SSE alumni celebrate 50 year anniverary of their study tour to Japan

In 1970 17 alumni went to Japan for a five week long study tour. We went to Osaka, Nagasaki, Kyoto and Tokyo and we visited about 60 business organisations, companies, universities, political organisations, media, central and local governments. At the time, Japan was a fast growing economy which attracted a lot of attention. How could it be explained?

We met again on 5 February to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the study tour (postponed 2 years due to Covid), our fourth reunion. We had a full day seminar with three major themes:

The security situation in the region. Speaker: Major General Lars-Olof Corneliusson, Swedish Armed Forces;

Kishidanomics – Will prime minister Kishida succeed in closing the economic divides in Japan? Speaker: Professor Marie Söderberg, European Institute of Japanese Studies;

The occupation of Japan and Japanese secularism prior to and after 1945. Speaker: PhD Ernils Larsson, Uppsala University.

Even if we didn’t think that the economic growth could continue at a very high speed for ever, we surely thought that Japan would remain the major economic power in the region. In the 1970ies, China was a minor economic player and neither China nor North Corea posed a military threat to Japan.

At the time of our study tour, a common belief was that increased wealth would change the Japanese way of living by providing the Japanese with shorter working hours, longer holidays etc. Which is what has happened in Sweden over time. However, that didn’t happen in Japan. Working hours are still long, vacations short, maternity leaves are short etc which means that Japan faces a demographic problem due to low birth rates and very limited immigration.

Religion was a field we didn’t focus on in our preparations for the encounter with Japan. Ernils Larsson gave us a fascinating introduction of the limited importance of religion as we understand the meaning of religion whereas religion as a tradition seems to be very strong.

If you would like to read about the trip and what we learnt, we published a book after the trip: “Japan ekonomi och politik” under redaktion av Anders Abrahamson, Peter Gorpe och Birgitta Nygren, utgiven av HHS/EFI/IFL, Stockholm 1971