In a miraculous, parting-of-the-Red-Sea moment, Japan’s bookshops have set aside shelf space for a genre of literature that has, appropriately, generated roughly zero demand for the past three decades: inflation and what to do about it. Titles such as Inflation Japan: the Coming Era of Endless High Prices and A World of Inescapable Inflation, strike a common, cautionary and grandiose tone. In the judgment of these works, Japan’s late 2021 entry into a sustained, 20-month stint of consumer price increases after years of stagnation and deflation represents not only a profound economic shift but a psychological, social and epochal one too. On balance, that feels about right. Japan’s experience with deflation was weirdly protracted and weirdly pernicious. If it is now truly over, there is an awful lot of weirdness to work out of the system even as the country is braced for inflation to become the next problem.
Beijing, meanwhile, may decide that Japan’s inflation-linked publishing phenomenon is worth a particularly close study as the two economies pass on the stairs: Japan swatting deflation’s last tentacles off its ankles just as China seems to be stumbling resignedly into its embrace.
China’s descent into deflation was confirmed last week as part of a wider onslaught of tough economic news from the economy that generates over a third of global growth. Alarmingly high youth unemployment, weak property prices and a heavily indebted corporate sector are all hurting demand, and were the backdrop against which weak consumer prices turned mildly but undeniably negative in July.