied to the house for the rest of their lives and have spent their whole lives paying off their debts for the house. This kind of debt repayment is sometimes not just the mission of a generation, but even two or three generations in the family have to face together.
sighs, commit suicide, and lying flat have become the labels for the lives of these house buyers.
This time, the financial bubble severely hurt Japan's vitality and has not recovered for more than ten years.
Heisei era, Japanese anime and electronic games began to appear in large numbers, and the sad Japanese people were investing in the virtual two-dimensional world to find their presence. The time when the bubble burst happened to be the Heisei era, so this generation became the "Heisei waste" that everyone calls.
For those who have not bought a house, the blind cat runs into a dead mouse to escape the disaster. The sharp drop in housing prices has allowed them to buy a house that is sufficient to survive without spending too much money. Compared with those who want to pay off their debts for the house, their happiness index is much higher.
This undoubtedly belongs to the " coincidence and " caused by the times.
Conclusion:
Good fortune is the hidden danger, and misfortune is the dependence of good fortune. After seeing the appearance of sentient beings under the collapse of the Japanese property market, I am afraid that only this sentence can be summarized.
In addition, those who were interested in the high profits of the Japanese real estate market and were willing to take on loans and "speculate" have now received such an ending, which also gives us a lesson: speculators will not end up well.
Author: Black Cat
