Full transcript
0:00Japan is considered one of the most developed countries in the world today.
0:03Its clean roads, bullet trains, technological advancements, robots, disciplines,
0:09are all of the level that everyone praises today.
0:13But can you imagine,
0:16just 80 years ago, in this very Japan, people were starving.
0:23And in the newspapers, government experts were teaching people
0:27how they could eat the wood and mouse as food.
0:31People were selling their clothes, watches and jewellery for food.
0:35In the Second World War, 66 big cities of Japan were burned to ashes.
0:4090 lakh people did not even have a home.
0:43After defeating Japan, America took over the entire country.
0:46And the situation was so bad that at that time,
0:49American General Douglas MacArthur announced to the world
0:53Japan had now become a fourth-rate nation.
0:58But then, only 23 years later, Japan became the third largest economy in the world.
1:04This journey from the ashes to the top economy of the world is considered the biggest comeback in modern history for any country.
1:13And it is called the Japanese miracle.
1:18Hello, to understand this, we will have to go back in time, to the year 1945.
1:23In the Second World War, Japan's 1 4th National Wealth was destroyed.
1:2965% of the houses in Tokyo were burnt to ashes.
1:3257% in Osaka.
1:3489% in Nagoya.
1:35This was the situation in all major cities.
1:38And then came the nuclear bombs.
1:45America dropped the first one on Hiroshima.
1:48And then on Nagasaki after 3 days.
1:50Only these two bombs caused more than 2 lakh people
1:54But the biggest disaster was Japan's economic destruction.
1:58Industrial production fell to only 20% at the peak of the Second World War.
2:03The government had only three days left of rice in Tokyo.
2:06And the finance minister himself said that about one crore people could die from hunger.
2:12The situation was that the government experts in the newspapers were teaching people how to eat rice, peanut shells and wood.
2:20to eat.
2:21For protein, silkworms, rats and snakes were being given advice.
2:26The whole country was alive on the black market, where rice was selling 30 times more expensive
2:30than the official price.
2:31It was called the bamboo shoot existence at that time, because just like the layers of
2:36bamboo fall one by one, people were selling their life layers one by one just to eat.
2:43All decisions were made by an American general, Douglas MacArthur, who was called the Japanese
2:48People called him Blue-Eyed Shogun.
2:52Emperor Hirohito, who was considered a god in Japan a few days ago,
2:57when he met MacArthur, he was so down that he was shaking his hands.
3:03This was the moment when the pride of this country was completely broken.
3:07The most shocking thing was that the cost of this occupation was also being paid by Japan.
3:12On one hand, people were starving and on the other hand,
3:15only 1 third of the country's budget was going to the American forces
3:20in the name of ending the war.
3:22America's plan was simple.
3:24To weaken Japan so much that it would never be in danger again.
3:28So in 1947, he introduced a new constitution on Japan.
3:33In Article 9, it was written that Japan would always
3:36abandon its right to fight
3:39and would never have any kind of army.
3:43But then came March 1947
3:45With the American Soviet Union
3:48They were entangled in a Cold War.
3:50They readied their armies to fight what would prove to be one of the most abstract conflicts in history.
3:56The Cold War.
3:57Look at the map once.
3:59Look at the location of Japan.
4:01On one side was the Soviet Union, which was already Communist.
4:04And on the other side was China, where the Communist army was winning.
4:08Now America was afraid that if Japan also became Communist, then the whole of Asia would be taken by them.
4:13America's top strategist, George Cannon, also published a report in 1948.
4:17that MacArthur's policies and the ruined economy
4:20made Japan vulnerable to communism from the inside.
4:24America could not take this risk.
4:27So it changed its policy overnight.
4:29On 9th October 1948,
4:31President Harry Truman approved a document called NSC 13-2.
4:36It stated that America's primary objective in Japan
4:40would be its economic recovery.
4:42But the problem was that Japan's economy was on two sides.
4:46One was government subsidies and the other was American aid.
4:50Apart from this, there was another big problem,
4:52the cost, which had reached 195% in 1947.
4:57Can you imagine such inflation?
4:59So for this, in 1949, America brings a new policy called the Dodge Line.
5:04In this, all subsidies are stopped and government loans are also suspended.
5:09In April 1949, a single exchange rate of the currency was also fixed.
5:13$1 equals to 360 yen
5:16It was deliberately kept a little more
5:18so that Japanese exports would remain cheap in the world's markets
5:22And after a few years, it stopped being expensive
5:25But it also caused a loss
5:27Companies started to lay off
5:28Now people neither had a job nor money
5:31If there was no money, there was no demand
5:33And if there was no demand, there was no production
5:34The entire economy of Japan stopped
5:38And in the beginning of 1950, the Japanese economy stopped
5:42was heading towards depression.
5:44Japan needed demand from somewhere.
5:46And then, suddenly,
5:48this demand came.
5:50And the whole story changed.
5:55Where did this demand come from?
5:56Before you know this, you need to understand that
5:58fortune favors the brave.
6:00Japan's factories, its engineers, its workers,
6:03were ready before the time came.
6:05And if that day, luck would have been with another country
6:08instead of Japan,
6:09then we wouldn't have seen this result.
6:12And, this rule hasn't changed even today.
6:14We are also facing a similar situation,
6:17which is called AI Revolution.
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7:32Now let's get back to our topic and understand on which occasion
7:36North Korea's army attacked South Korea on June 25, 1950 and the Korean War began.
7:43North Koreans launched a full-scale, well-prepared drive on the capital of the South, Seoul.
7:50America also joined the war in support of South Korea.
7:56We are united in detesting communist slavery.
7:59We know that the cost of freedom is high, but we are determined to preserve our freedom no matter what the cost.
8:05Now America needed trucks, uniforms, machine parts, weapons, and Japan was the closest country to Korea.
8:14At this point, America started buying war supplies from Japan on a large scale.
8:18From June 1950 to the end of 1953, about $2.3 billion was bought.
8:25This number was so large that from 1945 to 1951, Japan received more financial aid than America.
8:34And this money proved to be a lifeline for Japan.
8:38The Japanese economy was back on track.
8:41The production of factories began.
8:43Jobs came and people started getting money.
8:46In just two years, industrial production increased by 70%.
8:50And exports increased by more than 2.5 times.
8:52The stock market also calmed down by more than 80% by December 1951.
8:58The trucks that America bought for the war,
9:00revived the automobile industry of Japan.
9:03Toyota, which was about to close down and was taking out the workers from their jobs, was suddenly ordered by America to make more than 4,600 trucks.
9:13And the company was re-opened.
9:15The president of Toyota later said that he was feeling two things at the same time.
9:20Joy for his company and guilt that he was happy at the war of another country.
9:26And this was actually true for the whole country of Japan.
9:30Millions of people were dying in neighboring Korea
9:32And Japan's factories were making profits by making trucks and bombs for that war
9:38The governor of Bank of Japan called it Divine Aid
9:42And along with Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, many leaders also called it a gift of the Gods
9:48Gifts given to God
9:50The country whose economy was destroyed by a war, was revived by another war
9:56On 8th September 1951, Japan signed peace treaty with most of the countries that fought against it in World War II.
10:04Under which, in 1952, the American occupation of Japan was ended.
10:09Before the San Francisco Peace Conference comes Premier Shigeru Yoshida.
10:13Accepting the treaty terms, he pledges that Japan is a new nation dedicated to peace, democracy and freedom.
10:19At that time, India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had opposed this treaty.
10:23He believed that this treaty would not fully restore Japan's sovereignty.
10:28The treaty was a guarantee that some islands of Japan would still be in the control of America,
10:33and some occupation forces could still live in Japan.
10:37Later in 1952, India signed a separate treaty with Japan.
10:42Now, the help of the Korean War and America did kickstart Japan's economy.
10:47But no government aid made Japan a superpower.
10:50It was made a superpower by the passion, hard work and stubbornness of the people there,
10:57who refused to bow down to the system and the circumstances.
11:01After the bomb dropped in Hiroshima, 15 out of 49 citizen schools in the city were completely destroyed.
11:07Only one out of 30 middle schools was left and seven colleges were destroyed.
11:12But even then, the education of the children did not stop.
11:15in May 1946
11:17in a burning school field
11:19under the open sky
11:20the first class was set
11:22next month another
11:24In the burnt down building of the former school, three teachers started teaching 37 children.
11:29There was no bench, no blackboard, no books.
11:32A defeated country was sitting in a ruins and teaching its children from a new start.
11:38The same inspirational story is of the villages.
11:40Before the war, about 70% of Japan's farmers would not own their land, but someone else's.
11:46And 50-70% of the crops were given to the landlord.
11:50In 1946, the Land Reform Law was introduced.
11:52The law stipulated that the government would buy land from the landlord,
11:56and sell it to the farmers who worked hard on it.
11:59But can you guess who implemented it?
12:02The farmers themselves.
12:03More than 11,000 village land commissions were formed in the country.
12:07The farmers of the villages themselves would select them.
12:09And these committees decided which land belonged to whom.
12:13This encouraged the farmers.
12:15The country's Finance Minister had predicted the death of 1 crore people,
12:20by 1950, the food shortage had ended.
12:24The changing symbol of Japan's place in the Far East.
12:27Once it was a symbol of destruction,
12:29today, we look upon it with hope,
12:31as a symbol of stability.
12:33And the same stubbornness was seen in the automobile industry,
12:37which is still known as Japan.
12:39After many years of the Second World War,
12:42Japan's car production was stopped.
12:44In 1950, America produced 66 lakh passenger cars.
12:48Whereas in Japan, only 1,600 cars were produced.
12:52In the 1950s, most people in Japan believed that the country didn't need its own automobile industry.
12:58The government said that Japanese car companies couldn't compete with foreign companies.
13:03But some people refused to believe it.
13:06One of them was Toyota's founder, Kichiro Toyoda.
13:11In the 1940s, when there were restrictions on making cars in Japan,
13:15at that time, Kichiro Toyoda said that
13:18factory on the road, will keep moving forward until it falls.
13:23And will make products that will not be inferior to anyone.
13:27In 1957, Toyota sent its two best cars, Crown and Crown Deluxe, as an experiment to America.
13:34But when these cars were tested on the highways of America at high speed,
13:38the engine started making strange noises, vibrations occurred and parts broke down.
13:43The quality control was so bad that in June 1958, 30 Crown cars were sent to America without headlights.
13:49Toyota's official history itself believes that the performance of the initial cars was not worth selling in America.
13:55In America, Toyota's cars were seen as a joke, they were laughed at.
14:00But Toyota also learned from this defeat.
14:03A new production system was started and today it sells the most cars in the world.
14:13smaller numbers of parts to be used when it needed them, allowing the company to operate
14:16on a tighter budget.
14:17By the way, the story of this company is so interesting that a separate video can be made
14:22on it, that what laws the company implemented within itself that made it possible.
14:28But there is another similar story of Masuru Ibuka.
14:31Masuru Ibuka started in 1945 in a burnt building of a department store in Tokyo, from a radio
14:36repair shop.
14:37Later in 1946, along with Navy Lieutenant Akio Morita, he started a new company with a capital of only 1.9 lakh yen.
14:47His first product was an electric rice cooker, which was so bad that Ibuka named it as failed prototype number one.
14:55Let's call this failed prototype number one.
14:58And then in 1952, they went to America and found out that the Western Electric Company
15:04was selling its new invention, the transistor's production rights.
15:12Transistor is a small electronic component made of silicon
15:18which boosts electrical signals to increase their power
15:22Nowadays, it is used in every device from phones to laptops
15:26Ibuka was a small company, they didn't have that much money
15:30The Japanese government had already refused to help them
15:34The government had said that this would be foolish
15:36that advanced technology like a transistor
15:39is not the same as a small factory bus.
15:42But still, somehow,
15:43Ibuka succeeded in getting the rights to make transistors.
15:46And for the first time, Ibuka made a radio out of this transistor.
15:50In September 1955,
15:52their company launched Japan's first transistor radio,
15:55TR-55.
15:57And after 2 years,
15:58the world's smallest transistor radio,
16:01TR-63, came.
16:03This radio could fit in the pocket of a shirt.
16:06That's why it was also called pocketable radio.
16:08You won't believe it, this radio hit America so hard that to meet the Christmas demand, the company had to book charter planes.
16:16And at the same time, a watch company in America offered them an order of one lakh radios.
16:20But on the condition that the brand name of the radio would be on it.
16:23Because no one knew about this company.
16:25It was a huge offer for a small company.
16:28But Akio Morita rejected this offer.
16:31, can you guess which company this was?
16:36This was Sony.
16:39The same Sony that is one of the world's largest electronics companies.
16:43Now, a question will come to your mind.
16:45Whether it is Toyota or Sony,
16:47these are the examples of individual companies.
16:49The owners of these companies must have done something that made them successful.
16:53What is their connection with the story of Japan?
16:56, the connection is that this story is not only of these two companies.
17:00This is the story of the entire Japan at that time,
17:03which refused to accept defeat.
17:06Toyota and Sony are just two examples, there are no shortcomings in many such examples.
17:11Honda's founder Soichiro Honda, a son of a iron man and a mechanic himself,
17:16who started a garage in a wooden hut in 1946.
17:22In fact, the government wanted to limit car manufacturing to only a few big companies.
17:26But Soichiro Honda refused to follow the government's instructions.
17:31Now, it is not that the Japanese government did not want to help these people.
17:34The problem was that in the 1950s, Japan had very little foreign exchange, i.e. dollars.
17:40So the government only gave dollars to some selected industries and companies to import goods.
17:46But as Japanese companies progressed, they also brought in foreign exchange with them and the shortage of dollars began to increase.
17:53Apart from this, there was a high growth rate and jobs were created.
17:57The situation was that by the mid-1950s, Japan's economy had exceeded the level of the Second World War.
18:04But at this point, Japan's infrastructure was still insufficient.
18:09And Japan could not grow much further without fixing it.
18:13And at this time, the man who was the most important person in the growth story of Japan entered the picture.
18:20A man who made economic growth the national consensus of the country.
18:26He was Japan's Prime Minister, Ikeda Hayato.
18:30He came up with an income doubling plan in December 1960.
18:34The target of this plan was to double Japan's income in the next 10 years.
18:39And to do this, the most powerful infrastructure was given to increase it.
18:43Which Japan needed.
18:44The country was home to expressways, monorails, bullet trains and highways, and the public
18:52infrastructure was also strengthened.
18:54The most important step here was to focus on education and training.
19:00Increasing science and technology is the first condition for the development of any country.
19:06In the 1950s and 60s, Japan spent 21-22% of its total government spending on education alone.
19:14It was the most in America, Britain, the Soviet Union, and India at that time.
19:18And as time went by, this spending increased.
19:20In 1960, Japan spent 612 billion yen on education.
19:25Whereas in 1973, this amount had exceeded 5 trillion yen.
19:30In other words, in 13 years, their education budget increased by 8 times.
19:34This had a direct impact on the children there.
19:37In 1950, only 42.5% of the children in Japan could reach high school.
19:42In 1975, this amount reached 91.9%.
19:47And in education, their focus was mostly on science and technology.
19:51After World War II, it was decided that the government should focus on science and technology.
19:57That's why in 1951, the government introduced the Industrial Education Promotion Law.
20:02And in 1953, the Science Education Promotion Law.
20:06Both these laws aimed at teaching students skills that would be useful in the industry.
20:11And to promote science education.
20:13In schools, science was taught through practicals and experiments.
20:17the central government would take half the cost of these equipments.
20:21In 1957, Japan made 8,000 student plans.
20:25According to which, the 8,000 seats of science and technology
20:28were increased in the next 4 years.
20:30After that, in 1961, 20,000 student plans were brought.
20:34In which the seats of science and engineering were decided to be increased by more than 20,000.
20:38And here again, the target was of 4 years,
20:42but Japan completed it in 3 years.
20:44Compare it with your country,
20:46There are not enough seats in colleges, and government schools are closing down.
20:54In the last 12 years, the government schools have been decreasing in India.
20:59Meaning, we are doing the right thing in the wrong way.
21:02And the gas that was coming out of the gutter, we used the same gas to make tea.
21:07And what happened in Japan?
21:09In 1955, the number of students studying science and technology in Japan was 80,000.
21:14In 1975, it increased to 4 lakh.
21:17These graduates had such a high demand that in the 1960s, many years came when every graduate of engineering got a job in Japan.
21:26And the Japanese government did not leave any trace here.
21:29In addition, changes in trade policies also liberalized the entire economy, which helped the private industry.
21:35And while doing all this, Japan did not forget its poor people.
21:39Social security and social welfare were invested so that government help could be delivered to the needy.
21:46The Japanese government and people worked so hard that the income doubling plan that critics were calling fantasy,
21:52was achieved in just 6-7 years instead of 10.
21:57Imagine, on one side there are our politicians who show dreams of $5 trillion.
22:03They say that they will achieve it by 2022.
22:06In the next 5 years, we can become an economy of $5 trillion.
22:11We are not able to achieve it even after many years of delays.
22:14and there, the target set by Japan was completed in half the time.
22:18The target was of 7.8% growth,
22:20but Japan's economy increased by 10% every year.
22:24Only this one plan supercharged Japan's economy.
22:28That country where there were no jobs after the Second World War,
22:31and the income was very low.
22:32There were so many jobs that people became poor.
22:35There was a shortage of workers.
22:37Young people from the villages were filling up in special trains
22:39and coming to the factories of the cities,
22:42which were called golden eggs.
22:43But one question here is that all these factories, highways, and bullet trains were built by
22:48How did they get the money? Japan had neither oil nor colonies.
22:52The answer to this is the common people there.
22:56From 1947 to 1949, the Japanese family's budget was negative.
23:01People were not saving but were eating their savings.
23:05But what happened after that was shocking.
23:08From 1961 to 1986, for 25 years, every year a family was saving more than 15% of its income.
23:17And by the mid 1970s, this figure had reached 23%.
23:22Which means that an average family,
23:25was saving 23% of the money they were earning.
23:29This was the highest number in all the developed countries of OECD.
23:33And this savings did not live in the vault of the house.
23:35It went to the banks and post offices.
23:38And from there, it was loaned to the factories that were building Japan.
23:42And this saving was being taught to people since childhood.
23:46In the 1950s, more than 30,000 schools and 80 lakh children were taking part in children's banks.
23:52That is, Japanese Miracle was not funded by a foreign investor, but by the common people there with a domestic budget.
23:59This was a turning point in the Japanese story.
24:01This country was uprooted from the ashes of the Second World War.
24:04And it announced it in front of the world in 1964.
24:09On 1st October 1964, a train leaves Tokyo's railway station.
24:17Tokaido Shinkansen.
24:20It was the world's first bullet train, running at a speed of 210 kmph.
24:25The Japs call it the bullet.
24:27They're super express that thrusts aside all existing ideas of train speed.
24:30Europe's first high speed train, France's TGV, arrived after 17 years.
24:35After the Second World War, the country where homeless people were forced to live in train boxes,
24:42made one generation ahead of the technology.
24:45The effect of increasing science education was now clearly visible.
24:49And just nine days after the start of this train,
24:51on 10 October 1964, the Olympic Games began in Tokyo.
24:56The first Olympics in Asia.
24:58October 10, 1964.
25:00The first nation to ever hold Olympic competition.
25:03An interesting fact here is that the face of these Olympics
25:06was made by Yoshinori Sakai, 19 years old.
25:09which was born on 6th August 1945 in Hiroshima,
25:15the day the atomic bomb fell.
25:17The city of Hiroshima,
25:19which was said to have been a place where grass would not grow for 70 years,
25:24was again under attack by the bomb after 3 days.
25:29It took only 3 days for a dead city to start again.
25:35Hiroshima was reconstructed as a peace symbol.
25:39by 1958, the population of Hiroshima had reached its pre-war level.
25:44Hiroshima had returned to its former glory, like a phoenix.
25:53And this is the story of Japan.
25:55By 1968, after Japan, America and the Soviet Union,
25:59the world's third largest economy had been formed.
26:02Between 1946 and 1976,
26:05that is, within just 30 years,
26:07Japan's economy had increased by 55 times.
26:10How mind-blowing is this?
26:12You can guess from this,
26:14that Japan has only 0.3% of the world's land.
26:17And 3% of the population.
26:19But its share in the global economy was 10%.
26:23The Japan that was ridiculed for its cheap cars,
26:2622 years later, in 1980,
26:28the same Japan left America behind,
26:30and became the world's number one car producer.
26:336 years later, in 1986,
26:36left America behind in the modern industry like semiconductors.
26:39And became number one in the market share.
26:42In memory chips, Japan's share remained 80% for a long time.
26:45And it had become Japan's specialty.
26:48In 1955, the per capita annual income of the country increased from $217
26:53to $24,000 in 1988.
26:56It was perhaps the highest in the world at that time.
26:59The America that had once occupied Japan,
27:02started writing books about it.
27:04that he should learn from Japan.
27:07There is a saying in Japan,
27:08Nana korobi ya oki
27:10means, fall seven times,
27:12get up eight times.
27:14Japan didn't fall seven times,
27:15it fell more than that.
27:17But every time,
27:18it got up more than once.
27:20This was Hiroshima,
27:22immediately after the atomic bomb.
27:24People stir and strive for the normal living they once knew.
27:27There is hope in the air.
27:29Perhaps the path from defeat will lead to a better way of living
27:32than they have ever known before.
27:34If you want one lesson from this video, be stubborn like the Japanese people.
27:44Learn to fall and rise again and again.
27:46Invest in yourself.
27:47Educate yourself.
27:49And if you want to upskill yourself in the field of AI,
27:52don't forget to join the AI Masterclass.
27:54You can click here to join.
27:56Or you can find the link in the description below.
27:58And if you liked this video and want to watch more videos like this,
28:01then the story of Singapore is also very interesting.
28:04Singapore was once a very poor country.
28:07But its turnaround was as miraculous as Japan's.
28:11But there, more credit goes to a politician than the people.
28:16You can find out more about it by clicking here.
28:19Thank you very much.