Japanese streets
I wish I could have thousands of buildings to shelter all the poor people in the world to be happy. Human beings are born with deep feelings for land and houses. To get married and start a business, you must first have a house to get married and then start a business. Living and working in peace and contentment has always been the basic guarantee of people's sense of happiness and satisfaction.
With the development of the market economy, the real estate industry has also become an indispensable part of the economic systems of various countries. Houses have transformed from basic living products to the most sought-after goods on the market.
Since 1955, with the help of the United States, Japan has entered a golden period of economic development, and people have begun to speculate in real estate. By the 1990s, the housing price bubble in Japan burst , and the people paid for the government's fault and committed suicide frequently on the streets.
House speculation
In fact, Japan's housing prices were not high originally. It is an island country and a volcanic area. It lacks land resources, and it has always been barely enough. After World War II, Japan's secondary and tertiary industries developed rapidly. By 1975, the proportion of agriculture in Japan was only 13.8%, and agricultural land was greatly reduced, and the problem of land scarcity has been alleviated.
Therefore, houses and land were just daily necessities in early Japan and had no commercial value.
Japanese houses
The reason why housing prices will rise higher and higher in the later period is that after the rise of the Japanese economy, Americans bought a large number of land and houses in Tokyo and Setouinian coasts, and then sold them at a high price.
This is the earliest real estate speculation group. The US real estate speculation group made a lot of money in Japan, and local companies also began to be jealous. Toyota, Fuji, Hitachi and other companies bid for large quantities to buy land. Since then, the housing function of Japanese houses has gradually weakened, and most people buy houses for investment.
Residents of big cities such as Tokyo immediately followed up when they saw this scene. Many middle-class people spent a lot of money to purchase houses and land, becoming rich. In order to get a share of the real estate market, many people use loans to buy houses.
In order to make ordinary people affordable housing, the Japanese government has launched loans for 50 or even 100 years, with young people carrying 50 to 60 million yen debts abounding. The confident Japanese all think they are about to become a member of the rich.
Japanese people
In 1989, it was the peak of Japan's real estate economy. At that time, the housing prices in Japan were about 7-10 times the income of ordinary employees. The land price of Ginza Shime Ding is 120 million yen per square meter.
According to the valuation, the land price of a Tokyo is equivalent to the total land price in the United States. Japanese newspapers and people at that time advocated that by selling the land in Tokyo, you can buy the entire United States. In the general environment, the whole of Japan has such blind and confident remarks, which has caused the Japanese to fall into a pathological mentality of complacent.
House prices have driven Japan's stock market to soar, and Japan's manufacturing industry has always been in the world's leading position. At that time, the total market price of NTT was higher than that of the United States AT&T and IBM combined, and Japanese cars such as Toyota made local American car manufacturers about to go bankrupt. Any Japanese housewife earns more money from trading stocks at home than an ordinary employee’s monthly income.
Foreign luxury goods stores are crowded with Japanese people, and the standard Japanese women with LV bags. In the downtown areas such as Shinjuku, everyone is wearing brand-name clothes, whether they are blue-collar or white-collar workers. Every Japanese has become an investor, and stocks, foreign exchange and housing prices are all the daily life that ordinary people call.
Japan
House price bubble burst
In fact, as early as the beginning of the year, some economists in Japan predicted that the real estate economy would collapse. The Japanese government also adopted austerity policies in March to prevent foreign investment from being withdrawn. But at the same time, the property tax has been increased, hoping to make a big profit from the people. Unexpectedly, once such a policy was implemented, it had a counterproductive effect. Foreign investors, enterprises and people with a large number of houses began to sell their houses in large quantities, and the Japanese stock market began to collapse.
After reaching its peak in 1989, Japan's real estate bubble quickly collapsed. House prices fell by 90% within three years. Oversupply real estate and unfinished buildings can be seen everywhere on the streets, and the yen began to depreciate.
A large number of Japanese residents have been burdened with tens of millions of debts, enterprises go bankrupt, employees are unemployed, people are unable to repay, and banks have a bad debt of up to 100 trillion yen. The dream of buying a house in Japan is shattered.
People and enterprises send their last hope to the Japanese government. They thought that after a large number of banks went bankrupt, the government would find ways to repay debts. But at this time, the Japanese government implemented a bank restructuring, and the debts people bear will be transferred to the restructured banks. As long as you live for one day, you must continue to pay off your debts.
Japanese ordinary employee
An ordinary employee, who just bought a house and was burdened with tens of millions of dollars in debt, the real estate collapsed. The company also went bankrupt due to the bubble economy, lost jobs, could not pay off its debts, and the house was confiscated.
In order to protect his wife and children's property, he voluntarily chose to divorce. From then on, has no home and wanders on the streets. In the end, he would probably find a temporary job and rent a small house for the rest of his life. This is the real situation of many people in Japan at that time.
According to statistics, in 1991, the divorce rate in Japan soared by 2.5 times. There are more than 2,000 homeless people in Osaka, and only more in Tokyo. By 1997, Japan's economic growth rate reached its historical low. In 1998, Japan's unemployment rate broke the historical record again.
The suicide tradition in Japan since ancient times has also led to frequent suicide incidents. The more confident I was at the beginning, the more desperate I am now. The Japanese are considered a shame to be a shame to be unable to fulfill their responsibilities and obligations, unable to repay the loan, and unable to raise their wife and children. Only suicide can be solved. From 1991 to 1998, the number of suicides in Japan has been between 20,000 and 25,000, which is still high. At the highest, it reached 30,000 people.
Japanese people who live on the streets
and those who live on must continue to work hard. Abe Hiroshi, the actor of Kōkai in "The Legend of Demon Cat", was interviewed in 2007 and happily announced that he had finally paid off his debt of hundreds of millions of yen.
It turns out that over the years, he has lived in poverty in order to pay off his debts. Who would have thought that behind the glamorous stars, it was also so bitter. You can imagine the life of ordinary Japanese debt-behind people. The reason behind
Japan in the 1990s was called "the lost decade" by media from various countries . During these decades, the national economy has continued to grow negatively, and the number of people living in wandering and suicide has soared, which is something that all Japanese people will never forget in their lives.
The bursting of the real estate bubble was also called the "second defeat" after World War II by some people in Japan. It can be said that since the 1990s, Japan has lost the most important golden period of development.
Japanese real estate economic bubble
Why did such a real estate economic bubble occur in Japan?
One: is determined by Japan's national conditions. Japan was scarce in resources and barren land. Although it vigorously developed manufacturing, processing industry and service industries after the war, it was not supported by huge industries. Therefore, although its manufacturing industry once led the world, its overall economic system foundation is unstable.
This is why Japan needs the support of the United States after the war. Such an economic form will easily lead to a bubble economy in the long run. It is also true that Japan's real estate economy is directly separated from the real economy and has no functionality.
The second: is a fuelling force from the United States. The rapid development of Japan's economy after the war caused panic to many European countries. In 1985, Japan replaced the United States as the world's largest creditor country. The United States signed a square agreement with Germany, France and Britain with Japan, which was a sanction on the Japanese economy. After the
square agreement, the yen appreciated and its export competitiveness decreased. In addition, the US "house speculation group" led Japan to a crazy housing speculation craze, which directly led to the bursting of the later real estate bubble. A considerable number of people believe that the Plaza Accord is a huge conspiracy between the United States and Japan.
Japanese people living on the streets
Third: is intentional by the Japanese government. Throughout the incident, the Japanese government acted incomprehensible. First, we signed the square agreement, and then promoted the top-down real estate economy across the country. When there were more and more bubbles, we could burst it out. Why is this the Japanese government, which has always been smart?
When the square agreement was first signed, the Japanese government actually understood that this was a special agreement against Japan, but had to agree. The reason for the compromise is ultimately because of Japan's scarcity of resources. Although the economic development momentum is gratifying, the entire economic lifeline is still in the hands of the United States. The signing of the square agreement can be said to be a helpless move.
Later, the real estate industry became more and more intense, causing the agricultural economy, which originally had a small proportion, to shrink, and the number of farmland ownership to continue to decline. If this continues, Japan can only import food from other countries, which is a very dangerous signal.
Japanese real estate
At the same time, the real estate industry has directly affected the development of manufacturing that Japan has always been proud of. If one day, manufacturing in other countries will rise and surpass Japan, Japan will no longer be able to exchange food, water, electricity, oil... and will eventually go to the end. The Japanese government saw this clearly, so at a critical moment, it directly chose to burst the bubble by itself.
In fact, the Japanese government could have chosen to slowly turn the situation around, but in the end, it chose such a rough approach, and did not assume the country's responsibilities and obligations, and did not solve the difficulties of life after the collapse for ordinary people, resulting in a large number of people losing confidence. This is why it took the Japanese government twenty years to slowly recover the economy.
