Property Adjacent Episode 1 – Richard Katz and The Contest for Japan’s Economic Future
- Adam German
- Feb 18
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 27
Earlier in February, Richard Katz sat down with Adam German to give listeners a healthy dose of what they can find in his newest book, The Contest for Japan’s Economic Future.
The Contest cover art courtesy of Amazon. Click here to buy the book.
Found on Amazon in both physical and digital forms, The Contest opens eyes on how Japan’s economy got to where it is and where it can go from here, offering fresh insights not found elsewhere, especially when looking the nation's small-to-medium sized enterprises.
Property Adjacent by Patience Realty is a podcast dedicated to zooming out from the confines of just residential real estate to see a general view of the economy to give property buyers and sellers a sense of what could be on the horizon that can affect property decisions here in Japan.
Wage growth, corporate health, government policies and demographic trends are some examples, but not all, of what can move the dial price-wise in the residential sector of the property market.
Key Topics Covered in Richard's Podcast
2:30 – Why Richard wrote the book: To offer actionable proposals for policymakers. Focused on entrepreneurship as firm turnover drives innovation and efficiency.
4:30 – Japan once thrived on creative destruction but slowed it from the 1970s, protecting failing firms instead of building a safety net—paralleling stagnation behind Western populism.
10:00 – Scandinavia offers a better model than post-Reagan America’s weak safety net or Europe’s rigid one, balancing market-driven policies with social support—an approach well-suited to Japan.
17:50 – Japan’s strengths: social mobility, education, universal healthcare. Human capital is its greatest asset.
22:00 – STEM must integrate humanities for strategy and market insight (e.g., Google hires humanities PhDs). Manufacturing thrives globally, but Japan underutilizes its service sector’s potential. Once strong in analog tech, Japan lags in digital.
33:55 – Japan’s image as conservative belies its entrepreneurial past. Meiji and postwar Japan were highly innovative, but once startups became giants, they blocked challengers and promoted cultural myths.
41:50 – Lifetime employment, introduced in the 1890s to prevent job-hopping, was later framed as “company as family.” Once beneficial, it now stifles fresh ideas.
43:50 – The lost decades weren’t caused by the bubble but by deeper economic flaws, including monetary policy missteps.
49:35 – Corporate self-delusion: Why Fujitsu lost networking dominance to Cisco.
51:55 – Japan’s reaction to the book: Policymakers responded positively. Many experts recognize the issues and potential solutions but seek concrete strategies—the book presents actionable proposals.
