Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Orix Buys into Hedge Fund Manager

. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Mariner Investment Group, a $12 billion hedge-fund manager, plans to sell a “significant” stake of the holding company to a unit of Japan’s Orix Corp. to help it expand its asset-management business.

The deal will have no impact on Mariner’s investment process and all after-tax proceeds from the sale will be reinvested by the partners in Mariner’s business and its funds, according to a letter the Harrison, New York-based firm sent to investors today.

“This is a unique opportunity to partner with a global financial institution whose experience and footprint, particularly in Asia, will boost our efforts to recruit additional investment talent to our growing investment business,” William Michaelcheck, founder and chief investment officer of Mariner, wrote in the letter.

The purchase was reported earlier today by Nikkei English News, which said Orix will buy the Mariner stake for about 15 billion yen ($184 million).

Mariner will keep its nine-member management committee and add two non-voting, observing members from Orix, said a person briefed on the plans who asked not to be named because the information is private.



http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-19/hedge-fund-manager-mariner-to-sell-stake-to-japan-s-orix.html

Monday, October 25, 2010

Yakuza and Politicians - Sengoku Sues Shukan Shincho

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku has filed a libel suit against Shinchosha Publishing Co. over a recent article that implied he has had ties to the underworld.

he suit filed Monday with the Tokyo District Court seeks ¥10 million in damages and the publication of an apology over the article carried in the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho.

According to the suit, the edition issued last Thursday carried a feature article saying the top government spokesman was connected with the "black human network," a reference to the shadowy criminal underworld.

The suit says the article has seriously stained Sengoku's reputation by giving readers a mistaken perception of him. It also says the article could mar his political stance and exert immeasurable effects on him.

Sengoku also issued a comment calling on the publisher not to repeat the mistake in a sequel article planned to be carried in the next issue.

The magazine said the article reported facts on the basis of accurate research and will continue carrying articles on Sengoku in the next and subsequent issues.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20101027b2.html

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Young Japanese Men

TOKYO - Something is happening to Japan's young men. Compared with the generation that came before, they are less optimistic, less ambitious and less willing to take risks. They are less likely to own a car, want a car, or drive fast if they get a car. They are less likely to pursue sex on the first date - or the third. They are, in general, less likely to spend money. They are more likely to spend money on cosmetics.

Japan's young men mystify their girlfriends and their bosses. They confound the advertisers who aim products at them. They've been scrutinized and categorized by social commentators, marketing consultants and the government. And they unnerve just about everybody who makes long-term projections about Japan's flagging birthrate and fading economy. Japan will grow or falter, economists and sociologists say, upon the shoulders of these mild, frugal, sweet-mannered men.

To hear the analysts who study them tell it, Japanese men ages 20 to 34 are staging the most curious of rebellions, rejecting the 70-hour workweeks and purchase-for-status ethos that typified the 1980s economic boom. As the latest class of college graduates struggles to find jobs, a growing number of experts are detecting a problem even broader than unemployment: They see a generation of men who don't know what they want.

Japan earned its fortune a generation ago through the power of office warriors, the so-called salarymen who devoted their careers to one company. They wore dark suits; they joined for rowdy after-hours booze fests with co-workers; they often saw little of their families. These are the fathers of Japan's young men.

But among business leaders and officials, there is a growing understanding that the earlier work-for-fulfillment pattern has broken down. The economy's roar turned into a yawn. Concern about Japan's future replaced giddy national pride. As a result, this generation has lost "the willingness to sacrifice for the company," said Jeff Kingston, author of the recently published book "Contemporary Japan."

Kingston added: "And now as Japan begins to unravel in a sense, young people realize that the previous paradigm doesn't work. But they aren't sure what comes next. They've seen what amounts to a betrayal in Japan."

Striving for balance

And so, instead of fantasizing about riches, Japan's young men now fantasize about balanced lives and time for their families and quaint hobbies. As they do, Japanese women are catching up. This month, the government said single women younger than 30 were, for the first time, earning more on average than their male counterparts.

Yuizo Matsumoto, 24, learned about the differences between old and young values when he worked for a small food development company. Matsumoto studied the way trace ingredients and artificial flavorings change a product's taste. He developed salad dressings and fruit juices. He liked his job, with one major complaint: He worked 14 hours a day, often on Saturdays as well. He worked so hard, he didn't have time to job-hunt for alternatives. So in July, with the support of his parents, he told his boss he was quitting.

"My boss said to me, 'If you quit this wonderful company you'll never succeed in life,' " Matsumoto said. "I think the concept itself of quitting is alien to them. I think it's very normal for somebody from the older generation to stick with something whether he's happy or not."

Many in Japan's older generation deride the young for listlessness, even a lack of what is thought of as traditionally male behavior. Playing to that characterization, some media accounts of the transformation note the extremes of behavior: how one in four engaged men now opts for a pre-wedding spa treatment; how young men host dessert-tasting clubs; how, given a hypothetical $1,000 to spend and a list of possible purchases, a lot of young men would choose a high-end rice cooker.

Similar to metrosexuals

But Japan's modern man, separated from the statistics, cuts an endearing profile. Pop culture writer Maki Fukasawa first wrote about the changing male gender identity in 2006, coining a shorthand term for the new man ("a herbivore" - gentle and cautious). Now Fukasawa, who has surveyed young Japanese men about their purchasing preferences, defends the herbivores' nobility. "The people of the older generation would buy things, consume things, even fall in love for status," Fukasawa said. "However, these young people have no desire for status. . . . Maybe we're searching for new values. This is a more sustainable model."

This isn't about sexual orientation. According to a 2009 survey from market research firm M1 F1 Soken, almost half of Japanese men ages 20 to 34 identify themselves as herbivores. No matter their sexual preferences, herbivores tend to be less overtly sexual. Many say they do not prioritize physical relationships. They're more likely to buy gifts for their mothers than for their significant others.

apan's herbivores bear some resemblance to the metrosexuals familiar in America. Like metrosexuals, they pay a lot of attention to how they look and how they dress - with a preference for flannel-patterned shirts, bought first-hand but made to look second-hand, and tight-fitting pants. But herbivores reflect a wider societal movement.

And, as it turns out, even those who identify themselves as more traditional men, rather than herbivores, are a lot different from their fathers.

Like Shinsuke Kanemura, 25, a jockish graduate from the elite Kyoto University, who met his friend for a 4 p.m. ice cream before beginning his night shift. And Akira Tanaka, 26, a "carnivore" who ridicules the herbivorous desire to "blend into the atmosphere."

"I was brought up in a family where, if you're a man, you ought to act like a man," Tanaka said. He works as a hairstylist.

Those who have rejected the old model, though, haven't yet discovered a new model - a way to earn a comfortable living without losing a quality life. Much as they loathe the office place's stifling social obligations, Japan's young men - according to the latest government statistics - prefer lifelong employment to any alternative, mostly because they value a safe option over a risky one. Japan's dim economic climate, experts say, has spawned a generation of unsentimental job-seekers who see only a spectrum of flawed options.

Little income

This demographic has remained elusive for automakers, brewers and other manufacturers. According to Tokyo's Metropolitan Police, between 1998 and 2007, the number of driver's licenses in Japan increased by 1 million. But the number dropped by 30,000 for people age 20 and by 40,000 for people age 25. People in their 20s, according to government statistics, consume less than half the alcohol of twenty-somethings in 1980.

Yoshio Kanda, 28, a wedding photographer from Osaka, says he feels "awkward" when talking to people from the bubble generation. He describes a sense of opposite values. He notices this most, he says, "when we go out drinking."

"People of an older generation, whatever they say or do, it's to the max," Kanda said. "Our generation, we don't spend money to the max and we don't drink to the max. We feel the need to save. At the same time, it's not cool to be throwing up on the street after you've been drinking."

More than the earlier generation, Japan's young men, according to marketing consultants, value close friendships and memorable experiences. One recent beer commercial depicts a hiking trip. Another shows a bunch of pals, hanging out at somebody's home.

But there's another factor, too: Japan's young men have little money to spend. Only 3.5 percent of men ages 25 to 34 make more than the average workers' household income of about 6 million yen (or $73,600) per year, according to National Tax Agency.

Matsumoto, the former food developer, has only his unemployment stipend, which expires in three months. He hopes to find a new job before then. So far, he's interviewed for one position and applied for five more.

He admits there's a chance his next job could also require 14-hour workdays. He wouldn't want to ask direct questions about time off during an interview.

Matsumoto shrugged.

"I never thought my job was the priority - that it was everything in my life," he said. "I want my private life to feel enriched as well. . . . I feel that the system itself is built for the older generation, but the young people just go into it because they have no other choice."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/24/AR2010102403342.html

October 25 - Yen Strengthens to Annual Historical Highs

The yen appreciated to as high as 81.06 per dollar today in Tokyo, compared with 81.31 when stock trading began. A stronger yen cuts overseas income at Japanese companies when converted into their home currency.

The yen is headed for its strongest annual average level against the dollar since currencies began trading freely in 1971, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and based on each day’s closing price.

The Group of 20 agreed to “move towards more market- determined exchange-rates systems that reflect underlying economic fundamentals and refrain from competitive devaluation of currencies,” its finance ministers and central bankers said after talks on Oct. 23 in Gyeongju, South Korea.

The Bank of Japan will probably leave policy unchanged this week to gauge whether cutting interest rates to near zero and pledging to buy financial assets will shield the economy from the yen’s advance to a 15-year high.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-25/japanese-stocks-rise-on-outlook-for-corporate-earnings-softbank-advances.html

September - Exports - Slowest Growth this year

Japan's exports grew at their slowest pace this year in September, hit by cooling foreign demand and a strong yen.
Exports climbed 14.4 percent from a year earlier to 5.8 trillion yen ($72 billion), the Ministry of Finance said Monday. Imports rose 9.9 percent to 5.04 trillion yen.

The September figure underlined weakening global demand for Japanese goods. Earlier in the year, Japan's exports enjoyed stellar 50 to 60 percent growth as they bounced back from the previous year's slump amid robust growth in Asia.

Waning foreign demand poses a major risk to Japan's export-led economy. Exports alone account for around 15 percent of Japan's economic growth.

"The latest data showed falling global demand. Growth in Japanese exports is very likely to slow in the coming months because the global economy has yet to recover," said Hideki Matsumura, senior economist at Japan Research Institute, a think tank.

Apart from weak demand abroad, the government said a rising yen was also hurting Japanese exports.

A strong yen cuts the value of repatriated profits for Japanese exporters like Toyota Motor Corp. and Sony Corp., and makes their products less competitive abroad. The ministry said the yen in September strengthened about 9 percent against the dollar from the same period last year.

The ministry said the dollar averaged 84.66 yen in September. It is now trading at the 81 yen level, nearing a post World War II record low of 79.75 yen set in 1995.

"The rising yen will continue to squeeze Japanese exports and pressure earnings of Japanese exporters," Matsumura said.

Exports to China, Japan's biggest trading partner, increased 10.3 percent in September from a year earlier, the ministry said. While Japanese exports to China rose for the 11th straight month, the September result marked the lowest growth since November 2009 when exports rose 7.8 percent.

Japan's exports to Asia increased 14.3 percent—the weakest growth in 2010.

U.S.-bound shipments grew 10.4 percent, while those to the European Union rose 11.2 percent in the month.


http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9J2EKF80&show_article=1

June - Cushman Wakefield See Property Prices at bottom

Japan, supported by acquisitions by real estate investment trusts, accounted for 40 percent of total investment volumes of direct commercial property transactions in the Asia-Pacific region in the first quarter, according to Chicago-based broker Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

June 29 (Bloomberg) -- -- Cushman & Wakefield, the world’s largest privately held real estate services firm, said it will focus on adding assets in Japan as property prices near bottom.

Cushman & Wakefield’s assets under management in the nation rose 10 percent to 220 billion yen ($2.5 billion) as of June from November, said Yoshiyuki Tanaka, president of Cushman & Wakefield’s Japanese asset management unit. The company bought 50 billion yen of office and residential buildings in Tokyo in the period as it shifts its focus to acquisitions, betting on a recovery, he said.

“The market is not going to get worse from now on as investors wait for an entry point,” said Tanaka. “We don’t plan to sell aggressively as we see prices bottoming.”

Transactions volume in Japan rose as commercial land prices reached a 36-year low. The country’s 38 publicly traded real estate investment trusts more than doubled property purchases in the first quarter to 229 billion yen from the same period last year, according to IB Research and Consulting Inc


Residential and retail properties each account for one- fifth of total assets Cushman & Wakefield manages, with 39 percent in office buildings, according to data from the New York-based company.

While a stable return can be achieved in Tokyo, a quick rebound in real estate prices is not likely, Tanaka said.

“A stable return of 4 percent is not very attractive to opportunistic funds,” said Tanaka. “We are likely to see property prices recover gradually.”

Japan’s commercial land prices declined 6.1 percent in 2009, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism said in a report in March. Values are at their lowest since the ministry began collecting comparable data in 1974.



http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-28/cushman-wakefield-to-add-japan-assets-as-prices-near-bottom.html

June - Property Prices near bottom?

Property prices in Japan may be near the bottom because transactions are picking up as loan default rates begin to decline, said Yuji Hashimoto, a director at Standard & Poor’s.

“We’ve started to see some property transactions taking place at about 20 to 40 percent discount,” said Hashimoto, director of the structured finance ratings division at S&P in an interview in Tokyo. “This tells us that the impact of loan default for the property prices is likely to be limited going forward and property prices may have bottomed.”

The percentage of default in loans backing commercial mortgage backed securities rated by the U.S. rating company narrowed to 19 percent in the first quarter, a second straight decline, a report by S&P dated May 7 showed. The default rate shrank from a peak of 63 percent in the third quarter last year.

Investors including Chuo Mitsui Trust & Banking Co. and CLSA Capital Partners have said they will invest in real estate in Japan this year after the nation’s commercial land prices fell to the lowest in at least 36 years. At least 115 billion yen ($1.25 billion) of properties backing CMBS have been sold by special servicers as collateral since the second quarter of 2009, according to Fitch Ratings.

“The best time to invest is before things hit bottom, because if everyone were to agree we are right at bottom, they would all come rushing back in,” said Buddy Ferrie, a general manager of the investment division at property consulting firm Colliers Halifax in a phone interview in Tokyo. “If you have a longer term outlook, now is a very interesting time to be looking.”

Loan Refinancing

Japan’s commercial land prices declined 6.1 percent in 2009 from a drop of 4.7 percent a year earlier, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism said in a report in March. Values are at their lowest since the ministry began collecting comparable data in 1974.

Faced with decline in property prices, building owners are injecting capital to refinance loans or returning properties to lenders as collateral when loans are coming due or being reviewed by banks.

Shinsei Bank Ltd. sold Pacific Century Place, an office building adjacent to the Tokyo station, after K.K. DaVinci Holdings, the owner of the building, failed to repay loans. Secured Capital Japan Co., an investment management company, bought the building for 140 billion yen, 30 percent less than what DaVinci had paid three years earlier.

“Larger loans are more likely to be rescued or receive extension of repayment because many people believe that it is not wise to sell large properties in the current market conditions,” said S&P’s Hashimoto. “As a result, they are less likely to default

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-03/japan-s-property-set-to-recover-as-prices-near-bottom-s-p-says.html

July - Real Estate Market Bottoms out?

Blackstone Group LP may buy Morgan Stanley Japan’s real estate assets, making its first property investment in the country, a person familiar with the deal said.

The world’s biggest private-equity firm expects to complete a deal for assets with a face value of 100 billion yen ($1.16 billion) next week, the person said, declining to be identified before an announcement. Blackstone may offer less than 50 percent of the face value of the portfolio, which consists of 11 non-recourse loans with about 30 office buildings mainly located in greater Tokyo, the person said.

Prices for Tokyo office buildings have fallen as much as 50 percent from their 2007 peak, according to an estimate by CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s Japan subsidiary. Blackstone’s first purchase in the country, after opening a Tokyo operation three years ago, may suggest prices are set to climb, said Takashi Ishizawa, a real estate analyst at Mizuho Securities Co.

“The news confirms my view that property prices in Japan have reached bottom,” Ishizawa said in a telephone interview in Tokyo. “Now is the time to invest.”

Natsuo Nishio, a spokesman at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo, and Peter Rose, a spokesman for Blackstone, declined to comment.

Blackstone’s second-quarter earnings rose 13 percent, partly on a gain in the value of its real estate holdings, the company said today. The shares climbed 43 cents, or 4 percent, to $10.74 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading at 4:46 p.m.

Bank of America

Blackstone may sell some of the buildings and own some after the acquisition of the debt portfolio, the person said.

An agreement this month between Blackstone and Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. bank by assets, for the private- equity firm to manage the bank’s portfolio of Asian real estate investments expanded Blackstone’s business in the region.

The private-equity firm had $23.8 billion of real estate assets under management as of March 31, according to its website. It has capital to invest from an $11 billion U.S. real estate fund and a European property fund of about $4 billion.

Japan’s nationwide average land prices dropped 8 percent in 2009 from a year ago, the second straight annual decline, the National Tax Agency said in a report earlier this month.

The drop has attracted other buyers. Acquisitions by the country’s 38 publicly traded real estate investment trusts more than doubled in the first quarter to 229 billion yen from the same period last year, according to IB Research and Consulting Inc., a Tokyo-based research firm.

Japan’s listed real estate investment trusts have raised 195.5 billion yen in the first six months of this year, the highest since 2008, as they look to expand their portfolios, according to Mizuho Securities Co.

The Nikkei newspaper reported earlier today that a deal between the two companies was imminent.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-22/blackstone-said-to-seek-morgan-stanley-s-1-15-billion-japan-land-assets.html

Tokyo Star Bank to Buy Aiful's Business Loan Business

Troubled consumer lender Aiful Corp. plans to sell its subsidiary business-loan lender Businext Corp., with Tokyo Star Bank Ltd. strongly considered a prospective buyer, sources said Friday.

Along with the sale, Aiful expects to cut several hundred million yen in costs by pulling its TV commercials and additionally shutting down some 30 unmanned outlets in northern and central Japan as part of its revival efforts, they said.

Businext, lender for sole proprietors and small to midsize firms, was set up in 2001 with Aiful investing 60 percent of the capital and Sumitomo Trust & Banking Co. funding the rest. Sumitomo Trust has agreed to the planned sale, the sources said.

Aiful has been trying to revive itself under the so-called alternative debt-resolution procedure since last year and restructuring its business under a rehabilitation plan agreed with its 65 creditors, including Sumitomo Trust.

The consumer lending business has became harsher as an increasing number of borrowers began claiming refunds of excessive interest charges following a Supreme Court ruling in January 2006 that invalidated any "gray area" interest charges beyond the interest rate restriction law.

The money-lending business law, revised in 2006, also hurt the industry as it tightened lending conditions

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20101023a4.html

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Fortress Sees `Significant' Opportunities in the Japanese Property Market

Fortress Investment LLC which has $41.7 billion of assets under management, said there are investment opportunities in the Japanese real estate market because some banks may sell properties as loans come due.

“The distressed space in Japan today is extremely compelling,” Thomas Pulley managing director at Fortress Real Estate (Asia) GK, said at the Real Estate Investment World conference in Tokyo yesterday. “We believe the opportunities for Fortress are significant.”

“A fair portion” of $50 billion worth of real estate will have to be sold in the next three to five years as loans backed by those properties come due, according to Tokyo-based Pulley. Some Japanese banks may have to sell properties that were used as collateral as real estate values in Japan fall about 30 percent to 40 percent, he said.

Real estate values in Tokyo started to drop after they peaked in the fourth quarter of 2007 as global financial crisis unfolded. Property owners and funds, facing declining property prices, will either have to inject new capital or return properties to lenders as collateral when property loans are due.

Total commercial mortgage debt in Japan this year will reach a record high 1.12 trillion yen ($14 billion), a 59 percent increase from last year, according to an estimate by Moody’s Investors Service.

Fortress, based in New York, closed the Fortress Japan Opportunity Domestic Fund in June at 75 billion yen, saying it would invest in real estate debt and other assets in Japan over the next 12 months, according to a statement distributed by Business Wire.

Fortress Real Estate this month hired Douglas Smith, former head of real estate financing at Deutsche Bank AG in Tokyo, as a managing director to oversee its property investment advisory business, according to three people familiar with the situation.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-20/fortress-sees-significant-opportunities-in-the-japanese-property-market.html

July - Highest Povery Level since 1955

Poverty in Japan is deepening. The welfare ministry announced last month that as of June, 1,907,176 people in 1,377,930 households were on welfare, receiving livelihood assistance (seikatsu hogo). This is the first time that the number of people on welfare has topped 1.9 million since fiscal 1955, when about 1.93 million people were receiving livelihood assistance every month. It is estimated that the number of welfare recipients will exceed 2 million by the end of 2010, close to the record set in fiscal 1952 when some 2.04 million people were on welfare.

In fiscal 1995, about 880,000 people were on welfare — the lowest figure on record. Since then, the number of welfare recipients has been rising. It topped 1.5 million in fiscal 2006. Since December 2008, due to the effect of the economic downturn triggered by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s collapse, every month more than 10,000 people have been joining the welfare rolls. The total number surpassed 1.8 million in December 2009. The figure in June 2010 is some 208,000 more than a year before.

Welfare rolls are swelling because of high unemployment, low wages and the increasing number of households that include low-income elderly people. A growing number of relatively young people who either can't find work or work in extremely low-paid jobs are being forced onto welfare. Often they have not joined the unemployment insurance scheme or their wages were so low that they cannot make ends meet with their unemployment insurance benefits.

The government should change the social insurance system so that even if the duration of time that people work is extremely short they can join and benefit from health and unemployment insurance schemes.

Currently, people have to pay premiums for at least 25 years to be eligible to receive pensions. This period should be shortened. Most importantly, the government must focus on job creation, particularly medical, nursing care and child-rearing services, where demand for workers is strong.


http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20101020a1.html

Economic Changes for Japanese Consumers

OSAKA, Japan — Like many members of Japan’s middle class, Masato Y. enjoyed a level of affluence two decades ago that was the envy of the world. Masato, a small-business owner, bought a $500,000 condominium, vacationed in Hawaii and drove a late-model Mercedes.

ut his living standards slowly crumbled along with Japan’s overall economy. First, he was forced to reduce trips abroad and then eliminate them. Then he traded the Mercedes for a cheaper domestic model. Last year, he sold his condo — for a third of what he paid for it, and for less than what he still owed on the mortgage he took out 17 years ago.

“Japan used to be so flashy and upbeat, but now everyone must live in a dark and subdued way,” said Masato, 49, who asked that his full name not be used because he still cannot repay the $110,000 that he owes on the mortgage.

Few nations in recent history have seen such a striking reversal of economic fortune as Japan. The original Asian success story, Japan rode one of the great speculative stock and property bubbles of all time in the 1980s to become the first Asian country to challenge the long dominance of the West.

But the bubbles popped in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Japan fell into a slow but relentless decline that neither enormous budget deficits nor a flood of easy money has reversed. For nearly a generation now, the nation has been trapped in low growth and a corrosive downward spiral of prices, known as deflation, in the process shriveling from an economic Godzilla to little more than an afterthought in the global economy.

Now, as the United States and other Western nations struggle to recover from a debt and property bubble of their own, a growing number of economists are pointing to Japan as a dark vision of the future. Even as the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, prepares a fresh round of unconventional measures to stimulate the economy, there are growing fears that the United States and many European economies could face a prolonged period of slow growth or even, in the worst case, deflation, something not seen on a sustained basis outside Japan since the Great Depression.

Many economists remain confident that the United States will avoid the stagnation of Japan, largely because of the greater responsiveness of the American political system and Americans’ greater tolerance for capitalism’s creative destruction. Japanese leaders at first denied the severity of their nation’s problems and then spent heavily on job-creating public works projects that only postponed painful but necessary structural changes, economists say.

“We’re not Japan,” said Robert E. Hall, a professor of economics at Stanford. “In America, the bet is still that we will somehow find ways to get people spending and investing again.”

Still, as political pressure builds to reduce federal spending and budget deficits, other economists are now warning of “Japanification” — of falling into the same deflationary trap of collapsed demand that occurs when consumers refuse to consume, corporations hold back on investments and banks sit on cash. It becomes a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle: as prices fall further and jobs disappear, consumers tighten their purse strings even more and companies cut back on spending and delay expansion plans.

“The U.S., the U.K., Spain, Ireland, they all are going through what Japan went through a decade or so ago,” said Richard Koo, chief economist at Nomura Securities who recently wrote a book about Japan’s lessons for the world. “Millions of individuals and companies see their balance sheets going underwater, so they are using their cash to pay down debt instead of borrowing and spending.”

Just as inflation scarred a generation of Americans, deflation has left a deep imprint on the Japanese, breeding generational tensions and a culture of pessimism, fatalism and reduced expectations. While Japan remains in many ways a prosperous society, it faces an increasingly grim situation, particularly outside the relative economic vibrancy of Tokyo, and its situation provides a possible glimpse into the future for the United States and Europe, should the most dire forecasts come to pass.

Scaled-Back Ambitions

The downsizing of Japan’s ambitions can be seen on the streets of Tokyo, where concrete “microhouses” have become popular among younger Japanese who cannot afford even the famously cramped housing of their parents, or lack the job security to take out a traditional multidecade loan.

These matchbox-size homes stand on plots of land barely large enough to park a sport utility vehicle, yet have three stories of closet-size bedrooms, suitcase-size closets and a tiny kitchen that properly belongs on a submarine.

“This is how to own a house even when you are uneasy about the future,” said Kimiyo Kondo, general manager at Zaus, a Tokyo-based company that builds microhouses.

For many people under 40, it is hard to grasp just how far this is from the 1980s, when a mighty — and threatening — “Japan Inc.” seemed ready to obliterate whole American industries, from automakers to supercomputers. With the Japanese stock market quadrupling and the yen rising to unimagined heights, Japan’s companies dominated global business, gobbling up trophy properties like Hollywood movie studios (Universal Studios and Columbia Pictures), famous golf courses (Pebble Beach) and iconic real estate (Rockefeller Center).

In 1991, economists were predicting that Japan would overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2010. In fact, Japan’s economy remains the same size it was then: a gross domestic product of $5.7 trillion at current exchange rates. During the same period, the United States economy doubled in size to $14.7 trillion, and this year China overtook Japan to become the world’s No. 2 economy.

hina has so thoroughly eclipsed Japan that few American intellectuals seem to bother with Japan now, and once crowded Japanese-language classes at American universities have emptied. Even Clyde V. Prestowitz, a former Reagan administration trade negotiator whose writings in the 1980s about Japan’s threat to the United States once stirred alarm in Washington, said he was now studying Chinese. “I hardly go to Japan anymore,” Mr. Prestowitz said.

The decline has been painful for the Japanese, with companies and individuals like Masato having lost the equivalent of trillions of dollars in the stock market, which is now just a quarter of its value in 1989, and in real estate, where the average price of a home is the same as it was in 1983. And the future looks even bleaker, as Japan faces the world’s largest government debt — around 200 percent of gross domestic product — a shrinking population and rising rates of poverty and suicide.

But perhaps the most noticeable impact here has been Japan’s crisis of confidence. Just two decades ago, this was a vibrant nation filled with energy and ambition, proud to the point of arrogance and eager to create a new economic order in Asia based on the yen. Today, those high-flying ambitions have been shelved, replaced by weariness and fear of the future, and an almost stifling air of resignation. Japan seems to have pulled into a shell, content to accept its slow fade from the global stage.

Its once voracious manufacturers now seem prepared to surrender industry after industry to hungry South Korean and Chinese rivals. Japanese consumers, who once flew by the planeload on flashy shopping trips to Manhattan and Paris, stay home more often now, saving their money for an uncertain future or setting new trends in frugality with discount brands like Uniqlo.

As living standards in this still wealthy nation slowly erode, a new frugality is apparent among a generation of young Japanese, who have known nothing but economic stagnation and deflation. They refuse to buy big-ticket items like cars or televisions, and fewer choose to study abroad in America.

Japan’s loss of gumption is most visible among its young men, who are widely derided as “herbivores” for lacking their elders’ willingness to toil for endless hours at the office, or even to succeed in romance, which many here blame, only half jokingly, for their country’s shrinking birthrate. “The Japanese used to be called economic animals,” said Mitsuo Ohashi, former chief executive officer of the chemicals giant Showa Denko. “But somewhere along the way, Japan lost its animal spirits.”

When asked in dozens of interviews about their nation’s decline, Japanese, from policy makers and corporate chieftains to shoppers on the street, repeatedly mention this startling loss of vitality. While Japan suffers from many problems, most prominently the rapid graying of its society, it is this decline of a once wealthy and dynamic nation into a deep social and cultural rut that is perhaps Japan’s most ominous lesson for the world today.

The classic explanation of the evils of deflation is that it makes individuals and businesses less willing to use money, because the rational way to act when prices are falling is to hold onto cash, which gains in value. But in Japan, nearly a generation of deflation has had a much deeper effect, subconsciously coloring how the Japanese view the world. It has bred a deep pessimism about the future and a fear of taking risks that make people instinctively reluctant to spend or invest, driving down demand — and prices — even further.

“A new common sense appears, in which consumers see it as irrational or even foolish to buy or borrow,” said Kazuhisa Takemura, a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo who has studied the psychology of deflation.

A Deflated City

While the effects are felt across Japan’s economy, they are more apparent in regions like Osaka, the third-largest city, than in relatively prosperous Tokyo. In this proudly commercial city, merchants have gone to extremes to coax shell-shocked shoppers into spending again. But this often takes the shape of price wars that end up only feeding Japan’s deflationary spiral.

There are vending machines that sell canned drinks for 10 yen, or 12 cents; restaurants with 50-yen beer; apartments with the first month’s rent of just 100 yen, about $1.22. Even marriage ceremonies are on sale, with discount wedding halls offering weddings for $600 — less than a tenth of what ceremonies typically cost here just a decade ago.

On Senbayashi, an Osaka shopping street, merchants recently held a 100-yen day, offering much of their merchandise for that price. Even then, they said, the results were disappointing.

“It’s like Japanese have even lost the desire to look good,” said Akiko Oka, 63, who works part time in a small apparel shop, a job she has held since her own clothing store went bankrupt in 2002.

This loss of vigor is sometimes felt in unusual places. Kitashinchi is Osaka’s premier entertainment district, a three-centuries-old playground where the night is filled with neon signs and hostesses in tight dresses, where just taking a seat at a top club can cost $500.

But in the past 15 years, the number of fashionable clubs and lounges has shrunk to 480 from 1,200, replaced by discount bars and chain restaurants. Bartenders say the clientele these days is too cost-conscious to show the studied disregard for money that was long considered the height of refinement.

“A special culture might be vanishing,” said Takao Oda, who mixes perfectly crafted cocktails behind the glittering gold countertop at his Bar Oda.

After years of complacency, Japan appears to be waking up to its problems, as seen last year when disgruntled voters ended the virtual postwar monopoly on power of the Liberal Democratic Party. However, for many Japanese, it may be too late. Japan has already created an entire generation of young people who say they have given up on believing that they can ever enjoy the job stability or rising living standards that were once considered a birthright here.

Yukari Higaki, 24, said the only economic conditions she had ever known were ones in which prices and salaries seemed to be in permanent decline. She saves as much money as she can by buying her clothes at discount stores, making her own lunches and forgoing travel abroad. She said that while her generation still lived comfortably, she and her peers were always in a defensive crouch, ready for the worst.

“We are the survival generation,” said Ms. Higaki, who works part time at a furniture store.

Hisakazu Matsuda, president of Japan Consumer Marketing Research Institute, who has written several books on Japanese consumers, has a different name for Japanese in their 20s; he calls them the consumption-haters. He estimates that by the time this generation hits their 60s, their habits of frugality will have cost the Japanese economy $420 billion in lost consumption.

“There is no other generation like this in the world,” Mr. Matsuda said. “These guys think it’s stupid to spend.”

Deflation has also affected businesspeople by forcing them to invent new ways to survive in an economy where prices and profits only go down, not up.

Yoshinori Kaiami was a real estate agent in Osaka, where, like the rest of Japan, land prices have been falling for most of the past 19 years. Mr. Kaiami said business was tough. There were few buyers in a market that was virtually guaranteed to produce losses, and few sellers, because most homeowners were saddled with loans that were worth more than their homes.

Some years ago, he came up with an idea to break the gridlock. He created a company that guides homeowners through an elaborate legal subterfuge in which they erase the original loan by declaring personal bankruptcy, but continue to live in their home by “selling” it to a relative, who takes out a smaller loan to pay its greatly reduced price.

“If we only had inflation again, this sort of business would not be necessary,” said Mr. Kaiami, referring to the rising prices that are the opposite of deflation. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for 20 years for inflation to come back.”

One of his customers was Masato, the small-business owner, who sold his four-bedroom condo to a relative for about $185,000, 15 years after buying it for a bit more than $500,000. He said he was still deliberating about whether to expunge the $110,000 he still owed his bank by declaring personal bankruptcy.

Economists said one reason deflation became self-perpetuating was that it pushed companies and people like Masato to survive by cutting costs and selling what they already owned, instead of buying new goods or investing.

“Deflation destroys the risk-taking that capitalist economies need in order to grow,” said Shumpei Takemori, an economist at Keio University in Tokyo. “Creative destruction is replaced with what is just destructive destruction.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/world/asia/17japan.html?_r=1

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

September - Department store sales down for 31st consecutive month

Earlier today, the Japan Department Store Association released data showing that sales at department stores nationwide fell 5.2% to 446.3 billion yen in September, marking the 31st consecutive month of decline. The survey covered sales at 92 department store operators with 260 shops, down from 263 a month before.
Here is the breakdown of sales by individual categories:
Clothing: 34.7% of total sales, sales down 8.9% from a year ago
Personal Effects: 12.8% of total sales, down 7.2%
Miscellaneous Goods: 15.3% of total sales, down 3.5%
Household Goods: 5.2% of total sales, down 2.9%
Food: 25.3% of total sales, down 3.1%
Services: 1.2% of total sales, up 1.9%
Other: 2.3% of total sales, up 21.1%
Gift Certificates: 3.5% of total sales, up 8.2%
In the Tokyo area itself, sales fell 3.8% to 112.7 billion yen, also marking the 31st consecutive month of decline.
In a separately published survey, the Japan Department Store Association indicated that sales to foreign tourists has increased 18.7% in September, though this report only took sales at 41 locations into consideration.
According to the report, tourists from China accounted for the greatest share of sales, followed by those from Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, The United States and Malaysia.

http://www.japaneconomynews.com/2010/10/18/japan-department-store-sales-down-for-31st-consecutive-month-in-september/

Monday, October 18, 2010

Young Japanese Prefer Games to Travel; youth trends

The “Land of the Rising Sun” is one travel market that many want to tap and cultivate. But it is not an easy one to tap. Some insights into the market and the changing Japanese customers were revealed at the WIT Conference in the session, “My Name is Yuki-san, I Love to Travel”.

The panel was moderated by Aya Aso, CEO & president of Agora Hospitalities, Japan and Yeoh Siew Hoon. The panellists included some of the movers and shakers of the Japanese travel industry:

• Kei Shibata, president & CEO of Venture Republic, Japan

• Yoshinori Nishihara, regional director – sales & accounting management, Pegasus Solutions, Japan

• Sam Ohta, publisher & president, OHTA Publications, Japan

• David Asahara, director, North Asia, Expedia Affiliate Network

Here are the highlights.

Women are travelling
Japanese women are travelling, especially those in their 30s and 40s, and 60s and 70s.The latter group is enthusiastic and aggressive to travel. Where they go depends on how much money they have in their pockets. The women in their 30s and 40s travel by themselves and are active. So focus on women travellers, forget about men.

The young prefer playing in the virtual world to travelling in the real one

Of young Japanese aged between 20 and 30, more than 30% ohave not travelled in the last 12 months. They prefer to play games on their mobiles or computers. They spend a lot of time on video games, preferring the virtual world to the real one.

Mobile, social media (Mixi), social gaming are ways to reach these youngsters. Work with a gaming company and come up with something that will entice young Japanese to travel physically.

Social media is fragmented in Japan – no clear winner.

Trends in search

• Meta-search works in Japan because the market is so fragmented – 10,000 OTAs and 60,000 hotels. And people are shopping for price.

• Mobile is big in Japan. Twenty percent of traffic on travel.jp comes from mobile. 20% of domestic flights are booked through mobile.

• Watch the medium-sized OTAs – they are doing a lot of customisation and building trust among customers.

• Twitter is a growth phenomenon

http://www.webintravel.com//news/wit-day-one--japan-unravelled_694

Distress Real Estate Sales - Foreign Funds Handing Back Keys

Shinsei Bank's headquarters in Tokyo is an impressive structure, with its multi-storey, glass-encased entrance hall and offices overlooking Tokyo’s lush Hibiya Park. But the building is attracting interest not so much for aesthetic reasons as doubts over its future.

A sharp fall in Tokyo property values over the past two years is raising questions in the market over whether a fund managed by Morgan Stanley, which acquired the building for Y118bn ($1.4bn) in early 2008, could end up handing the keys over to its creditors if it is unable to refinance its loans when they come due early next year.

The Shinsei Bank building, soon to be vacated by its sole tenant, is just one of the most prominent among a clutch of properties in Japan that investors believe could end up on the market

In the wake of the global financial crisis, a renewed plunge in property prices in Japan has fuelled expectations of a new era of distressed asset fire sales, an opportunity specialist funds have been hungrily eyeing.

Bankers to a fund managed by Goldman Sachs are believed to be looking to sell the Tiffany Building after the fund, which bought the building for Y38bn at what is now seen to be a peak price, chose to walk away when its loan came due this year, leaving the property under the control of its lenders. “Japan will be the first to pass through this ordeal because the lending terms for non-recourse loans made for real estate investments are short, at three years,” says Tetsuji Takenouchi, who heads the commercial mortgage-backed securities team at Moody’s in Tokyo.

SCJ Investment Management, which has since March bought about Y20bn of loans made during the peak years of 2006 and 2007, believes about Y200bn of such loans, excluding those held by the former Lehman Brothers, could be sold between 2009 and 2011.

“The distressed market is beginning to come to the fore in Japan right now,” says J-P Toppino, SCJ president, which is raising up to $350m to invest specifically in distressed debt.

Fortress, the alternative investment group, has invested Y20bn of its Y75bn Japan Opportunity Domestic Fund, which targets real estate-related debt.

Capmark formerly known as GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors, which is currently in liquidation, is expected to sell its portfolio of real estate loans, believed to be in the range of $1bn-$2bn.

Japan was a treasure trove of lucrative investment opportunities after the asset bubble burst in the early 1990s, with funds managed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley among many believed to have booked handsome profits.

But while this year was expected to be one of the biggest years since for distressed asset sales as loans made in 2006-07 come due, activity has not been nearly as high as anticipated.

Many of the distressed asset sales have been by funds that have borrowed from foreign financial institutions that are unwilling or unable to refinance troubled deals.

“At this point, what you have is mostly foreign institutions selling positions” that were originally intended to be securitised, says Mr Toppino.

But Japanese lenders have been reluctant to foreclose on their loans, as they would have to book their losses.

“Japanese banks are relatively healthy, so rather than sell their distressed assets to allow distressed asset funds to make money, they are holding on to them and refinancing,” says a senior Japanese regulator.

Furthermore, many players are convinced that “if we are not at the bottom of the market, we are not very far from it, so why don’t we refinance for one or two years,” says Michael Bowles, national director, Asia Capital Markets, at Jones Lang LaSalle in Tokyo.

The question is whether there is any justification for that optimism.

With uncertainty clouding the global economy, a recovery in Japanese asset prices is hardly assured.

The property slump has become entrenched. With the exception of 2006 to 2008, commercial real estate prices in Tokyo have fallen every year since 1991.

The reluctance of the domestic banks to foreclose on their loans could risk “[dragging] the pain on for another two to three years” and slowing the recovery in real estate in Japan, says Mr Bowles

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c6a82202-d61e-11df-81f0-00144feabdc0.html

Changes in Japanese Values from Bubble Years to Now

very five years for more than half a century, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics has conducted its Nihonjin no Kokuminsei Chosa (Survey of Japanese National Character) to study and analyze the values, opinions and lifestyle choices of Japanese people as they change from generation to generation.

Last week in Counterpoint I discussed some of those values, opinions and choices from the 1980s, the peak period of Japan's so-called bubble economy. During that decade — as the survey showed — confidence in the strength of the national economy was at a peak.

On the surface, everything seemed hunky-dory. The shinjinrui (new breed) of young people were focused less on the pride of self-sacrifice that came from rebuilding the nation after the war than on the benefits of immediate self- gratification.

What were the shinjinrui like?

They valued the freedom of individual choice that their newfound affluence afforded them, expressing it through consumption — much as a generation of American youth had done in their "new breed" phase in the 1950s. The categories of the objects of desire harbored by the two new breeds were similar: cars, music and fashion. It was the tastes of the two young generations in the United States of the 1950s and the Japan of the 1980s that drove the booms in those three classes of consumption.

With the collapse of Japan's real-estate bubble of the '80s, a lot of the land whose value had been vastly overassessed and used for collateral to get bloated loans from banks was turned into negative equity. The number of bankruptcies rocketed. Large manufacturers severed ties with small and medium-size manufacturers around the country, trying to protect the status of their "permanent" employees by severing limbs to protect vital organs.

All this led to a decline in the economic fortunes of the provinces and an increase in the number of young job-seekers leaving home to try their luck in the big cities. Bureaucrats and politicians alike, however, were convinced that the collapse of the bubble in the early '90s was no more than a "technical adjustment." As one prominent businessman told me then: "We'll be back on our feet in five years. This temporary setback will actually be good for Japan."

The Nihonjin no Kokuminsei Chosa was still indicating that confidence in the economy was strong: In 1993, 73 percent of people surveyed believed the state of the economy to be "very good" or "good"; while 74 percent felt the same about the standard of living. Evidently, it was not only bureaucrats and politicians who were in denial about the profundity of Japan's fall.

It didn't take long for this to change.

The survey of 1998 showed that the 73 percent with confidence in the economy had shrunk, within just five years, to 32 percent; and the 74 percent who had rated Japan's standard of living highly were now only 53 percent of the total respondents.

The two surveys conducted this century, in 2003 and 2008, have indicated an even bleaker outlook. In 2003, only 14 percent of respondents thought that people's lives would become more affluent in the future; by 2008, this had fallen to 11 percent. In 2003, 47 percent said livelihoods would actually get less affluent; by 2008, no fewer than 57 percent expected to be less well-off in the future. Clearly, what many had thought to be a technical adjustment to the cosmetics was, in reality, a body blow to the fundamentals.

For two decades now Japan has been caught in "The Big Drift." What of the staples of the shinjinrui lifestyle? Young people have turned away from cars. They still love their music, but they are purchasing it online, and the market for CDs barely survives. As for fashion, consumption at the high end has plunged. Retailers who can clothe you from tip to toe for less than ¥10,000 are thriving. Luxury has become just that: a luxury.

What happened to the shinjinrui values of the 1980s? After that time, what was worth sacrificing yourself for anymore, when the boom had just made the rich richer and the luxury items you had sought with such enthusiasm now gave you little pleasure? Young people who sought guidance on values were getting no more from society's elders than strings of cliches about perseverance and working for the national good.

The Great Hanshin Earthquake in January 1995, which left more than 6,000 people dead and many more with injuries and property damage, curiously energized young people. Undeterred by an official response that was clumsy and slow, many young people flocked to Kobe and its environs as volunteers. In other words, their response to disaster was not something abstract or tied to a national emblem but a personal calling to help individuals in need. This volunteer movement of young people had a marked effect on the government, which, thanks to those young people's spirit, spearheaded its initiative in the United Nations to make 2001 the International Year of Volunteers.

This, to me, became symbolic of a shift in values. The outward selfishness of the new breed of Japanese youth was just that, a surface value. Deep down there was empathy. It needed only a catalyst to become proactive.

One disaster, however, does not change a society. The high-tech boom that was to follow facilitated the new breed in their inward turn. They took refuge in one or another mania, whether gaming, anime or simply the obsession with technology that has long been a feature of Japanese life.

The shinjinrui morphed into the otaku (obsessives), who would rather stare into a screen than a face. The shinjinrui of the '80s and the otaku of this century don't look alike. The former were the children of kokusaika (internationalization) and the new individualistic cool; the latter, the products of Japanese pop gadgetry. To the otaku, nerdy is the new cool.

But the two young generations were and are both self-obsessed in a similar way, being wary of the older generation's preachy diligence-for- its-own-sake and self-sacrifice in the name of some amorphous and unobtainable goal. Their take on ethics was and is ultimately personal.

Today's immense popularity among younger readers of Takiji Kobayashi's 1929 classic about the oppression of the working class, "The Crab Canning Ship," and of the new translation by Ikuo Kameyama of Feodor Dostoevski's "The Brothers Karamazov" (which has sold more than a million copies) are indicative of this otaku generation's genuine search for a morality that suits both society and the individual.

Perhaps the very technology that looms so large before their eyes is what allows them to reach out to others with a real sense of concern.

The survey on national character may be pointing in the direction of gloom, if not doom, with its findings that young Japanese people are disillusioned with their country. But I believe there is a values revolution taking place in the subculture . . . and this makes me hopeful.

Progress originates in the depths of dissatisfaction with a society, then marches into the light once that society, with its young people in the vanguard, finds ways to express itself meaningfully and concretely in personal values and lifestyle choices.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20101010rp.html

Toyota Stays Committed to Local Production

Toyota Motor Corp. President Akio Toyoda denied Monday the automaker is stepping up efforts to transfer production bases overseas even though the surging yen has made auto production costly at home.

"Logically, it doesn't make sense to manufacture in Japan," Toyoda told reporters in Nagoya. "But I feel a sense of crisis and worry what would happen to this country, which largely depends on manufacturing, if Toyota (scaled back production in Japan).

"I know that the present situation for manufacturing is very tough, but our Toyota group places much importance on maintaining production (bases in Japan)," the president said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69E15R20101015

Hotels, retailers cater to pet pamper boom

Businesses from hotels to supermarkets are ramping up their pet-related services, looking to cash in as more people treat their animal companions like members of the family.

Major supermarket chain operator Aeon Co. began revamping its stores' pet departments at the end of September. At the Jusco Shinagawa Seaside store in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, Aeon affiliate Petcity Co. offers about 6,000 kinds of pet-related goods, including medicinal food given under the instruction of veterinarians for pets prone to disease. A wide selection of colorful clothes and toys are also available.

Petcity Co. President Ryoji Mamesaya said: "One of the best ways for customers to use the department is to build a relationship with and get advice on raising pets from our sales clerks, who are pet specialists."

Major online retailer Amazon Japan K.K. opened a pet goods section on its Web site on Sept. 30.

According to Yano Research Institute Ltd., the value of the pet-related goods market in fiscal 2009 was 1.37 trillion yen, an increase of 1.3 percent over the previous year. The institute expects further increases in fiscal 2010 and 2011.

===

Traveling with pets

Meanwhile, the travel industry also has improved its services for people wanting to journey with their pets.

Hotel Okura Kobe in Hyogo Prefecture opened Felice, a separate annex catering exclusively to dogs, on Oct. 1. The hotel offers three types of rooms--according to dog size--with the largest suite costing 25,200 yen per night. Additional charges apply for shampooing and other services.

Felice is located within a parking building and as in the past, customers' dogs are not allowed to enter the hotel's main premises.

In July, the Tsugaru Kaikyo Ferry Co. in Hakodate, Hokkaido, also set up separate premises for dogs--a dog room in full view from the main passenger cabin--in newly built ferries traveling the Tsugaru Strait between Aomori and Hakodate.

Before its establishment, customers had to leave their pets in their cars. The company charges 1,000 yen per dog for use of the room, which is separated from the main cabin by double doors so odors and barking do not cause any disruptions. There also is space for passengers to play with their dogs on an adjacent deck.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69E15R20101015

Aichi's Centrair Airport looking to cash in on budget airline boom

Budget airlines are finally coming to Japanese skies.

Unlike major carriers, their flights are operated at the lowest possible cost — by providing minimal onboard services and so forth — allowing them to offer fares 30 to 70 percent cheaper than the megacarriers.

In hopes of increasing its presence as an international hub, Aichi Prefecture's Central Japan International Airport, also known as Centrair or Chubu Kokusai Kuko, is trying to win a piece of this new low-frills pie.

Budget airlines that grew up in Europe now see Asia as a growth market. Their share of the Asia-Pacific region is estimated to have soared to much as 15 percent last year.

"We have grown the customer base with discount fares," said Cheon Insung, head of the Japan branch of South Korea's Jeju Air, the only discount airline serving Centrair.

Jeju Air began flying there in late March with daily service to and from Gimpo airport in Seoul. Jeju's fare is nearly 30 percent cheaper than those offered by major airlines. Helped by a recovering tourism industry, seat occupancy exceeded 80 percent in August. "We are only one step away from turning a profit," Cheon said.

Last month, Spring Airlines, a Chinese no-frills carrier that connects Ibaraki and Shanghai, surprised the public by offering ¥4,000 one-way tickets for 10 percent of its seats during a special campaign period.

Meanwhile, All Nippon Airways Co. announced Sept. 9 that before the end of the year it will launch its own budget airline based at Kansai International Airport to survive the competition.

With Haneda airport in Tokyo opening a new terminal in October to handle more overseas flights, other international airports have been forced to look for ways to survive. They're placing a great deal of hope on the burgeoning low-cost carriers because they can't foresee significant growth among the full-service ones.

"We are now in negotiations with several budget carriers," said Centrair President Hiroshi Kawakami.

Centrair's operator is putting top priority on increasing international routes for short and midrange distances. This month, it assigned two staff members to focus on attracting budget airlines.

However, Kansai International Airport Co. has already recruited five budget airlines, the best in Japan. The airport has made landing fees practically nonexistent for airlines opening new international routes through the end of next March, and it's taking a look at developing a special terminal for ANA's new budget subsidiary.

"The rise of low-cost carriers will give travelers more choices on fares and services in addition to those provided by major airlines. They will also be able to choose the airport they want to use," said an official in the corporate strategy office of Kansai International Airport Co.

The low-cost airlines are mainly targeting Asian tourists who until now generally considered international travel an expensive luxury. In that respect, the Kansai airport enjoys an overwhelming advantage over Centrair because of its proximity to such internationally known tourist spots as Kyoto and Osaka.

In fact, on Jeju Air's Chubu-Seoul flights, South Korean fliers have been taking up only 30 percent of the seats, while Japanese have accounted for 70 percent. By contrast, 60 percent of the travelers on the Kansai-Seoul route are South Korean.

Kawakami of Centrair knows he can't expect high demand among tourists for his airport. To make up for this, he said he is considering new tour packages that would tie Chubu with other areas, utilizing the domestic airports spread around Japan.

"Centrair is blessed financially compared with Kansai International, so it might be easier to provide preferential treatment for carriers, such as discounted landing fees," aviation analyst Kazuki Sugiura said. "There should be a way out of the stagnant situation, depending on how it approaches the hurdles it faces."

Attracting travelers from Asian countries can't be achieved solely through the efforts of the airport company. To make up for the Chubu region's tourism "handicap," it is imperative to establish a broader and stronger cooperation system by involving local governments and business circles as well as the tourism industry

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69E15R20101015

2009 - Women's Salaries Overtake Mens

Not only can young Japanese women look forward to a longer life than their male peers, now they also make more money.

Income for single women under 30 hit an average of 218,156 yen ($2,680) a month in 2009, edging above the 215,515 yen ($2,640) of their male counterparts for the first time ever, according to an Internal Affairs ministry survey.

The change, which saw women's incomes surge 11.4 percent from the previous survey five years ago compared to a 7 percent fall for men, was driven by the plunge of the global economy and the fact that men's incomes simply had more room to fall.

"Basically, men's salaries were much higher in general, and they took a much bigger hit when the economy worsened," said Hideo Kumano, chief economist at the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.

"In addition, many more men work in manufacturing than women, and after the Lehman failure things for this sector really chilled."

Japan's economy has always been export-dependent and centered around manufacturers, who suffered especially badly from the late 2008 failure of Lehman Bros and the global stock market plunge that followed. In early 2009, Japanese stocks fell to a 26-year closing low.

By contrast, women are much more involved in jobs in medicine and nursing care, which have surged as Japan's population ages.

In addition, Kumano said, younger women may finally be starting to reap the rewards of the trails blazed by older predecessors in white-collar jobs such as finance.

"Women are now more able to take career-track jobs like this thanks to those in their 40s and older, who now are taking up managerial positions," he added.

But Kumano cautioned the figures may be a one-off fluctuation and it is still to early to see if the change is lasting.

According to the 2009 United Nations Development Programme's Gender Empowerment Measure, Japan ranked 57th out of 109 countries in political and economic participation for women.

Women accounted for only 4.1 percent of department managers in private corporations in 2008, according to a study by Japan's Gender Equality Bureau of the Cabinet Office.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69E15R20101015

August - Machinery Orders Jump 10.1% YOY

Japan's machinery orders, a closely watched indicator of future business investment, unexpectedly jumped due to one-time purchases in August, marking the third straight month of growth, the government said Wednesday.

Japan's core machinery orders in August rose 10.1 percent from the previous month to 843.5 billion yen (US$10.3 billion), the Cabinet Office said. The August result was far better than a 4.0 percent drop projected by economists.

The figure excludes volatile numbers from shipbuilders and electric power companies.

Hiroshi Watanabe, economist at Daiwa Institute of Research, said a surge in August machinery orders was due to one-time purchases including massive orders for chemical and nuclear plant equipment.

"It is too early to say machinery orders are recovering strongly. The August figure was boosted by one-off factors. Companies remain cautious about making big investments amid uncertainty over a global economic recovery," he said.

Orders from manufacturers grew 12.5 percent, while those from non-manufacturers climbed 8.3 percent in August.

But overseas demand, an indicator of prospects for Japanese exports, fell 3.7 percent in August amid cooling demand abroad. The figure marked the first drop in four months, the government said.

In the three month period to September, the Cabinet Office has predicted machinery orders will rise 0.8 percent from the previous quarter

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/business/news/20101013p2g00m0bu082000c.html

Economic Reality for Japanese Youth

It's a drizzly Friday night in Shibuya, central Tokyo's bustling, neon-splashed shopping district and Ikuya Ueda is doing his best to stand out in the crowd. With a smile and a nod of his bleach-blond head, he tries to tempt the crowd that streams past him into a nearby restaurant. But as he chain-smokes in the rain, it is easy to see his heart's not in his work.

"The food's not that great," he confides with a smile.

It's hard to fault Ueda for his lack of enthusiasm. This was supposed to be the year he followed Japan's decades-long, springtime tradition that sees hundreds of thousands of students bloom into full-time workers.

"I couldn't find a job, so I'm staying on in school for another year," he admits with a shrug.

That makes him one of the more than 100,000 new university graduates — 20 per cent of the total — who hadn't secured full-time employment as of May 1, according to a survey by the Japanese Education Ministry. Their ranks have been growing each year.

"If you talk to college students, they are scared if they don't get a job after school," says Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a professor at Japan's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. "They feel like they've lost their career track."

Media reports refer ominously to the emergence of a second "lost generation," the successor to the 1990s graduates who were shouldered with unstable, low-paying jobs following the long, drawn-out Asian financial crisis.

Not much has changed in the years since. In fact, one can argue that things have become worse.

Japan is no longer the world's second largest economy, its debt is approaching 200 per cent of its annual gross domestic product, its population is aged and shrinking, and, for a nation of legendary savers, it isn't socking away as much as it used to.

All this is a far cry from the post-War boom when jobs were plentiful, thanks in part to a government-established system whereby companies hired students straight out of high school or university and moulded them to suit their purposes.

Over the years, legions of so-called "fresh graduates" obtained permanent working class positions or became "salarymen," the name used to describe Japan's devoted white-collar labour force.

However, the system started to unravel even before it was buffeted by the economic troubles of the 1990s. Fewer young people won employment straight out of school and, because Japanese companies favoured hiring fresh graduates, they were left hopping from job to job.

These people were called "freeters," a label that evolved in the 1980s to describe Japanese who rejected the salaryman's endless workweeks and corporate dedication in favour of freedom and creative pursuits.

In recent years, however, some have come to consider the moniker a stigma.

"They are not choosing to become freeters" says Kyoto University sociologist Emiko Ochiai, "They just can't find stable jobs."

Ochiai paid for her daughter to stay in school for two extra years so she could keep her fresh graduate status while job hunting, which is not a problem that's exclusive to Japan.

To put it bluntly, it sucks to be young the world over. The UN's Labor Agency reported in August that global youth unemployment hit an all-time high at the end of 2009, with 80.7 million workers, aged 15-24, unemployed worldwide, up 7.8 million from 2007.

The reason this issue has special resonance here in Japan, however, is because young people are putting off getting married and having kids for a variety of reasons, including unemployment uncertainty, and the older generation is worried the country's pension and social security system will collapse under the weight of its growing seniors population.

That's why talk of this second lost generation here sometimes takes on a "what's wrong with the kids?" tone.

In extreme cases, the term hikikomori is applied, used to describe young people, especially males, who all but cut themselves off from the rest of society, often living in a virtual world of online chat groups and social networking sites, and refusing to leave their homes.

"There are different names for the same group of people, just different degrees of social withdrawal," says Michael Dziesinski, who is in Japan working on his PhD. "Hikikomori is just the most extreme example."

Dziesinski, who taught English in rural Japan, spent time studying a hikikomori rehabilitation centre for his graduate work and his current research is focused on the transition between education and employment in this country.

College students from vocational schools in Tokyo punch the air with their fists during a pep rally in February 2010 to launch their spring job-hunting, a tradition that has become more challenging of late.

He believes the disconnection and disenchantment among Japanese youth can be attributed to a number of factors. Among them, an affluent middle class that can afford to let kids to live at home almost indefinitely and an abundance of technology and entertainment.

But he also points a finger at the country's rigid school-to-work system.

"So many kids are in the pressure cooker from elementary school to college," he says. "A lot of students are saying, 'What's the point of all of this? I pass my exams, get into college, and I don't get a job?'"

It's the kind of question Yosuke Ebisu was asking himself earlier this year. After doing 24 interviews with eight different companies, the science major couldn't secure employment to coincide with his graduation from the prestigious University of Tokyo.

So instead of heading to work next spring, he is planning to head to grad school.

Ebisu is particularly upset at corporations that only look to hire "fresh graduates," a critique he shares with Kiyoshi Kurokawa, one of Japan's top science advisers, at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

"Many establishments want to have fresh graduates so they are obedient," says Kurokawa in a tone of exasperation. "It's crazy in my view."

Kurokawa believes Japan's unbending, hierarchical system, which worked so well before the age of the internet and globalization, needs an overhaul and that CEOs need to be more creative.

"I asked one of them, 'Why are you so concerned about fresh graduates? How about somebody who took a leave of one year?' He told me he'd never thought about it."

The Japanese government is certainly thinking about it, though. It is now actively encouraging companies, with financial incentives, to treat all job applicants who graduated from high school or university within the last three years as "fresh graduates."

That is the kind of change many in this country will welcome. But it may not fully take into account the changing attitudes that a prolonged downturn has brought about.

As Kyoto University sociologist Emiko Ochiai points out, today's young Japanese are adapting to their country's new normal.

"Economic success is not the only value for these young people," says Ochiai. "What I am observing is they are changing their attitude about life, and they're not necessarily feeling unhappy.

"Many are adjusting themselves to the economic conditions, trying to find new ways to enjoy life."

Yosuke Ebisu, the science undergrad who is now preparing for grad school, is part of this new wave. So is Ikuya Ueda, the back-at-school, part-time restaurant promoter.

"Last year, I wanted to be a salaryman, but I didn't get a job," says Ueda. "I started thinking about my future. I thought that being a salaryman would be boring." So now he is thinking about saving his money and opening a small shop.

In a way, Japan could be viewed as a type-A workaholic who, more than a little burnt out, decided to slow down and figure out a new work-life-balance.

This approach might not be sustainable given all of the economic and demographic challenges the country is facing. But it might also just help bring about some of the changes so many in this nation feel are necessary.



http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/10/08/f-dale-tokyo-lost.html#ixzz12lCxyqWi

August - Wages Fail to Rise for First Time in Six Months

Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Japan’s wages unexpectedly stagnated in August, failing to rise for the first time in six months, adding to concern the country’s consumers won’t be able to drive growth in place of slowing demand abroad.

Monthly wages including overtime and bonuses were unchanged from a year earlier at 274,232 yen ($3,288), the Labor Ministry said today in Tokyo. Barclays Capital had projected a 0.6 percent annual advance in pay, while Bank of America Merrill Lynch had forecast a 1 percent gain.

Today’s report adds to risks for an economic recovery already burdened by the effect of an appreciating yen on the nation’s exports, which grew the least this year in August. Deteriorating growth prospects mean the Bank of Japan, which begins a two-day meeting today, will probably add monetary stimulus this month, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economists say.

“The rebound in wages after the steep drop in 2009 has been extremely slow,” said Yoshiki Shinke, senior economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute in Tokyo. “We’re seeing more and more economic reasons for the Bank of Japan to ease policy.”

Overtime pay rose 10.8 percent from a year earlier, the eighth straight increase, as employers had staff work more hours to keep up with demand. Special pay, a category that includes bonuses, dropped 10.7 percent, according to today’s report.

Yen Trading

The government intervened in the foreign-exchange market for the first time since 2004 on Sept. 15 to protect the export- driven recovery, and the yen weakened to as low as 85.93 against the dollar on Sep. 17. The yen has advanced since then, trading at 83.55 at 12:58 p.m. in Tokyo today.

Amid signs of a faltering recovery, Prime Minister Naoto Kan unveiled a 915 billion yen ($11 billion) stimulus on Sept. 10 that government estimates say will create or sustain 200,000 jobs, and has instructed ministers to compile another support package to keep the recovery going. National Strategy Minister Koichiro Gemba said today that total will be about 4.8 trillion yen.

The central bank will probably tomorrow increase its 30- trillion yen credit program for lenders to encourage bank lending and reduce demand for yen, 14 of 17 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News said.

More Easing

“We would not rule out more extensive easing” than the expansion of the credit facility, Chiwoong Lee, an economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said in a report. “We are seeing the start of deterioration in the real economy.”

The BOJ will in the coming months increase its annual planned purchases of government bonds to at least 35 trillion yen from 21.6 trillion currently, boosting buying of five- and 10-year bonds to cut corporate borrowing costs, said Hideo Shimomura, chief fund investor at Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management Co.

The unemployment rate fell to 5.1 percent in August from 5.2 percent in July even as the number of those with work dropped, reflecting an increase in people leaving the workforce, data showed last week.

Growth in paychecks is unlikely to pick up because of deflation and a weakening recovery in factory output, Dai-Ichi’s Shinke said. Industrial production fell for a third month in August.


http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-04/japan-wages-fail-to-rise-for-first-time-in-six-months.html

Friday, October 1, 2010

September - Takefuji Applies for Bankruptcy

OKYO — Japan's once high-flying consumer credit firm Takefuji Corp. will file for bankruptcy protection with liabilities of five billion dollars, a credit research company said Monday.
Takefuji, which calls itself a "yen shop", is burdened with claims by customers for refunds of excessive interest charges since the Supreme Court in 2006 entitled borrowers to do so, Tokyo Shoko Research said.
Its liabilities total 433.6 billion yen (5.1 billion dollars), it said.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange suspended trading in Takefuji's shares, which are also listed on the London bourse. No immediate comment was available from Takefuji.
Media reports said the company would file with the Tokyo District Court as early as Monday for restructuring under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law.
It will seek a sponsor while reducing debts through cuts in refunds to customers and other measures, the Nikkei economic daily said, while warning liabilities could expand if more customers come forward with claims.
Takefuji, established in 1974, grew quickly to become the nation's top consumer finance company.
Its founder, the late Yasuo Takei, was Japan's top taxpayer in 1993 and the company boasted group operating profit of 425.4 billion yen and outstanding loans of 1,766.6 billion yen in the year to March 2002 at its height.
But Takei was arrested in 2003 for wiretapping a journalist who wrote an article criticising the company's operations and was given a suspended jail term the following year.
Takefuji saw loan demand fall rapidly in recent years and the Lehman shock in 2008 made Takefuji's fund-raising harder, the Nikkei said.
Japan's megabanks have recently purchased troubled consumer credit firms but Takefuji remains independent from them.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hYYKzRZ705X0l5aNfIUlb1DelzaA

August - Carmakers Production Growth

OKYO—Japan's top three car makers revved up domestic production in August as consumers rushed out to dealerships to pick up new cars just before government purchasing incentives ended.

Reporting output and sales figures for last month, Toyota Motor Corp., the world's biggest car maker by sales volume, said Tuesday it boosted its production in Japan 13.3% on year. Meanwhile, Nissan Motor Co., Japan's second-largest player, said it lifted its domestic output 24.6% on year in the same month while third-largest Honda Motor Co. said production grew 24.8%.

Such robust growth is likely to stall now that a 17-month period of government subsidies to spur auto sales ended slightly ahead of schedule earlier this month as the budget for the program ran out.

The termination of the government grants is likely to make matters worse for Japanese car makers who are already contending with the risk of slowing domestic production. On top of that, persistent strength in the yen is making it difficult for auto makers to export vehicles overseas as their product has become less price-competitive.

Honda executive vice president Koichi Kondo said last month he expects Japan's industry-wide auto sales to fall as much as 30% in the quarter through December from the same term last year because of the termination of the subsidies.

Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn, meanwhile, has said his company's domestic production might drop as much as 20% in October and November compared with September's production volume, weighed down by the ended grants and the strong yen.

But all is not lost for Japan's hard-hit auto industry. The government continues to offer other types of aid to spark domestic auto sales with tax breaks for fuel-efficient cars that are effective until April 2012.

Toyota built 225,634 vehicles in August in Japan, marking the 10th straight month of increase in domestic output as its sales in its home market grew 43% on year to 132,556 vehicles while exports rose 3.9% to 115,216.

During the same period, Nissan produced 91,519 vehicles at home, as its domestic sales increased 34.6% to 55,083 vehicles and exports rose 11.9% to 43,145 vehicles.

Honda's August domestic output totaled 68,065 vehicles as the company sold 65,009 vehicles in Japan, up 59.6%. It exported 27,573 vehicles, up 55.9% on year.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882404575519211731247460.html