ECONOMICS PROJECT

2022-23

DOES THE JAPANESE CULTURE

INFLUENCE ITS ECONOMY?

 By- SEHER NIJHAWAN

 Grade- 12 C

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 Acknowledgement

I would like to express my warmest thanks to my economics teachers

Mr. Bhatt and Mr. Malik who made this paper possible. Their guidance
and advice kept me going through all the stages of writing this paper.
The completion of this essay could not have been possible without the
two of them.

A debt of gratitude is also owed to my peers who motivated me every

time I felt like giving up.

Last but not the least, I would like to thank my parents without whom
none of this would indeed be possible.

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Introduction

Cultural economy in a broad sense refers to the cultural aspect of an economic activity and is
indicative of a particular section of an economic activity which is concerned with activities such
as of music, arts and film. Japan is a highly cultural nation and it may come off as a surprise to
those who view Japan as a modern high-tech society filled with robots, but most Japanese
organizations still rely on their traditional way of doing things. For instance, job and university
applications are still done by hand and their fax machines are still in use. Even then, their
cultural economy has become a large and complex part of the economic activity with many links
opened to it internationally. Japanese inventions like sushi, anime, electronic games etc. are
being used, adopted and replicated in many countries around the world.

Japan has a very rich cultural history and even though a lot of cultural elements were originated
in Japan, its roots are mostly in china. This is one of the main reasons why Japan attracts a lot of
tourists culturally. It contributes around 359 billion dollars a year. This mainly happens because
the art, traditions, architecture, etc.in Japan are a few things that only this country can offer.

Although, Japan has been doing really well in terms of the nominal GDP in the world, this paper
reflects on how the culture of Japan influences its economy. The paper contributes to the three
main cultural factors influencing the country’s economy. Primarily, the paper covers the tourism
of Japan and how it has affected the country to this date. Secondly, it focuses on the Japanese
work culture and if it really is toxic. The third point throws light on the anime industry of Japan
and its distribution.

Tourism

Tourism refers to travelling to another country or city to relax, travel or for business purposes.
Globalization has made tourism a very popular leisure activity in the twentieth century because

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people travel a lot more these days than they did back in the early 1900s. The global tourism in
Asia and the Pacific had very little importance as compared to the Western countries a decade
ago. However, over the past five years, the number of tourists has increased by 24% annually,
and that number is expected to continue to rise in the upcoming years. It went from 200,000
tourist arrivals in 1950 to more than 343 million travelers in 2018. Pre covid-19 every one in four
people visited the Asian Pacific region and looking now, people love to travel and explore others
countries, especially the countries with completely new and different cultures from their own.
People do this because they want to embrace new cultures through travel. They want to
experience what it’s like to be a part of a community other than their own.

Japan has a very rich cultural history and even though a lot of cultural elements were originated
in Japan, its roots are mostly in china. This is one of the main reasons why Japan attracts a lot of
tourists culturally. It contributes around 359 billion dollars a year. This mainly happens because
the art, traditions, architecture, etc.in Japan are a few things that only this country can offer.

The tourism is a growing industry in Japan and has been taking off to contribute a meaningful to
its economy. Its inbound tourism market has shown remarkable growth, with the number of
foreign visitors traveling to Japan in 2019 reaching a high record of 31.88 million (2.2% more
than the previous year), marking the seventh consecutive year of high record. In 2019 itself,
Japan earned around 46.1 billion US Dollars in foreign tourist expenditure from visitors to Japan.
The travel and tourism sector contributed about 359 billion US dollars to Japan’s GDP, making it
the world’s largest market in the world after the United States and China.

The graph below represents the number of tourists that have visited Japan in 2019 since 2010 and
it is clear how vast of a difference there is in Japan’s tourism.

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The tourism industry of Japan consists of a wide range of sectors and businesses, including the
dining and hotel industries, transportation, travel agencies, as well as parts of the leisure industry.
The tourism industry is an important part of Japan’s general economy and culture plays a very
important role in it as it allows intercultural exchange. Japan is one of the most amazing tourist
destinations in the world as it offers many unique experiences that a lot of other countries can’t.
It is the perfect blend of eastern culture and western modernity that cannot be seen everywhere.

The country has something new to offer for each of its beautiful seasons. The beginning of the
spring is generally from March to May in Japan. “Sakura” or cherry blossoms are a symbol of
spring in the country. They are tied to country’ history, culture and identity. It originally marks
the year’s harvest in the country and contributes around 2.7 billion dollars to the Japanese
economy every year with an estimated 63 million people traveling to and within Japan just to
view the bloom of the Sakura season. The famous Ueno Park in Tokyo is the most popular
destination for bloom viewing, with an estimated 4 million visitors.

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The summer season in Japan, which can be really hot and humid for most of the time, but since
Japan is surrounded by sea, people enjoy swimming in different places. The remote islands such
as of Okinawa are a great tourist spot. The region offers the intertwined culture of the Japanese
and the Chinese into their own. On the other hand the winter in Japan has its own advantage
because Japan is blessed with an abundant snowfall throughout its mountains in the northern part
of the country, particularly in Hokkaido, Tohoku, and the Japan Alps.

Another very famous tourist spot is the Tokyo Disney Land. Even though Walt Disney has no
ownership of the Tokyo parks, it is very famous within the country. This is because everything in
there is localized. Since Japanese people don’t speak English or other languages very frequently
they have localized all the Disney characters into speaking the Japanese language, attracting a lot
of tourists from within the country. Even though it is not as big as the Disney land in the United
States, the both of them get a similar number of people every year with 18 million people visiting
in japan and around 20 million people visiting the one in the States. This also contributes to the
Japanese economy culturally.

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Japan had big tourism goals for the country in 2020 and with Tokyo Olympics taking place, they
wanted to reach 600 trillion yen which is about 500 trillion dollars in terms of nominal GDP.
Although, the tourism demand significantly declined due to the global spread of the corona virus,
and their goal could not be achieved. The Japanese government still provides people with loans
and other support measures so they can travel safely for work purposes during the crisis. This has
also impacted the local economy of the country confirming that tourism plays an important role
in Japan’s economy.

Japanese Work Culture

Japanese people are known to be workaholics and are very loyal to their company. They take
their jobs very seriously and try to do all their work responsibly. People’s thoughts and their way
of doing things reflects certain attitudes for the Japanese people. Japan is globally recognized as
an economic powerhouse and even the foreign workers in Japan are expected to follow their
work style.

Japan, although, being a modern country, it still follows some very common stereotypes
including only being allowed to leave the office after the boss leaves and have drinking parties
with your colleagues. This is often known as “Nomikai” in Japanese. The Japanese believe that
spending more time with their colleagues will help them strengthen their friendship and they will
be able to make more progress.

The assertion that Japanese people work too many long hours is nothing new. For several years
the government has been trying to change the long working hours but they still haven’t
decreased. Regular employees still work about 2,000 hours per year, a level that has attracted a
lot of attention from abroad. Long workdays or hours make it harder for people to maintain a
healthy life balance between work and private life. Giving too much time might lead to a loss of
leisure, overwork has started to effect a lot of people’s marriages, family life and caregiving for

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their children. One of the main reasons why Japanese people work long hour shifts is because
they think putting in long hours will show devotion and hard work towards their work rather than
poor time management skills. What they tend to forget is that along with .work, their mental
health plays an important role as well. Work stress leads a lot of people into taking their lives
and the number of suicides rose in October 2020 to the highest level in more than five years.
This rose because of the impact of the coronavirus on the country’s economy.

Life-time employment is one of the prominent features of Japanese management. It is a

characteristic of Japan’s postwar labor system, even though it did not apply to a lot of workers
and is currently declining. Companies hire workers right when they get out of school and keep
them in the company until retirement. These employees are raw and straight out of school so
they are taken in by companies for their general potential and not for their special skills or
training. These employees are considered the company’s human capital, to be trained and
assigned to posts in the company’s best interest. Although, there is no written contract stating the
employment, there is a mutual agreement between the employee and the employer. The
employee to serve the company loyally and to not leave the company for a better job opportunity
and for the employer to not dismiss or fire the employee during any emergency. This system

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worked well during the postwar economic growth with a young and energetic force but it started
to decline during an economic recession with an aging force in 1990.

Gender Division of labor- In the beginning, a compensation system had originally started where
companies used to pay salaries to support the worker’s families, and the amounts were high
enough for only one spouse to work. This led to the stereotype of labor between the two genders
dividing them into the supposed “gender roles”. Men devoted to work whereas women were to
devote to the house and family’s well-being. However, the economic boom era was finally set
into its place and things started becoming better for good. Social values supporting the “gender
roles” were fixed. Although, the Japanese constitution guarantees equality in gender roles, this
does not in fact exist because Japanese males do not regard women as equals and a lot of them
still describe a woman’s place at home. They expect women to be fancy and decorative, sitting at
home and throwing parties. Even at work they are mostly undertaking mindless repetitive tasks
before they can start to rise high in their careers. The Japanese men in general are not
comfortable with the modern western mindset about the positions and progress of women
because it seems very threatening to them. Younger Japanese in particular are changing their
attitudes and becoming what most people call less “Japanese” in their views about the proper
roles of husbands and wives.

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Is the Japanese work place culturally toxic?

Some might think that the Japanese work environment comes across as toxic. Even though the
country’s strict disposition regarding labor maximizes productivity, it also puts an unhealthy
amount of pressure on its employees. Japan’s collective attitude regarding work is one of the
country’s longest traditions and it certainly is one of the most toxic ones. In japan more than 60%
of employees suffer from anxiety and stress. The Japanese society has only started addressing
these issues recently. The stress is usually caused to due to work-load and job-related suicide.

Many tourists view this as another positive feature of the Japanese culture, these long-standing
traditions somehow flow into the country and put an intense amount of pressure on both male
and female citizens. Japan has consequently become the birthplace of what they call Karoshi,
“Death from overwork”, a word which came out in the 1970s to describe the deaths related to
stress and tension. Unfortunately, it is still common in japan with roughly 1,900 people taking
their own lives in just 2020 due to work-related problems.

Many workers in the country fall under the typical “salarymen” category, usually working a 9-5
job or more each work to get the overtime payment. The unspoken rule of not leaving the
workplace until the boss does plays a very important role here. Since the worker’s chances of
progression and bonuses are mainly based on their work ethics and capabilities, there is always
some kind of pressure on the shoulders of an employee to continue working to show their loyalty
and devotion towards their work. Violating this would not only make an employee an outcast but
also bring them down in the eyes of other colleagues.

To solve this issue numerous times, the government started a campaign with the name of
“Premium Friday” in the year 2017, with its main purpose being to encourage people to relax a

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bit by allowing the workers to leave work at 3 pm on a chosen Friday of the month. Only 2.5%
of the company’s had accounted for the government’s leading Premium Friday because although,
the idea was quite innovative and even the campaign seemed great, it failed due to it not being
mandatory.

Many businesses and company’s decided not to participate and those who did compensated for
their work on the weekends. The failure of this scheme by the government demonstrated a clear
fact- Toxic work culture cannot be changed or fixed with such strategies unless the culture itself
changes, and while some companies are changing their work style, japan will not be able to
transform unless the country itself decides to make long lasting-overdue improvements.

The system of seniority wages also affected the Japanese work culture during the 90s and was
originally on the basis of value and experience that the older employees brought with them. It
was based on the assumption that living expenses would be greater for senior employees, this
spread like wildfire at the time of inflation. However, this structure is now being challenged by
young managers, who want to reject the traditional system of seniority wage and promotion
system. People want to abolish this criterion because it values longevity over merit. If an under
deserving employee is promoted on the basis of their seniority, then that company would just end

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up paying more to an employee who is not worthy of the achievement and this wrongs other
employees. Not only this, but, the nature of work has also change nowadays. Technology has
evolved so fast now that experience may not present the advantages it once did. This system that
had once affected the economy of japan has finally started to decline for good.

One of the most under-discussed subject in the Japanese work culture is still the mistreatment of
the female employees. Although the country’s percentage of women have outgrown that of the
United States, the patriarchal culture is still there in japan making it impossible for the women to
advance within any given career, however, keeping this aside the women gets paid less is also
because of their job choices. Women, although being mentally and physically strong, are called
vulnerable and like working jobs such as of a teacher, nurse, philanthropist, where they can help
bring some change in the society or help someone in need. These jobs comparatively pay
relatively less than the jobs preferred by men, for instance, men like working as engineers,
automobile architects etc. These jobs pay more in comparison to the social service jobs. On
average, the monthly pay for men was 179,500 yen and 174,600 yen for women. Overall,
women’s average pay is still only 74.4% of the salary of men. Another reason is that the
country’s over- due work habits creates an unequal working environment.

Japan’s workplace culture is really interesting and it’s necessary to understand these points
especially if someone is thinking of working in a culture oriented country like japan. While, it
may take employees, especially foreign workers to get used to this culture, it is advantageous in
the longer run.

Anime on Economy

There are many things in Japan that you can’t find in other countries, making it an exciting place
to visit. Lots of these culture’s fame have gone famous worldwide and are piquing foreigner’s
curiosities and encouraging them to experience it for themselves. Japan has made a lot of

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contributions to the world over the years with developments such as the bullet trains, video
games and fashion.

One of the Japan’s greatest contribution that is still iconic to this day is “anime”. Anime, which
is originated from the English word “animation”, has contributed so much to the people all
around the world who are in love with any genre of it, these people feel the overpowering urge to
travel to japan and visit the country of origin, sometimes, even learn the language.

Anime is used to describe the Japanese animation and has been since the early 20th century.
Now, anime and its comic part, manga are very successful in japan and beyond with an industry
worth of over 15billion US dollars. Anime includes TV series for children as well as for adults.
In Japan, people of all ages have watched anime at some point of time and it has also become
part of their modern culture. Anime is useful in teaching and learning about Japanese culture
because it creatively shows many aspects of the live people live in Japan. They also show
various real life locations, institutions, historical and cultural references. Small things like
learning Japanese gestures and body language can be learned easily by watching anime.

The Japan External Trade Organization reported that anime has a growing viewer base in nearly
70countries that broadcast it on television. Japan may not emerge as a strong global economic
force, but the power of its entertainment has gained mass appeal. It is Japan’s third largest
industry and has an annual turnover of 250 trillion yen. The revenue generated by the sale of
anime related goods to the United States far surpasses Japan’s steel exports to the country.

The year 2017 was the first year that the Japanese animation industry had reached the 2 trillion-
yen. The company revenue of 2 trillion 152.7 billion yen, rising for eight consecutive years, with
five consecutive years breaking high sales.

The graph below shows the breakage of the sales in categories.

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Not only this, as the world is globalizing and digitization is breaking barriers by influencing
people view anime and how distribution networks work, anime is breaking people’s screen
times. This shows a strong correlation between the consumption of anime and the economy.
Under these situations, the industry is forced to increase efficiency at a rapid pace. Studios have
to produce more anime while retaining the current quality standard, and it can only happen if
everything is digitized.

The number of theatrical animation has increased rapidly. The production margins increased in
2016 and this was due to the continuous popularity of the famous show “Doraemon” as well as
the increase in small and medium sized films. Another hit was “Your Name”, an anime that
activated the innovation in the genre. The anime related products increased after the movie was
released. The move from real products to reel or digital products has been increasing year after
year. The size of the internet distribution market was valued at 59.5 million yen in 2020, a 10.5%

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increase from the previous year. The market has made its presence known on global OTT’s like
Netflix and amazon Prime as well.

ANIME DEMAND ANALYSIS

The Demand curve refers to the quantity of a good that a customer is willing to buy, at a given
price. The law of demand shows an inverse relationship between quantity demanded and price.

In terms of anime, the factors affecting shifts in demand vary from genre to preference. At the
end of 2019, there was an upward trend in the share of demand for the anime content that has
continued to this day. In August of 2021, this measure hit a new high when the global audience
gave a 5.5% share of demand to anime content.

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ANIME SUPPLY ANALYSIS

The Supply curve is a representation of the relationship between the price and the quantity at
which a producer is willing and able to supply a product or service. The Law of Supply states
that as price of the product increases, the quantity supplied increases. In other words, the price of
a product and the quantity are directly proportional.

Here is a graph representing the supply curve of anime-

Overall, anime has a great impact on the Japanese economy and since the Japanese leaders are
well-aware of that, they are using it as an advantage and it is contributing to the economy even
more.

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Hypothesis

Culture of Japan is already playing an important role in its economy but there are some aspects
of it that the government hasn’t pondered upon. The Japanese government would not have faced
so many issues with their work culture policies had they applied strict laws and policies for the
benefit of their employees from the beginning. Since, the work culture in Japan is already being
looked upon, it would have been easier to implement these policies, however, on the other end if
these are to be implemented now, it would benefit the coming generations as they are much more
inclined about the well-being of their mental health. Another cultural resource, the country’s
economy could benefit from is their need of individualism. Japan is all about working as a group
or society. The collectivism in the country is quite evident, although, many young Japanese
people are now quitting the roots that had been engraved in them and walking towards being an
individual in the society much like the western culture. It will be a long but beneficial walk as
this will lead the country to have many more start-ups instead of people working in regular 9-5

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corporate jobs. Another cultural aspect the government can work on is promoting anime in Japan
in foreign languages. There are many foreigners living in Japan and not all of them are very
fluent with the language, having sold anime and manga in some other regional languages would
promote not only Japanese drama but also, others’ own culture. This would take the demand for
anime on a whole new level.

Conclusion

The culture of Japan is attractive and is influencing its economy in many ways because some of
their traditions are very unique and it plays an important role in strengthening the country’s
economy as the Japanese people know how to use their cultural resources to their advantage. The
Japanese businesses are flourishing, especially its manufacturing industry because of the cultural
Anime production, which is being globalized and digitized a lot these days, so people from all
over the world can watch anime and entertain themselves. The work culture in Japan has built
good relations between the employees and the employers and even that affects their economy
because everyone works together in unity. Japanese people emphasize on teamwork a lot which
prevents them from making silly mistakes. The tourism industry is reaching to the top and is
affecting the economy because many people from the west are visiting this eastern island to see
and explore their culture, leading to an increase in the economy.

To wrap it up, Japan is a culturally developed country and is still developing at its own pace.
Culture and traditions change over time, old always replaces new but with better and good ideas
that will take the Japanese economy to even better heights.

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