Interview with Mr. S

"Over the past twenty years, I’ve witnessed how much Japan has changed. After the bubble economy collapsed, prices kept falling, and it wasn’t until just these last couple of years that they started to rise again. To be honest, for ordinary people like us, the collapse didn’t feel like such a disaster — in fact, with cheaper prices, some people even lived more comfortably than before.

Most people here belong to the middle-income group. Salaries aren’t especially high, but the differences between people also aren’t that large. In the past, Japanese society liked to think of itself as technologically ahead, but that mindset has mostly faded. I still remember when China’s GDP first surpassed Japan’s — people here were shocked. Now, though, it has become something we’ve grown used to. After all, China’s GDP is already several times larger than Japan’s, and Chinese consumers today have far greater spending power than before."