Yusuke Narita, PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and current professor at Yale, is once again making the rounds commenting on the current state of his home country, Japan.
Dr. Narita, who may be unknown in Western academic and cultural circles, is known in Japan for his commentary on modern Japanese society, government, and more.
Narita typically wears his signature square and circle glasses (seen above) and is also not afraid to speak his mind, which has led to him gaining quite a following on Twitter/X, with over 700,000 followers to date .
While Narita’s comments are generally to the point, some of them are considered controversial, and his final thoughts on the state of Japan are quite scathing.
“Japan is a country without powerful people,” Narita said in an interview after. “There is no final boss who controls politics, and even the prime minister is ridiculed by the common people for the way he eats rice balls.”
If you thought the opening of his first public commentary on the New Year received enough criticism, wait a minute, Narita moved on into modern, popular Japanese culture.
“Celebrities who seem to be at the top of the entertainment industry also die immediately after a weekly magazine article,” Narita said. “There are almost no real rich people, and the number of billionaires per population is by far the lowest in the G7.”
Narita’s comments about the number of actually wealthy people in Japan come from his background in economics, as both his graduate and doctoral programs focused on these topics. The last bit of his thoughts, however, may be the most critical.
“Japan is a country of equality where everyone is helpless and everyone is poor,” Narita concluded.
It’s worth pointing out that Narita’s comments come after a long period of extremely weak Japanese Yen.
In recent months and years, the yen to US dollar exchange rate has averaged 140-150 yen to the dollar. Most recently, the yen has trended toward 160 yen per dollar, its weakest point in decades.
The weak yen has led to a tourism boom in Japan, which accompanied the ending of COVID-19 restrictions, but has led to numerous problems for the country’s residents, both financially and culturally.
Although Narita has a background in economics and focuses on this with his teaching and research, he naturally comments on other current topics in Japan – such as the country’s growing population of seniors.
Narita’s previous comments on the subject were widely criticized when he suggested options such as mass suicides – citing the 2019 film Midsommar as an example.
Narita has said these comments, made years apart, have been taken out of context and he particularly wants to address the increasing efforts to push elders out of leadership positions in both government and business.
Japanese netizens seem mostly negative in their response to Narita’s latest comments, saying things like “Don’t be fooled by Narita, everyone!” and “But why is such a country the most attractive?”, among other comments.