One poster. A cartoon on a billboard on every platform in the Tokyo Metro network. Just look at it - enticing you to chuckle, but then eliciting the sort of thick tears of grief that flow from the tragedies of lost love or team relegation. One lousy poster and you open a window onto the wrenching paradox of Japan's benighted soul.
Over the past couple of days, I've been in a fascinating email to-and-fro with Jonathan Allum - the marvelous KBC strategist whose daily take on Japan is required reading for any investor who gives a hoot about the place. He belatedly came across an article I wrote back in February when everyone was in Tokyo wailing tales of woe, sackings and redemptions.
His point - and it is a good one - is that my observation of all those fund managers in despair and analysts in savage disagreement laid down a very precise marker of the Nikkei's bottom. Sentiment, he quipped, is a contrarian indicator. Jonathan also, with a perfectly righteous nudge, reminds me that he had a "mine!" on Japan back then when most were panic-stricken and bellowing "yours!". Takers of his advice would be (and some are) richer men and women by now.
Jonathan continued, as he invariably does, with compelling analytical evidence. So compelling, in fact, that I was just inches away from calling London and telling them to book me a slot for a hefty feature on how Japan is going to emerge ahead of the US and Europe from the recession, and how cleverly it has engineered itself into that position. I may yet write such a piece, but at the moment, all I can think about is that terrible, shocking poster.
Study it closely, and you will see why this public service billboard encapsulates all the reasons to beware the bulls on Japan.
In the middle of the trio we have a man busily making phone calls, awkwardly taking notes - possibly trying to squeeze another meeting into an already oppressive schedule, or close the deal that will save his division from downsizing. He is probably the only one of the three who pays income tax, he is certainly the only one with any real business to be sitting on that train. See the desperation in his eyes. Smell the sweat of his panic. Taste the acid of his ulcer and breathe-in the dangerous proximity of career calamity. He doesn't want to be on the bloody train or on the bloody phone. It is not his fault that three hours of his day are spent going to and from work on a train. It is not his fault that his bosses, the client and his colleagues expect him to be available every second of the day: he is the Japanese economy, in all its relentless, bludgeoning approach to work.
But even as he tries, single-handedly, to rescue a once mighty economy from terminal slippage, our brave worker bee is flanked by the indomitable locusts of frustration and failure. They are old, they are cranky and they want to read their manga porn or penny potboilers in peace. Never mind that they are under constant aural assault from the Japan that THEIR generation built - the redundant roar of a country that decries every form of pollution except for noise. It is the sound of the salaryman's voice that most disturbs them. His fear-driven corporate babble is the only thing standing between them and the chronic decline of the Japanese economy, and they want him to shut up.
And worst of all, Tokyo Metro has put itself squarely on the side of the locusts. There is no chart in the world that screams "sell" so loudly as this poster.
Recent Comments