The art of the useless is something many of us specialize in over a life time. We accquire stuff, that we may never use, drawing comfort in the act of buying.
The Japanese, with growing urbanization and wealth, post World War 2, indulged in wanton buying and coined the word 'Chindogu' for urban folk buying up and accumalating useless stuff.Stuff that was useless or that they would not use.
Now with the Japanese economy stagnating and real incomes dropping for urban Japan, many people are re looking at their habit of 'Chindogu'. It is extremely difficult to drop the habit at the flick of a switch.
Japan's rural population has aged and the farming sector has seen alarming dips in productivity with the average age of farmers, being about 65 years, prompting many youngsters to relocate from Japanes cities like Tokyo and Osaka to rural Japan and take up farming as a livelihood. For this to happen young Japanese will need to give up the habit of wandering into malls and shopping for Chindogu, which like many things is an addiction.
3 comments:
For ages Japan`s growing population and desire for unrelated goods or "Chindogu" created great domestic demand for goods and services. And major of production activities were carried by importing resources and specializations on account of global window.
As a result today their economy has a debt burden of 180% excess of their GDP.
Today it`s not only Japan all economies should try to diverge their national resource towards developing comparative and competitive edge for their nation.
Very true. Many of these nations did not develop intrinsic worth and had runaway growth.
The flamboyant and glamorous are good, but only for a while.
I'm sure the Japanes, will come out of tghis crisis, being the disciplined nation that they are.
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