The Weeb Economy

This March I published a book in Japanese, called Weeb Economy. Half of the book was republished (translated) posts from my blog, and half was a new section. I’ve been publishing that new section as a series of posts (Part I, Part II, Part III). But instead of publishing the final part as a fourth post, I figured I’d just publish the entire new section as a single post. So here you go! This is the entire new section of my book. It’s about a big idea for how to partially reverse the economic stagnation that has gripped Japan since the late 2000s.

Part I: I want the Japanese future back!

Japan lost the future in 2008, not in 1990

When I lived in Japan in the mid-2000s, it still felt very much like “the future”. 3g flip-phones with grainy cameras were far more advanced than anything I had encountered in the U.S. Japanese people had LCD or plasma TVs, while most Americans were still using old cathode-ray machines. Their kitchens had automatic rice-cookers and other appliances I had never seen, and their laptops were higher-performance and far more durable than the ones I had used in the U.S. Their toilets were like something from a spaceship, and their showers could dry clothing. Some people even had digital SLR cameras that could shoot movie-quality video — a miraculous technology I had never even dreamed was possible.

And the cities! Giant screens adorned the sides of buildings, like something out of science fiction. There was always a train station within walking distance that would take me anywhere I wanted to go. The trains were clean and fast and they ran on time, and they even had electronic screens that told you when the train would arrive at the next station. Japanese cars and even motorcycles glided along quietly, where in America they roared and grumbled. Even in the U.S., of course, the most revolutionary, futuristic car — the Toyota Prius — was a Japanese model.

In the 21st century’s opening decade, Japan felt like it had embraced that new century while America was still lingering in the 20th. William Gibson, the celebrated creator of the cyberpunk science fiction genre, wrote this in 2001:

The world's second-richest economy, after nearly a decade of stagflation…still looks like the world's richest place, but energies have shifted…yet it feels to