Yahoo Finance Shinzo Abe: Like Pokémon, the seeds of growth in Japan are waiting to be captured
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe compared his outlook for Japan to the hugely popular augmented-reality game Pokémon GO (NTDOY).
“It is almost like Pokémon GO,” he said. “Unless you look around you cannot find it. Unless you go to the spot, you cannot get it. So, come to Japan and look around. Seeds of growth are there, waiting to be captured and waiting to bloom.”
Japan, however, is not without its challenges.
Speaking at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York on Wednesday, Abe pointed out that Japan has lost three million people of working age in the last three years but the country’s nominal GDP has still grown.
Japan, the third largest economy in the world, faces two key demographic challenges — a low birthrate and an aging population. Abe contends that the country will use this as an incentive to grow productivity through technology.
“We should look to the future rather than worry about the present,” he said. “Japan may be aging, Japan may be losing its population, but these are incentives for us. Why? Because we will continue to be motivated to grow up productivity. We will continue to be motivated to use, say, everything new and digital, from robots to wireless sensing, and big data to AI.”
“So, Japan’s demography paradoxically is not an onus, but a bonus,” he added.
Abe said in the late 2030s Japan will have the maglev train, a high-speed magnetic levitation railroad.
“You will be popping on the maglev train in Tokyo; and boom, 40 minutes later, you will be standing in Nagoya,” he said. “Only 20 minutes more, meaning, in just an hour out of Tokyo, you will be getting off at Osaka Station. A distance between Tokyo and Nagoya, it’s almost the same as that between New York and D.C. and by the way, you could do the same thing here with the maglev technology that is there for you to get.”
He explained that in 20 years people will “find a brand new Japan.”
“From Tokyo to Nagoya to Osaka, you will see what? It will be among the biggest, richest, most technologically advanced, cleanest and yet most relaxed mega cities the world has ever seen with a population of 70 million people.”
“I do know Pokémon GO,” he said. “To achieve growth is not walk in the park. I see seeds of growth everywhere in Japan, and I am determined to let them bloom.”
Prior to Abe’s talk, activist investor Daniel Loeb, the founder of hedge fund Third Point LLC, said one of the things policymakers talk about is, “How does Japan cultivate the entrepreneurial mindset?”
Loeb—who’s made high-profile investments in Japan’s Sony, Suzuki, Seven & I —noted that Japan has many “well-educated, incredibly smart engineers and incredibly talented people.”
“If I were in [the policymakers’] shoes, I would create enterprise zones. Create an environment where people want to invest in and work in startups where you can tap into that talent and that education.”
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Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance.
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