Japanese financial elites deployed nationalist shame rhetoric to sell austerity to the public.
Evidence
In 1928, financial elites and those sections of the government pressing for an immediate return to gold enlisted the help of the major newspapers of the day to convince the public to return to gold. Typical was a series of editorials in Osaka Mainichi from the summer of 1928 through the spring of 1929. For example, when France went back on gold in June 1928, Osaka Mainichi argued that “France realized the repeal of the gold embargo: Japan should Shame Itself.” The same editorial asked rhetorically, “Why shouldn’t we repent ourselves of being left behind if we think our nation is a civilized and first-rate one?” In July 1928 the public was told that to rejoin gold “people must endure a pain of surgical operation … Shrink first in order to extend.” Later that summer, an editorial noted that although a return to gold would be painful “it is a hopeful pain. Eventually it would restore us.” — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 537
Categorization
- SEED: Article angle: the linguistic packaging of austerity as national honor and ‘hopeful pain’ — a cross-cultural vocabulary of suffering-as-virtue that reappears in every era.
- XREF: Picks up the gold-standard rhetoric from Blyth’s earlier cases and prefigures the moralizing language of austerity found in the 2008-12 Eurozone crisis chapters. — connects to: Japanese elites sold deflation as unavoidable sacrifice through mass propaganda — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 538
- CANDY: ‘Shrink first in order to extend’ and ‘hopeful pain’ are striking slogans — good as quasi-humorous austerity quips.
Broader Connections
- Japanese elites sold deflation as unavoidable sacrifice through mass propaganda
#corroborates(0.92) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 538