(2) In English:
Jacob M Schlesinger, Japan’s Economic Dilemma: Comfortable Decline or Painful Revival? With Abenomics at a crossroads, our correspondent writes on the difficult choices facing Japan. Wall Street Journal, Dec 4, 2014
online.wsj.com/articles/japans-economic-dilemma-comfortable-decline-or-painful-revival-1417640405
("Jacob M Schlesinger, a senior correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, first reported from Japan from 1989 to 1994, and again starting in late 2009. This is adapted from an essay published in Japanese on The Wall Street Journal Japan, to mark its fifth anniversary")
Quote:
"the country has, by and large, managed a relatively comfortable, peaceful decline. That helps explain why it took so long for an aggressive response, in the form of Abenomics—and why the public has so quickly developed second thoughts.
"After enjoying early high popularity, Mr. Abe faces growing doubts, calling a Dec. 14 election as a national referendum on his revival program known as Abenomics.
"The 'social contract' discouraging layoffs made companies hesitant to hire workers with good salaries and benefits. Japan’s low jobless rate came with more low-paying part-time or temporary jobs, especially for young people who came of age in the deflation era.
"China now boasts an economy twice Japan’s size.
"So far, at least, Mr Abe’s dice-roll hasn’t triggered the deflationist market-meltdown nightmare. Neither has it delivered the clear recovery promised by the reflationists. * * * For all the turmoil stirred up by Abenomics so far, the prime minister has barely started on the most radical piece of his agenda, the 'third arrow' structural changes.
"In a recent Nikkei newspaper poll, 33% supported Abenomics and 51% didn’t.
My comment:
(a) Author's introduction seems to talk about different things. However, I check ja.wikipedia.org, and indeed Wall Street Journal Japan (Japanese: WSJ日本版 or ウォール・ストリート・ジャーナル日本版) is a website; in addition, owners of iPad, iPhone and Android-based electronic devices can access to it.
(b) I can not find the English translation in WSJ’s US edition, on Dec 3 or 4.
(c) "After I’d settled in, a better word seemed 'kaiteki,' which means 'comfort'"
kaiteki 快適 【かいてき】 (n): "pleasant; agreeable; comfortable"
(d) "Near my financial-center workplace, the dumpy cinder-block office buildings with smoky coffee shops were replaced by gleaming towers"
dumpy (adj): "dirty and in bad condition"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dumpy
(e) "By branding Japan’s pre-Abe regime 'deflationist,' I’m not suggesting the country’s leaders intentionally sought to induce an enervating cycle of falling prices, wages, consumption and investment. But having stumbled into that state in the late 1990s, they tacitly concluded it wasn’t so bad—and the commonly prescribed cures risked doing more harm than good. One measure: The 'lost decades' unemployment-rate peak was 5.5%, far below double-digit recession levels for the US and Europe."
enervate (vt)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/enervate
(f) "I helped cover last year the battle between Seibu 西武 Holdings Inc and its biggest shareholder, private-equity giant Cerberus Capital Management LP, which [as a shareholder] was pushing for American-level profits. Cerberus detailed what it considered Seibu’s absurdly inefficient operations, including the four-car, six-stop Tamagawa train line on Tokyo’s outskirts. I knew it well: It was the line my daughters rode to school. I could see the logic of the frustrated American investors—and also the costs their blueprint would impose on communities."
(i) 西武
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%A5%BF%E6%AD%A6
("武蔵国の西部。以下の名称はこれに由来するものである")
translation: 武蔵国の西部. The following names [including 西武鉄道 and 西武百貨店] are derived from this.
(ii) Musashi Province 武蔵国
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musashi_Province
(section 1 Name)
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发表于 12-6-2014 15:38:41
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