Recently, a blog post by a famous Japanese actor in his 80s sparked controversy. With great confidence, he wrote:
“Out there are countless jobs that bring joy to others and money to you! Earning 500,000 yen a month is easy. Air conditioners, electrical work, cleaning, home repairs, carpentry—there’s no end to what you can do, even in old age!”
Now, 500,000 yen (about USD 3,400) may not sound like a fortune to Americans. But in Japan, the median monthly income is roughly 280,000 yen (about USD 1,870). Against that backdrop, the claim that “making 500,000 yen is easy” comes across as tone-deaf.
Yes, cleaning is something one could start today. But electrical repairs require a national license as an electrician. Air-conditioner maintenance involves refrigerant gases and circuitry, demanding both expertise and certification. Carpentry, meanwhile, takes years of training before one can provide paid services at a professional level. It is simply not the kind of world where you can declare, “Alright, I’ll be a carpenter starting today and earn 500,000 yen a month.”
This reflects a common pitfall: universalizing one’s youth as if times had never changed. In his younger days, Japan was in the midst of rapid economic growth. The harder you worked, the faster your pay rose. Effort was reliably rewarded. It was the very embodiment of what Adam Smith once wrote in The Wealth of Nations:
“The progressive state is, in reality, the cheerful and the hearty state to all the different orders of the society.”
But modern Japan tells a different story. The growth plateau has long passed. After decades of a dull stationary state, the country is now slipping into a declining state, shaped by demographic collapse and widening inequality. For today’s youth, it is a melancholy era where effort does not necessarily translate into reward.
In such a climate, lecturing the young with outdated values misses the point entirely. Ambition and initiative are certainly admirable, but the returns on effort are never fixed, they are always shaped by the social context. The struggles of today’s youth are not simply a matter of personal effort—they are, in many ways, the outcome of the times.
And this is precisely why success stories can be so unhelpful. They highlight effort while leaving out the timing and luck that played a decisive role. A tale of triumph, polished into a simple “hard work pays off” narrative, can mislead more than it teaches. Stories of failure, by contrast, often reveal the hidden obstacles and blind spots, and thus provide lessons far more valuable than any glittering success.
