From pet food delivery fees to software subscriptions, price increases have become part of daily life in Japan. Even when prices stay the same, products quietly shrink in size. Behind these small frustrations may lie something larger — the limits of maintaining the high standard of living Japan built during the bubble era. Perhaps the time has come not only to complain about rising costs, but also to reconsider what kind of life we truly need.
The day before yesterday, I received an email saying that the delivery fee for my dog’s food would be increased.
Yesterday, it was the price hike for my Office subscription.
None of these things come with negotiation or explanation.
If you cannot afford them, then stop using them and find something else — that is probably the logic behind it all, but there is something remarkably merciless about it.
As for dog food, perhaps I could simply go buy it myself.
But even driving costs money these days, so in the end, small price increases have to be accepted.
Office software used to be something you bought once and kept using until the next version came out.
You could protect yourself a little by skipping every other upgrade.
But once everything becomes a yearly subscription, there is almost no room left for self-defense.
And since I use it for work, stopping is not really an option.
After driving earlier word processors out of the market and achieving a near-monopoly, companies can now raise prices almost unilaterally, while users have very little means of resistance.
In any case, prices keep rising day after day.
Even products with unchanged prices often contain less than before.
“Stealth inflation” used to be subtle enough that people barely noticed it, but recently it has become rather shameless.
There is talk about lowering the consumption tax in Japan, but prices are rising faster than any possible tax reduction would help, so in the end it may amount to almost nothing.
At the same time, considering Japan’s enormous national debt, some international organizations even suggest that the consumption tax should eventually be raised instead.
During the bubble era, Japan’s standard of living reached one of the highest levels in the world.
Since then, Japan has continued trying to preserve that standard while maintaining its place among the world’s advanced societies.
But perhaps that, too, is reaching its limit.
Maybe the coming era will not be about seeking even greater convenience, but about maintaining the social infrastructure we already have — the Shinkansen, the highways, and the systems built over decades.
And honestly, perhaps that is already enough.
We ourselves may also need to stop assuming that our current standard of living is something permanent and unquestionable.
Perhaps we need to learn how to live a little more modestly.
Still, once a way of life has expanded, making it smaller again is never easy.
The difficult part is not enduring a poorer life, but accepting that “enough” may already have been reached.
・・・
Vocabulary for Learners
- merciless — 容赦のない、無慈悲な
- subscription — 定額契約、サブスク
- monopoly / near-monopoly — 独占 / 寡占
- stealth inflation — ステルス値上げ
- consumption tax — 消費税
- national debt — 国家債務
- social infrastructure — 社会基盤
- modestly — 質素に、控えめに
- unquestionable — 疑う余地のない
- maintain its place among ~ — ～の中での地位を維持する
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