The 40 Year Gap

Some Japanese says that when they go here in the Philippines it is like Japan long ago. The stage when it was developing.

I found this article again from the old Reader's Digest.  This is a commercial page for a certain oil company.
The page describe Japan in the Golden 60's.

Retyping what was written.

Here it goes.

Japan in the golden sixties.

Take four small mountainous islands, barely 1/6th of the land growing food, with poor coal, little iron, and few resources except  for its 95 million people. How very hard to live in Nippon you might think.

1. Yet in the last ten years, the Japanese have doubled their real income, and banked a surprising amount of personal savings.

A nation of technicians

2. The Japanese themselves, have no easy explanation for their prosperity. Labour is no longer cheap. Steel workers, for example, the average about US $112 a month.

3. The answer is probably technical expertise. For the past 10 years Japan's 239 universities have poured out a flood of technicians. Today Japan claims more engineers than any other country, except the USA and Russia.

Ten years of frenzied inventiveness

4. Short of land, the Japanese, farmed the sea intensively, became the world's greatest exporters of seafood.

5. Short of resources, the Japanese complemented their traditional heavy industries with light manufacture. The electric appliance industry multiplied itself by 22 in 10 years, now exports radios, washing machines, and miniature colour television sets even to the USA.

Energy: the big switch to oil

6. Growing 17% a year, industry soon outstripped energy resources of the country.

7. So Japan turned to oil. As an oil-consuming nation, she jumped from 7th place in the 1953 to 3rd in 1963 ( in this effort all companies invested heavily).

A new way of life

8. Today the Japanese have no more leisure than they ever had, but they certainly have more means. They crowd ski-slopes and pack hot-springs resorts. And all year round,  thousands of executives join in the new golf craze.

New frontiers

9. Japan wants to double her living standards again by 1970. Will she do it? For more than any other nation she lives on the knife-edge of the balance of trade.

10. The people believe she will. They know the difficulties. And they have the cheerful persistence that surmounts mountains. Already Tokyo is preparing feverishly for the 1964 Olympic Games.

Today Japan achieved that goal she is now  one of the riches nation.
Comparing it with the Philippines. We have all the resources both natural and man power. The Philippines is also one of the people who can speak  English. In that we are in advantage so it is so  unbelievable  that we are still in the list of the poorest countries.

The flaw maybe is in the leadership that lead the Philippines through years.
One of the father of a friend of mine once went to Singapore.
He overheard the word Philippines one day in a  meeting held in Singapore. So out of curiosity
He asked what it was all about, he found out that the leader is praising the Philippines for having a big natural resources, comparing it with the menial resources of Singapore, but the Philippines is mismanaged and for  the Philippines to improve leadership style should be change.

Philippine politicians are strange. Sometimes I think they mismanaged the public funds. Passing along the C5 road, I saw some projects which are not well think of. For example, They created a  beautiful garden under the bridge. So what is wrong with the garden.
If you are going to observe they planted some plants even to the places where the sun can't reached, so in the end those plants ended dying. I also have observed a certain side walk. Long ago tress were planted there, they were cut to improve the sidewalk, cemented it so it became a beautiful  not rugged path then all of a sudden someone drilled the side walk they flattened then planted trees again with spacing so little, not even  thinking of the future  when they grow into their full size then again I am betting when the tree grows they will be cut again to improve the side walk. 

Sorry if I went out of the topic.