Last week, every Japanese was astonished to hear a publicly unknown female researcher of 30 years old, Ms. Haruko Obokata, succeeded to discover STAP (= stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency). Besides cooperation with her Japanese colleagues, she collaborated with a laboratory of the Harvard University. Furthermore, her discovery is internationally recognized after the British eminent scientific journal “Nature” published an article on it.
Now that the so-called “ABENOMICS”, the current inflationary economic policy of the GOJ with de-facto depreciation of the JPY, obviously has begun to stagnate, Japan urgently needs innovations which will lead her to economic and social breakthrough. Even though that is widely known in the Japanese society, it’s quite ridiculous to find the Japanese (mainly men-dominated) leadership in every sector hesitates to begin to move forward.
A Japanese proverb says, “Deru kui wa utareru (=The stake that sticks out gets hammered in.)”. If you successfully initiate something remarkable for a social breakthrough in Japan, the Japanese public always put inappropriate pressure on you as far as its men-dominated traditional structure is concerned. The history clearly shows every time when Japan got into an age of historical turbulances, men hesitated to show their leadership for innovations.
However, don’t forget the traditional reversibility of the Japanese society. Its history also shows a kind of women-dominated leadership such as Queen Himiko in the ancient suddenly emerged in an emergency and always gave a breakthrough based on brandnew ideas and thoughts.
I personally think this is also applicable for Ms. Obokata’s case. While the still men-dominated scientific leadership in Japan isn’t capable of going beyond its culture of mutual jealousy, she succeeded to find there is a loop hole and encouraged those who have ambitions for a total shift of both Japan and the world. In this regard, the Japanese society actually relies on “Yamato nadeshiko”, or female leadership with unique aesthetics and tactics, which is not always known in the foreigners.
Anyway… Japan is still in lack of innovations to override the current hardship. Last week, an eminent Japanese investor approached me to ask whether I want to form a platform for the Japanese young leadership. “The international community needs intellectual stimuli from Japan, while the western countries apparently have begun to lose their dominant positions. For that, a completely new platform is urgently needed in Japan, in which leadership of younger generations freely discusses and starts to speak out intellectual, political and economic stimuli to the whole world”, he says. Spontaneously, three key words occurred to me during the conversation: “innovation”, “the Japanese way of societal life”, and “Japanesque”. I understand all these three elements are combined with each other and essential to accomplish “Pax Japonica”, which makes the international community much more peaceful than before without the war economy and compatible for the age of the accelerating deflation due to the global cooling. On February 6, I’ll meet him for a luncheon again and have to explain what I want to do. Till then, I struggle to deepen my thoughts on such a private forum of Japanese young leadership for “Pax Japonica”.
Last but not least, some comments on the near future of the Japanese financial market: My closest alliance partner, Mr. “HKD”, sent me the lastest result of his statistical analysis on the Nikkei 225 index to me as follows:
20140131 -1 16303.82 over 1296.76
20140203 -1 16232.53 over 1318
20140204 -1 16432.84 over 1518.31
20140205 -1 16426.52 over 1511.99
20140206 -1 16176.43 over 1261.9
20140207 -1 15696.27 over 781.74
*20140210 -1 15228.55 over 314.02
20140212 -1 15193.49 over 278.96
20140213 -1 15523.12 over 608.59
20140214 -1 15110.51 over 195.98
*20140217 -1 15026.12 over 111.59
20140218 -1 15022.99 over 108.46
20140219 -1 15019.9 over 105.37
20140220 -1 15018.1 over 103.57
20140221 -1 15015.43 over 100.9
20140224 -1 15013 over 98.47
Hmmm…. The current “up-and-down” movement of the Japanese stock market seems to continue until February 10. After that, our future will be two-forked: a drastic collapse or dramatic recovery. It all depends on whether the BOJ will suddenly step forward in the next session of its monetary policy meeting on February 17 and 18 preventively against possible turmoils due to the US federal debt limit and default of Argentina.
Well, don’t expect too much in the Japanese market for a while. Instead, just relax and enjoy the Japanesque such as the brandnew music shown below to imagine your brilliant, innovative future.