Japan is famous for its J-pop bands, where music and Manga meet. The US and the West for all its Justin Beiber-isation and Kardashian-ification simply can’t match Japan for mixing pure fantasy with crystalline escapism and the unexpected.
So it has not come as too much of a shock to be to discover the Japanese office of ADVFN, who have a stock market information site based in Tokyo have discovered a J-pop band that considers the performance of the Nikkei as important as their producers performance at the mixing desk.
Called Machikado Keiki, http://www.alice-project.biz/keikijapan, meaning “the street corner economists of Japan,” and also potentially a play on words meaning, “give them Cake.” The band is made up of four pretty gals lead by 20 year old University student Sakura Yuki.
In a way quintessential to Tokyo’s electronics district, Akiharbara, they gave out 1000 cakes to the heaving nerd crowd that packs this geek heaven. They did this because the Nikkei had hit 15000 and according to their manager they wore French underwear to celebrate.
This would of course be inconceivable on Wall Street or in London. Stock investing has not been in the mainstream since the dotcom crash. In Europe stocks are still considered in many corners as a sinful thing and investing tantamount to dicing with the devil.
The Tokyo stock Exchange genders not such inhibitions.
So the idea of having a pop band who cut the lengths of their skirts to the level of the market might not compute in the west, but the importance of Japan’s stock market still runs deep in the Japanese psyche.
Japan is a complex culture, it is often overlooked but it is steeped in humour and irony.
While the youths of western rock want freedom, the punks anarchy, Japanese youth want growth and employment. This is the vibe this J-pop band is plugging into.
The Japanese are not blind to their economic torpor or happy with its crippling inertia, they want the change that Abenomics promises.
They want the good times to roll again, even if it is at the cost of inflation.
This urge goes deep enough that it is manifesting itself in mainstream media.
If Premier Abe can get the Nikkei to 20,000 then Machikado Keiki promises to play for him in their shortest mini-skirts, but there are dark forces in the way.
The bad guys at the BOJ are out to spoil the party, so Machikado Keiki maybe doomed to forever wear ankle lengths skirts if the deflationist have their way and crush the Nikkei back under 10,000.
Of course in the J-pop world of Machikado Keiki, Abenomics cannot fail, let’s hope for the young of Japan, this turns out to be right, because with the right growth strategy not only will Japan rise from depression, it will lead the rest of the developing world past recovery into a new era of prosperity.
The alternative is grim.