Official Development Assistance (ODA) of Japan is the highest in the world. However, foreign aids besides ODA that match Japan's economic power is being required from all over the world.
GNP of Japan is the highest in the world. The speed of such development, in spite of crushing defeat in the Second World War, has even been called a miracle. However, the people's living standard is not necessarily in proportion to this. Reforms focusing on the people are task of the government from now on.
Japan, with few underground resources, is a country built on the business of importing raw materials and exporting manufactured products. However, the more Japan puts effort into export, the more the trade surplus increases, resulting in countries around the world putting restrictions on Japan's exports. At the same time, there is a growing demand to remove Japan's non-tariff barriers.
Japan has reached a high enough level of world economic strength that it can now be called a major economic power, and per capita national income has also been steadily increasing. As of 1993, it is 4.2 times larger than ten years ago. This places Japan first among member countries of OECD.
Kodo-seichoki refers to the period of some 20 years from the 1950s to the 1970s when the rate of Japan's economic growth exceeded an average of ten percent per year. During this period of time, whole new industries were born through technical innovation, and manufacturing techniques improved by leaps and bounds while there was also a strong labor force, and manufactured goods were exported in large numbers to foreign countries. In kodo-seichoki the lives of the Japanese people improved on a mass scale. The income-doubling program by government was realized and, with the introduction of electrical products one after another into people's homes, their lives changed significantly. However, as time passed, the concentration of population in the cities, the depopulation of farming villages, and environmental destruction and pollution started to become large problems, and, together with the Oil Crisis of 1973, kodo-seichoki met its final moments.
In land-scarce Japan, real property is regarded as the most certain asset. The "Bubble Economy" indicates "an economy swollen beyond its actual value," which is based on "land centrism." The second half of the 1980s was truly the golden age of the "Bubble Economy." Land prices rose sharply through excessive bank financing, and furthermore businesses secured loans against that land and invested in stocks; hence stock prices too rose sharply. However, in the 1990s the brakes were applied to the rise in land prices by such measures as tightening credit and strengthening control over financing, and the "Bubble Economy" collapsed. Land prices around Tokyo made a downward shift and stock prices also hovered low, and the myth that "neither land nor stocks will fall," which once controlled Japan, was disproved.
The three principal elements of Japanese management are probably lifetime employment system, the seniority system and company-based unions. In contrast to Europe and the United States, where people are employed for their labor and management functions, in Japan people are employed for their total capabilities. A premise for employees, therefore, is to work until the mandatory retirement age at one company, with salary and rank going up in accordance with the number of years one works there. The labor unions, too, which are organized within the company, work well in the co-existence and co-prosperity between labor and management--working as one body--and this fosters employee's loyalty to the company and makes for smooth management of the organization. These kinds of special features have contributed to Japan's economic prosperity.
The ratio of the food expense to the whole family budget is almost at the same level as that of Europeans' but higher than that of Americans'.
Regarding the substance of what Japanese eat, due to participation of woman to society and the increasing number of single persons, the percentage of eating out and eating prepared foods is getting high.
Commodity prices in Tokyo are expensive in fields of house rent, energy, water supply, and clothes, in addition to foods. Some commodities are cheaper in Tokyo; however, as trips abroad becomes popular, there are increasing numbers of people who strongly realize the difference.
Public peace and order in Japan are good and there is little danger of being robbed for cash, so the necessity for credit cards has not been so high. Besides, since using credit cards puts one into debt, there is even a tendency to dislike them. However, banks and companies with credit card distribution connections have recklessly issued cards in competing to increase their companies' market share; hence, Japan has become one of the prominent card-issuing countries in the world.
Because of excessive competition, value-added service, when compared to foreign countries, is especially thorough, but it does not have the same status symbol value as in Europe and the United States. Also, the quantity of cards for distribution in the market is low, and it is estimated that more than half the cards are almost never used.