Dogs and demons, The fall of modern Japan

The emperor of China asked his court painter,
«What's easy to paint and what's hard to paint?»
and the answer was
«Dogs are difficult, demons are easy.»
Quiet, low-key things like dogs in our immediate surroundings are hard to get right, but anybody can draw a demon.
Basic solutions to modern problems are difficult, but pouring money into expensive showpieces is easy.

uncontrollable excess is the defining quality of Japan's modern cultural crisis.

He asked workers in Tokyo if they would disclose wrongdoing in their company; 99 percent said they would not.

Japan's economy is supported by illegal dumping

In the early 1990s, construction investment overall in Japan consumed 18.2 percent of the gross national product, versus 12.4 percent in the United Kingdom and only 8.5 percent in the United States.

To put it simply, Japan failed to develop mature financial markets – and the expertise that goes along with them

In 1994, concrete production in Japan totaled 91.6 million tons, compared with 77.9 million tons in the United States

by 1993, 55 percent of the entire coast of Japan had been lined with cement slabs and giant concrete tetrapods

Building the new line, he said, "is needed to develop the social infrastructure so that people can feel they have become rich"