Koll Vs. Katz On Japan’s Economic Trajectory

Has Japan Already Reformed Or Is Reform Yet To Come?

Jesper Koll and I engaged in a spirited debate on the Foreign Correspondents Club Of Japan’s “Deep Dive.” The topics ranged from the meaning of today’s stock market rally to transformations (or lack of such) in the corporate world and labor market to the country’s growth potential.

Koll styles himself a “Japan Optimist” (that’s the name of his Substack blog). I, too, consider myself a Japan optimist. The difference is that Koll believes Japan has already reformed and it’s the big companies which have accomplished this. I believe Japan is yet to undergo enough reform to “turn the ship around,” and it will be a new generation of entrepreneurial companies that will catalyze reform. They will do this partly by replacing some of the old corporate “elephants” and partly because their challenge will force the older companies to up their game, just as Tesla (and now China’s BYD) pressured the legacy automakers to move into EVs.

I believe that optimists do what entrepreneurs do: see problems to which others are blind and come up with solutions. In the case of Japan’s situation, optimists are not the ones who say that Japan’s condition today is good enough. Rather, it is those who grasp that Japan has the capability to do so much better by reforming itself. Whether and how it will do so is the subject of The Contest for Japan’s Economic Future.

The sound begins at minute 2:00. My comments begin at minute 5:40, Jesper’s at 25:00, and the interchange and Q&A at 51:44. Click here for the video.