日本衰败的神话

The Myth of Japan’s Failure By EAMONN FINGLETON Published: January 6, 2012

《纽约时报》2012年1月6日

Tokyo

伊曼恩?芬格顿

DESPITE some small signs of optimism about the United States economy, unemployment is still high, and the country seems stalled.

尽管美国经济显露了零星令人高兴的迹象，但失业率仍然居高不下，整个国家似乎处于停滞状态。

Time and again, Americans are told to look to Japan as a warning of what the country might become if the right path is not followed, although there is intense disagreement about what that path might be. Here, for instance, is how the CNN analyst David Gergen has described Japan: “It’s now a very demoralized country and it has really been set back.”

美国人被再三告诫，如果选择的道路不正确，日本就是前车之鉴。但对什么样的道路是正确的却众说纷纭。比如说，CNN的分析员大卫?葛根这样描述日本：这是一个士气低落，深感挫败的国家。

But that presentation of Japan is a myth. By many measures, the Japanese economy has done very well during the so-called lost decades, which started with a stock market crash in January 1990. By some of the most important measures, it has done a lot better than the United States.

但是，对日本的如此解读其实是个神话。以众多标准衡量，从1990年1月股市崩盘算起，在所谓失去的20年里，日本经济成绩斐然。按照一些最重要的指标衡量，日本比美国做得要好很多。

Japan has succeeded in delivering an increasingly affluent lifestyle to its people despite the financial crash. In the fullness of time, it is likely that this era will be viewed as an outstanding success story.

即使发生了金融崩溃，日本仍然成功地使其国民过上了日益富裕的生活。如果放在一个完整的时间周期看，这个时期很有可能被视为取得重大成就的一段。

How can the reality and the image be so different? And can the United States learn from Japan’s experience?

现实与外在形象为何如此不同呢？美国是否能够得益于日本经验呢？

It is true that Japanese housing prices have never returned to the ludicrous highs they briefly touched in the wild final stage of the boom. Neither has the Tokyo stock market.

不错，日本房价从来也没有重回疯狂泡沫期触摸过的高点。东京股市也一样。

But the strength of Japan’s economy and its people is evident in many ways. There are a number of facts and figures that don’t quite square with Japan’s image as the laughingstock of the business pages:

但日本经济和日本人的实力在多方面都是显而易见的。众媒体的商业版面将日本描画成世人的笑料，但一些事实和数据却证明这个形象名实不甚相符。

Japan’s average life expectancy at birth grew by 4.2 years — to 83 years from 78.8 years — between 1989 and 2009. This means the Japanese now typically live 4.8 years longer than Americans. The progress, moreover, was achieved in spite of, rather than because of, diet. The Japanese people are eating more Western food than ever. The key driver has been better health care.

在1989年至2009年期间，日本人的平均寿命增加了4.2年，由78.8岁提高至83岁。这意味着日本人比美国人的寿命长4.8年。这种提高是在日本人饮食习惯有所改变的情况下取得的，而不是归因于饮食习惯的改变。他们现在吃着更多的西式食品。更完善的医疗保健条件是寿命延长的重要推动力。

Japan has made remarkable strides in Internet infrastructure. Although as late as the mid-1990s it was ridiculed as lagging, it has now turned the tables. In a recent survey by Akamai Technologies, of the 50 cities in the world with the fastest Internet service, 38 were in Japan, compared to only 3 in the United States.

日本在互联网基础设施上也有长足的进步。1990年代中期，日本还因落后受到讥讽，如今形势有了彻底改观。在阿卡迈技术公司（Akamai）最近的一份调查显示，在世界上互联网速度最快的50个城市中，日本占了38个，而美国仅有3个。

Measured from the end of 1989, the yen has risen 87 percent against the U.S. dollar and 94 percent against the British pound. It has even risen against that traditional icon of monetary rectitude, the Swiss franc.

从1989年算起，日元对美元升值了87%，对英镑升值了94%。即使是公认的传统避险货币瑞士法郎，对日元的汇率也有一定程度的贬值。

The unemployment rate is 4.2 percent, about half of that in the United States.

失业率是4.2%，仅为美国的一半。

According to skyscraperpage.com, a Web site that tracks major buildings around the world, 81 high-rise buildings taller than 500 feet have been constructed in Tokyo since the “lost decades” began. That compares with 64 in New York, 48 in Chicago, and 7 in Los Angeles.

据跟踪报道世界大型建筑物的摩天大楼之页网站（skyscraperpage.com）统计，自从“失去的20年”开始以来，共有81座高度超过500英尺的大楼在东京拔地而起。与之相比，纽约有64座，芝加哥以及洛杉矶则分别有48座和7座。

Japan’s current account surplus — the widest measure of its trade — totaled $196 billion in 2010, up more than threefold since 1989. By comparison, America’s current account deficit ballooned to $471 billion from $99 billion in that time. Although in the 1990s the conventional wisdom was that as a result of China’s rise Japan would be a major loser and the United States a major winner, it has not turned out that way. Japan has increased its exports to China more than 14-fold since 1989 and Chinese-Japanese bilateral trade remains in broad balance.

2010年，日本的经常项目顺差——最宽泛的贸易指标，总计1960亿美元，是1989年的三倍多。相比之下，美国的经常项目逆差则大幅上升，从990亿美元增至4710亿美元。虽然上世纪90年代有种传统认识，中国崛起的后果是日本受到最大损害，美国则受益最多，但结果却不是这样。自1989年以来，日本向中国的出口激增了14倍，而与此同时，中日双边贸易保持了总体平衡。

As longtime Japan watchers like Ivan P. Hall and Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr. point out, the fallacy of the “lost decades” story is apparent to American visitors the moment they set foot in the country. Typically starting their journeys at such potent symbols of American infrastructural decay as Kennedy or Dulles airports, they land at Japanese airports that have been extensively expanded and modernized in recent years.

长期研究日本的伊万?霍尔和克莱德?普莱斯维茨指出，美国游客在踏足日本土地的那一刻，就意识到所谓“失去的20年”纯属谬论。比较典型的对比就是他们从肯尼迪或杜勒斯机场出发——那里象征着美国基础设施的颓败，然后在日本的机场落地——这里在最近几年经历了大规模扩建和更新。

William J. Holstein, a prominent Japan watcher since the early 1980s, recently visited the country for the first time in some years. “There’s a dramatic gap between what one reads in the United States and what one sees on the ground in Japan,” he said. “The Japanese are dressed better than Americans. They have the latest cars, including Porsches, Audis, Mercedes-Benzes and all the finest models. I have never seen so many spoiled pets. And the physical infrastructure of the country keeps improving and evolving.”

威廉?霍尔斯泰因自上世纪80年代初期开始研究日本，是一位卓有建树的日本观察家。相隔几年后他再访日本。“人们在美国读到的日本和亲眼看到的日本之间存在巨大的鸿沟，”他说。“日本人着装比美国人好。他们开着款式更新的小汽车，其中包括保时捷、奥迪、梅赛德斯奔驰和其它所有的高档精品车型。我从未看到过如此众多的宠物受到人们的溺爱。这个国家的基础设施不断地改善并发展着。

Why, then, is Japan seen as a loser? On the official gross domestic product numbers, the United States has ostensibly outperformed Japan for many years. But even taking America’s official numbers at face value, the difference has been far narrower than people realize. Adjusted to a per-capita basis (which is the proper way to do this) and measured since 1989, America’s G.D.P. grew by an average of just 1.4 percent a year. Japan’s figure meanwhile was even more anemic — just 1 percent — implying that it underperformed the United States by 0.4 percent a year.

那么，为什么日本被视为失败者？从官方发布的国内生产总值看，美国多年遥遥领先日本。但即使是按照官方数据的字面看，两者的差距比人们认为的那样要缩小很多。按照人均衡量（更恰当的比较方式）并从1989年算起，美国的GDP每年仅增长14%，而日本的数字则小的可怜，仅1%，这似乎表明日本经济增长速度比美国每年低了0.4个百分点。

A look at the underlying accounting, however, suggests that, far from underperforming, Japan may have outperformed. For a start, in a little noticed change, United States statisticians in the 1980s embarked on an increasingly aggressive use of the so-called hedonic method of adjusting for inflation, an approach that in the view of many experts artificially boosts a nation’s apparent growth rate.

但若更进一步看，日本不仅没有落后，反而可能超过了美国。仅举一例，在不显眼的一个变化中，美国上世纪80年代的统计学家们开始逐渐大范围应用所谓扣除通胀因素的隐含统计方法，这种方式在一些专家看来会人为地提高一个国家的显在增长率。

On the calculations of John Williams of Shadowstats.com, a Web site that tracks flaws in United States economic data, America’s growth in recent decades has been overstated by as much as 2 percentage points a year. If he is even close to the truth, this factor alone may put the United States behind Japan in per-capita performance.

据在追踪美国经济数据疏漏的影子统计网站（Shadowstats.com）工作的约翰?威廉姆斯计算，美国近几十年的增长每年被高估了2个百分点。如果他说的是真的，那么仅仅这个数字就可以使美国在人均方面落后于日本。

If the Japanese have really been hurting, the most obvious place this would show would be in slow adoption of expensive new high-tech items. Yet the Japanese are consistently among the world’s earliest adopters. If anything, it is Americans who have been lagging. In cellphones, for instance, Japan leapfrogged the United States in the space of a few years in the late 1990s and it has stayed ahead ever since, with consumers moving exceptionally rapidly to ever more advanced devices.

假如日本人确实受到了损害，最明显的表现应是在接受昂贵的高科技产品方面反应较慢。可事实上，日本人一直居于世界上弄潮者行列。反应迟钝的反倒是美国人。以手机为例，上世纪90年代后期，日本比美国超前了数年并在此后一直保持领先。面对不断更新换代的电子产品，日本消费者的行动出奇地快。

Much of the story is qualitative rather than quantitative. An example is Japan’s eating-out culture. Tokyo, according to the Michelin Guide, boasts 16 of the world’s top-ranked restaurants, versus a mere 10 for the runner-up, Paris. Similarly Japan as a whole beats France in the Michelin ratings. But how do you express this in G.D.P. terms?

这种说法多属定性论断而非定量分析。一个例子是日本的在外就餐文化。根据米其林旅游指南提供的数据，东京拥有16家世界上的顶级餐厅，巴黎则屈居第二，仅有10家。同样地，在米其林的评分中，日本整体上居于法国之上。但你如果将这种现象以GDP数据表示出来呢？

Similar problems arise in measuring improvements in the Japanese health care system. And how does one accurately convey the vast improvement in the general environment in Japan in the last two decades?

在衡量日本医疗卫生方面的改善时也会遇到类似问题。过去20年里，日本在整体生活环境方面获得巨大改善，人们又如何能进行准确的计算呢？

Luckily there is a yardstick that finesses many of these problems: electricity output, which is mainly a measure of consumer affluence and industrial activity. In the 1990s, while Japan was being widely portrayed as an outright “basket case,” its rate of increase in per-capita electricity output was twice that of America, and it continued to outperform into the new century.

幸运的是，有一个指标可以精确地应对上述问题：发电量，这是消费者富足程度和工业活跃程度的重要指标。1990年代，当日本被广泛地描述为一个彻头彻尾的“失败者”的时候，它在人均耗电量的增长率是美国的一倍，并在进入新世纪后保持了超过美国的发展势头。

Part of what is going on here is Western psychology. Anyone who has followed the story long-term cannot help but notice that many Westerners actively seek to belittle Japan. Thus every policy success is automatically discounted. It is a mind-set that is much in evidence even among Tokyo-based Western diplomats and scholars.

这里的部分问题源自西方人的心理。任何对此长期保持关注的人都不可避免地发现，许多西方人实际是在积极地贬低日本。因而，任何政策上的成功都自动被打了折扣。这是一种心理定势，且普遍存在，甚至在常驻东京的西方外交人员和学者中间都有明显的表现。

Take, for instance, how Western observers have viewed Japan’s demographics. The population is getting older because of a low birthrate, a characteristic Japan shares with many of the world’s richest nations. Yet this is presented not only as a critical problem but as a policy failure. It never seems to occur to Western commentators that the Japanese both individually and collectively have chosen their demographic fate — and have good reasons for doing so.

西方观察者看待日本人口结构的态度就是一个很好的例证。由于出生率降低，人口老化是大多数富裕国家共同的特点，日本也不例外。但人们不仅将这一现象作为一个严重问题加以说明，还将其归结于政策上的失败。对于西方评论人来说，他们从未想过日本的个体和集体共同选择了他们的人口分布格局，而且他们有足够的理由作出如此选择。

The story begins in the terrible winter of 1945-6, when, newly bereft of their empire, the Japanese nearly starved to death. With overseas expansion no longer an option, Japanese leaders determined as a top priority to cut the birthrate. Thereafter a culture of small families set in that has continued to the present day.

这要追溯到1945-46年那个可怕的冬季，在日本帝国崩溃之际，日本人几近饿死。在向海外扩张不再可能的情况下，日本领导人决心将降低出生率作为他们的政策重点。此后，小家庭文化形成并持续至今。

Japan’s motivation is clear: food security. With only about one-third as much arable land per capita as China, Japan has long been the world’s largest net food importer. While the birth control policy is the primary cause of Japan’s aging demographics, the phenomenon also reflects improved health care and an increase of more than 20 years in life expectancy since 1950.

日本的动机很清楚：粮食供给保障。日本的人均可耕地面积仅相当于中国的三分之一，长期以来是世界上最大的粮食净进口国。计划生育政策是日本人口老化的主要成因，但这一现象同时也反映出自1950年以来医疗保健的大幅改善以及平均寿命延长了20多年这两种因素。

Psychology aside, a major factor in the West’s comprehension problem is that virtually everyone in Tokyo benefits from the doom and gloom story. For foreign sales representatives, for instance, it has been the perfect get-out-of-jail card when they don’t reach their quotas. For Japanese foundations it is the perfect excuse in politely waving away solicitations from American universities and other needy nonprofits. Ditto for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in tempering expectations of foreign aid recipients. Even American investment bankers have reasons to emphasize bad news. Most notably they profit from the so-called yen-carry trade, an arcane but powerful investment strategy in which the well informed benefit from periodic bouts of weakness in the Japanese yen.

抛开心理因素不谈，西方对日本的误解一大缘由是实际上每个在东京的人都从这个“末日颓景”故事中获益。比如那些海外销售代表，他们无法完成销售指标时，这个故事是个完美的托词。对于日本基金会来说，它也是将美国大学和其它非盈利组织的捐款要求拒之门外的恰当借口。同样地，日本外务省也可以利用这一点降低那些受援国的期望值。即便是美国投资银行家们也有理由强调形势不妙。最引人注目的是他们从日元套息交易中获取受益，这种神秘但强大的投资手法可令信息灵通者在日元不定期发作的弱势中盈利。

Economic ideology has also played an unfortunate role. Many economists, particularly right-wing think-tank types, are such staunch advocates of laissez-faire that they reflexively scorn Japan’s very different economic system, with its socialist medicine and ubiquitous government regulation. During the stock market bubble of the late 1980s, this mind-set abated but it came back after the crash.

经济上的意识形态在其中也扮演了不幸的角色。众多经济学家，特别是右翼智囊机构一类，属于坚定的“不干涉主义”的拥趸者，他们本能地嘲笑日本极为不同的经济体制；其特征是开列社会主义的药方，政府管制无所不在。在1980年代后期的股市大泡沫期间，这种思维定势落潮了，但在泡沫破灭后又卷土重来。

Japanese trade negotiators noticed an almost magical sweetening in the mood in foreign capitals after the stock market crashed in 1990. Although previously there had been much envy of Japan abroad (and serious talk of protectionist measures), in the new circumstances American and European trade negotiators switched to feeling sorry for the “fallen giant.” Nothing if not fast learners, Japanese trade negotiators have been appealing for sympathy ever since.

在1990年股市崩盘后，日本的贸易谈判人士注意到国外奇妙地出现了讨好日本的氛围。虽然此前国外嫉恨日本（并且严肃地谈到要针对日本将实施保护主义措施），而在新形势下，美欧贸易谈判官员转向同情这个“倒下的巨人”。如果不是学得很快，也不足为奇，日本贸易谈判官员从此就大打同情牌。

The strategy seems to have been particularly effective in Washington. Believing that you shouldn’t kick a man when he is down, chivalrous American officials have largely given up pressing for the opening of Japan’s markets. Yet the great United States trade complaints of the late 1980s — concerning rice, financial services, cars and car components — were never remedied.

这种策略在华盛顿特别有效。秉承落井下石非君子所为的信念，美国官员们表现出骑士风度，在很大程度上放弃了要求日本开放市场的要求。而在1980年代后期美国大肆抱怨在大米、金融服务、小汽车及其零部件等双边贸易中存在的问题，从此也一直未得到改善。

The “fallen giant” story has also even been useful to other East Asian nations, particularly in their trade diplomacy with the United States.

“倒下的巨人”这个故事对其它东亚国家同样有用，特别是在涉及美国贸易的外交活动中。

A striking instance of how the story has influenced American perceptions appears in “The Next 100 Years,” by the consultant George Friedman. In a chapter headed “China 2020: Paper Tiger,” Mr. Friedman argues that, just as Japan “failed” in the 1990s, China will soon have its comeuppance. Talk of this sort powerfully fosters complacency and confusion in Washington in the face of a United States-China trade relationship that is already arguably the most destructive in world history and certainly the most unbalanced.

乔治?弗里德曼所著《下一个百年》的书中提及一个引人注目的实例，它反映了这个故事如何影响着美国看问题的立场。在该书题为“2020年的中国：纸老虎”一章中，弗里德曼先生论证说，正如日本在1990年代“失败”那样，中国也会在不久之后重蹈覆辙。这种言论既让华盛顿沾沾自喜，也令其陷入迷茫，特别是面对美中贸易这个问题时，而美中贸易关系的问题无可争议地成为世界史上最具破坏力并且很确定地是不平衡的。

Clearly the question of what has really happened to Japan is of first-order geopolitical importance. In a stunning refutation of American conventional wisdom, Japan has not missed a beat in building an ever more sophisticated industrial base. That this is not more obvious is a tribute in part to the fact that Japanese manufacturers have graduated to making so-called producers’ goods. These typically consist of advanced components or materials, or precision production equipment. They may be invisible to the consumer, yet without them the modern world literally would not exist. This sort of manufacturing, which is both highly capital-intensive and highly know-how-intensive, was virtually monopolized by the United States in the 1950s and 1960s and constituted the essence of American economic leadership.

很显然，日本到底发生了什么这个问题具有头等的地缘政治上的重要性。对于美国传统思维进行了最有力反击的便是，日本从未停止建设一个更加精致的工业基地。人们对此懵然不知的部分原因在于，日本已成功转型，实现了所谓为制造商提供产品的角色转换。

Japan’s achievement is all the more impressive for the fact that its major competitors — Germany, South Korea, Taiwan and, of course, China — have hardly been standing still. The world has gone through a rapid industrial revolution in the last two decades thanks to the “targeting” of manufacturing by many East Asian nations. Yet Japan’s trade surpluses have risen.

考虑到日本的几大竞争对手——德国、韩国、台湾以及中国并没有踏步不前，日本取得的成就就更让人刮目相看了。过去20多年众多东亚国家以制造业发展为目标的努力，推动着世界经历了一次急速的工业革命。在此过程中，日本的贸易顺差则保持了增长态势。

Japan should be held up as a model, not an admonition. If a nation can summon the will to pull together, it can turn even the most unpromising circumstances to advantage. Here Japan’s constant upgrading of its infrastructure is surely an inspiration. It is a strategy that often requires cooperation across a wide political front, but such cooperation has not been beyond the American political system in the past. The Hoover Dam, that iconic project of the Depression, required negotiations among seven states but somehow it was built — and it provided jobs for 16,000 people in the process. Nothing is stopping similar progress now — nothing, except political bickering.

日本应该被立为学习楷模，而不是变成警世标本。如果一个民族能够调动众人意志团结一心，它便能点石成金。日本在基础设施升级方面的不断努力肯定是令人鼓舞的。这是一种常常需要各个政治势力间的广泛合作，但它并未超越美国政治体系中曾经有过的那种。大萧条时期的标志性项目——胡佛大坝，就曾需要7个州进行协商，最终也建成了。这个项目的实施，提供了1.6万个就业机会。如今，没有什么可以阻挡类似的进步举措，唯一的障碍就是政治纷争。

Eamonn Fingleton is an author who predicted the Japanese financial crash of the 1990s; he is working on a book about the end of the American dream.

后记：本文作者伊曼恩?芬格顿曾著文预测了1990年代日本金融风暴的发生；他正在写的一本书，涉及美国梦的终结。