Japan: Back to the future?

Chris Bailey, head of direct global investment at Close Brothers Asset Management, urges investors to look again at Japan as a guide to investing closer to home.

Twenty five years ago, the common perception was that Japanese companies, technology and products were going to take over the world. Business Japanese became de rigeur and companies fell over themselves to implement Japanese-style continuous improvement working practices. Today, China and other emerging markets have supplanted Japan, which has become a relative investment backwater. If investors and business people bother to come to Tokyo at all these days, it is not as a guide to the immediate future but to review a stagnating economy. This is a trip I have undertaken a number of tim...