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New York Times: Japan Ponders Its New Normal

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ISHINOMAKI, Japan — Its most sophisticated factory gutted by the earthquake, a maker of vital parts for smartphones says it will shift production overseas.

 Their boats washed away by the tsunami, fishermen in the town of Higashi-Matsushima say they will start over, but on a smaller scale.

And with electricity still in tight supply from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis, a landmark building in Tokyo has dimmed its famous lights.

Across Japan, there is a shared realization that the natural and nuclear disasters unleashed on March 11 have exposed the fragility of Japan’s postwar economic order — and that a recovery will not be a return to the status quo.

The disasters have dealt another blow to a manufacturing sector already battered by cheaper rivals, deepening fears of a “hollowing out” of Japanese industry long feared in this country. Japan’s aging, shrinking population will also make an energetic bounce-back more difficult. And Japan’s economy relies heavily on precarious nuclear energy, for which alternatives are likely to be more expensive.

Rebuilding will require a national rethinking if Japan is to achieve an economic rebirth, rather than sink further into the stagnation that has plagued it for two decades, many experts say. And reconstruction will define the nation’s place in a global order where Japan is no longer the rising economic star of a generation ago.

For more information:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/business/global/12normal.html


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