Premium Friday Launches Today

プレミアムフライデー Premium Friday  starts all over Japan today. Premium Friday is a government-sponsored campaign that is the latest move…

Japan and Working Women: The Swelling Wave of Abe’s 'Womenomics'

Via The Economist . The situation of working women has been tenuous in Japan, which ranked 103 out of 136 countries in World Econ…

Who Swings the Pendulum? Japan's Youth in the Pit

Once lonely at the top, Japan's elderly can expect company. Via . Sexagenarians arrested for shoplifting . A population  hard…

Abe's underwhelming victory

Abe Shinzō's LDP-led coalition with Komeitō got its wish Sunday, winning enough seats to retake control of the House of Counc…

Pinpointing public support for Abenomics

With the upper house election campaign in full swing — Michael Cucek has the campaign numbers breakdown here — there is no short…

Public support for Abenomics cools slightly, but the LDP will win anyway

With the campaign for the July 21st upper house election set to begin officially on Thursday, the Asahi Shimbun   has released th…

The Japanese public's ingrained distrust of investor capitalism

In the last part of this series of posts reviewing Japanese public opinion about economic policy during the "lost decades,&q…

The Japanese public's enduring anxiety about social security

Even as the Japanese people confronted slow growth and considered whether the longstanding institutions of Japanese capitalism …