Chapter 444: The Magical Era
One day in September 1986, two photos published in the Mainichi Shimbun sparked a heated discussion in Neon.
The first photo depicts the stark contrast in expression between an incoming American tourist and a Japanese staff member at the currency exchange counter at Narita International Airport.
This tourist named David exchanged foreign currency here last year. The yen to the US dollar was 250:1, and now it is 156:1, which is an amazing appreciation.
David opened his mouth in astonishment when he saw that the yen he exchanged for the same US dollars was only half of what he had last year.
As for the smiling faces of the Japanese staff behind the glass window, they were truly very proud and extremely happy.
Apparently this was not the first time he had encountered such a situation, and the astonished expressions of the Americans were the source of his daily joy.
This photo also shows the pride that Japanese people feel about the appreciation of the yen.
But it is much more obvious than the cautious tension of the Japanese government.
In other words, the public is extremely welcoming of the appreciation of the yen and the depreciation of the dollar. This is completely opposite to the attitude of the Japanese government.
Another photo published by the Daily News still features American tourist David.
It was already evening when looking at the photos. David was holding a 1,000 yen note and staring at a figure in front of the taxi in amazement.
The figure was a middle-aged man with a blurred face. The most eye-catching thing was not his fancy clothes, but the thick stack of ten thousand yuan bills in his hand.
The incident happened on the streets of Roppongi. David had just finished an expensive dinner and was about to take a taxi back to the hotel.
In his impression last year, because taxis are expensive, not many people in Japan take taxis, and most people choose to take the tram or subway as a means of transportation.
However, the scene outside this time was the opposite of what he had imagined. At the place where taxis were often taken, dozens of people gathered together, waving tens of thousands of yuan bills and hailing taxis.
David relied on his status as a foreign guest to squeeze to the front. If nothing unexpected happened, people around him would give him a hand, as he had experience in this kind of thing.
After a while, a taxi did stop in front of David, but before he could step forward, a middle-aged man got there first.
"Hello, please take care of me. We're going to Shiba Park." After saying this, the middle-aged man threw the thick stack of ten thousand yuan bills in his hand on the car door frame with a "pa".
After doing all this, the middle-aged man turned around and looked at David provocatively, his expression indescribably proud.
Damn Americans, you want to take advantage of us Japanese when it comes to taking taxis? If you have the guts, you can also take out 3 million yen to take a taxi.
"Oh~" The people who were waiting for the bus nearby waved their arms and cheered for the middle-aged man excitedly.
This scene is really inspiring. The proud and arrogant Japanese people's strong self-esteem bursts out at this time.
Several ladies even flirted with him, and the middle-aged man adjusted his tie reservedly, like a victorious general.
Then he threw a thick stack of banknotes onto the driver's passenger seat, creating a large area of banknotes that was extremely eye-catching.
"Three million yen, please~"
"Hi!" The taxi driver bowed his head and responded quickly.
Buzz~ The sound of the engine gradually faded away, leaving David watching it all with wide eyes and open mouth.
If he had heard correctly, that was three million yen! A five-minute drive from Roppongi to Shiba Park would cost three million yen!
David didn't know whether he was crazy or the whole of Neon was crazy.
Is this definitely the Japanese who I visited last year? Is this definitely the Japanese who have always been cautious, low-key and modest?
How come the whole of Neon has changed completely in just one year?
Three million may be a huge sum of money for David, but it is nothing special for a middle-aged man.
The middle-aged man’s surname is Watanabe, and he is a middle-level manager at Nomura Securities.
Do you know how much the transportation allowance Nomura Securities gave him this year was? 3 to 4 million yen.
Isn't it a bit irrational to spend this year's transportation allowance all at once?
Watanabe has the confidence to be irrational. Three or four million yen is just his transportation allowance. His current annual salary is 32 million yen!
32 million yen. Looking back from the perspective of future generations, Japan was indeed crazy.
Watanabe's annual transportation allowance was the total annual salary of an ordinary worker before, and his annual salary was ten times that of an ordinary person.
This is the result of the Neon Government’s “National Income Doubling Plan” and is also the product of various invisible subsidies.
In just three years, Watanabe will earn over 100 million yuan without having to speculate in stocks or real estate.
Magical? This is a normal income level for several major financial and securities companies.
The Daily News directly gave these two photos a simple yet heroic title.
Golden age!
From that day on, people all over Japan were discussing the various manifestations of the Golden Age.
This is just one scene in the Ukiyo-e of the Bubble Era, but at the macro level, the Japanese government was also not idle.
Of the 3.636 trillion yen previously approved, more than 2 trillion will be used to build public utilities and infrastructure in Neon.
All kinds of cross-sea bridges and undersea tunnels have been arranged.
In addition to these metropolitan areas, redevelopment plans have also been put on the agenda, such as Tokyo's Rikujima, Tennozu, Odaiba, Yokohama's Minato Mirai, and Osaka's Tempozan.
These projects are all products of this era.
At the same time, various tourist resorts began to pop up all over Neon like mushrooms after rain.
Hokkaido Shimukappu Resort, Kyushu Nichinan Seaside Resort, Chiba Prefecture Indoor Ski Resort, Nagasaki's Horan Village, Mie Prefecture's Nishibanga Village, and Niigata Prefecture's Turk Resort.
Some of these resorts have already started construction, while others have already created folders.
But the most famous one is Lujiao Resort, which was built several years earlier than other resorts in Japan and is the best in Japan in both scale and facilities.
Since last year, the Lujiao Resort has received more than 1 million tourists a year.
According to internal estimates of Shirakawa Holdings, the number of tourists this year will be more than 2 million.
Convenient transportation and mature supporting facilities make Lujiao Resort famous in Japan.
In particular, the two ski resorts built according to the terrain are world-famous.
Not to mention various sporting events, there are countless tourists who come here every year.
There are also golf courses and equestrian clubs in the summer, which will attract everyone to come here for a luxurious holiday experience.
It can be said that Lujiao Resort was almost tailor-made for people in the bubble era.
Different from the lively scene among the people, Neon is secretly full of strange and bizarre things.
After more than half a year of investigation, it was found that the US companies' accusation of dumping against Japanese semiconductor companies was true and that trade barriers also existed.
When the United States was about to make a final ruling on the investigation in August, Neon had to start negotiations with the U.S. government.
In September, the two sides reached a five-year semiconductor trade agreement.
In the agreement, the Japanese government promised to:
First, monitor the exports of Japanese companies to ensure that the sales price of their semiconductor products is not lower than the production cost;
The second is to work with the U.S. government to determine the price at which Neon will sell semiconductors;
The third is to regulate the sales of Japanese semiconductor companies in third-party countries.
This is in terms of the export of Japanese semiconductors and the opening of the Japanese domestic market.
The Japanese government promised to ensure that American computer and semiconductor companies would occupy at least 20% of the Japanese domestic market.
This is completely a forced sale. All imports and exports of Japanese semiconductors have been put under a tight rein by the United States.
Computers and semiconductor products in the United States are notoriously expensive.
How can the Japanese government guarantee the minimum market share of 20%?
Allocate! When all companies purchase computers and other products, they must ensure that one-fifth of them are American products.
This is simply ridiculous! When Shirakawa Feng first received the notice from the Neon government, his first reaction was to laugh and cry .
The world out there is already ridiculous enough, and the Japanese government is also playing awkwardly now, isn't it?
There is no way around it. This is a mandatory requirement. Not only Shirakawa Electric, but also Panasonic and Sony must comply with it.
So in the latest batch of computers purchased, Shirakawa Electric also bought some IBM, Apple and Compaq computers.
No need to worry about usage habits. No one wants to use these computers, and they are now lying in the corner gathering dust.
In fact, the saddest companies are not Shirakawa Electric and others, but Fujitsu, NEC and Sharp, whose main products are computers.
They produce computers themselves, but because of the semiconductor agreement, they have to use Lao Mi's computers like eating a fly.
Because of this incident, Fujitsu's Michiyoshi Mazuka called me more than once to complain to me.
These magical things all happened in Neon of this era.
Because of his many experiences, Baichuan Feng has now become somewhat accustomed to it.
However, the irony is that although the semiconductor agreement was signed, Japan's DRAM in 1997 continued to make inroads in the global market, capturing nearly 80% of the market share in one fell swoop.
Among the top ten semiconductor companies in the world, six are from Japan and only three are from the United States.
The top three among them are NEC, Toshiba and Hitachi from Japan. This severe slap in the face moment made several semiconductor companies in Japan secretly happy.
I ask you to sanction me, so what? You are still eating my tail gas in the global market.
American companies, which are under even greater pressure, have no choice but to learn from others' strengths since they can't beat them.
In order to expand their international market share in the semiconductor field, the Americans decided to learn from the experience of Japan's VLSI Research Institute.
They decided to set up the Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology Research Alliance (SEMATECH) next year , organizing 14 semiconductor companies including Intel, IBM, Micron, HP, Motorola and the US National Laboratory to carry out concentrated research.
Leaving aside the future impact of this measure, at least the United States has already put in its utmost effort to deal with the relentless pressure from Japanese semiconductor companies.
So, has SIC, also a semiconductor company, been affected by the sanctions?
There are some but not huge.
This semiconductor agreement is mainly aimed at Neon's DRAM business.
As for SIC, which targets processors, there is no dumping and its share in the international market is pitifully small.
Despite the support of Apple and the authorization of several semiconductor companies, SIC's market share in the global processor chips is only 9%.
With such a small share, even the shameless US cannot lie and accuse SIC of dumping.
However, Intel, which has given up its DRAM business, has been clamoring to include SIC in the sanctions list.
However, thanks to the lobbying of Arnold and Apple, Intel's evil plan failed.
However, in order to warn SIC to abide by the rules, the US government will also regularly review the prices of SIC chips to prevent low-price dumping.
In addition to sanctions on semiconductor companies, the appreciation of the yen has had a far more devastating impact on the manufacturing industry.
