Way back when, I knew government wasn’t that efficient. Standing around in some office, I could see some people waddling around slowly, scrutinizing this piece of paper and that, squinting, consulting some other person, and finally pulling up a chair to the window where I was waiting. We always got the business done, albeit in threefold the amount of time in which I thought I could do their end of it. I could see the inefficiency right there.

Before the 1990s, Japan had an unwritten policy about full employment. Between government programs, family support, and involvement of powerful corporations, a minimum level of sustenance and care was available to most Japanese. I started going to Japan for business in the 1990s, just as this fairly peaceful edifice was starting to crack. The great Japanese asset price bubble burst in 1992, and a lot of financial structures based on real estate and the equities market came apart at the seams.

Corporations had been adhering to their own form of welfare for decades. When an older worker started to become absentminded or slow, he (the business cadre at the time was almost entirely male) would be gently moved aside from critical duties and assigned to a job like pushing the tea trolley around from office to office. This person had become almost entirely useless, but was kept on at a lower salary and given a token job. This job gave…