This article is from WeChat official account:Modern Middle Class (ID: modernstory), author: modern middle-class, first – source: vision China
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After the collapse of the Japanese bubble, all industries were abandoned. Only consumer lending soared all the way. The industry hegemon, Take Fuji, rushed to go public and shouted out the trillions of loans.
In 1992, the following year when the bubble burst, Take Fuji built a new headquarters building next to Tokyo’s Nishi-Shinjuku subway station. At the bottom of the modern building, there is a coin-shaped round hole on which is a glass curtain wall with sky. Takei Yasuo stood behind the curtain wall and looked down, all beings are like ants.
He was also a member of the ants. Yasuo Takei was born in Saitama Prefecture, Japan, and his mother was a grocery store owner. After graduating from high school, he sold window frames, sold fake wine, worked as a billiard room kid, and finally reselled rice on the Tokyo black market.
In 1966, he used the proceeds from reselling rice to open a small company in Itabashi, Tokyo. The company is only 12 square meters, but he is full of pride.
The sound of horseshoes came from afar like thunder. The Tokyo Olympics has just ended two years ago, and Japanese TV’s 24-hour carousel has lasted for three years. Japanese brokers are flying rockets on the cover of Time, and hotel napkins are covered with loan shark advertisements.
Takei Yasuo started a loan shark business. His loan target was housewives, “women have better credit than men”.
He has a unique method of identifying customers. Every day at ten o’clock in the morning, he will wander the high-end community to observe which housewife hangs out clean clothes.
He would knock on the door from door to door, using the toilet as an excuse to observe each bathroom.
” Can’t lend to housewives who don’t clean the kitchen or toilet, but to A housewife with a child in clean clothes.”
Living in a high-end park means a stable income. Paying attention to hygiene implicates decent class. Takei Yasuo used this risk control, and the lending business began to soar.
Even if he is in arrears, he doesn’t care. When he was in the black market, he was associated with the gang. After starting the company, he hired high-level police officers as consultants with high salaries.
He eats black and white and has a source of both sides. He once bluntly said: The right wing is afraid of gangs, the gangs are afraid of the police, and the police are obedient to the right. If they are used properly, everything is possible.
The empire spread out in the shadows. In 1974, Yasuo Takei changed the company’s name to Take Fuji, nicknamed Yen Store, meaning that Yen is a commodity here.
That was an era of chasing money and throwing money. Everyone believed in the myth of getting rich and dared to overdraw the future. The leaders of the Bank of Japan said: From now on, change your thinking. In the past, you increased your savings. Now, please do your best to borrow money.
The dreams of countless ordinary people have folded into tides, and skyscrapers flooded them, like lonely islands. On the islands, Takei Yasuo, who was able to provide loans, was praised as a Robinson-like hero.
Takei Yasuo saw clearly that people love him only because he is rich. He loves to say to his friends most:
“If you leave a lot of money, future generations will think that person is so great.”
In the 1980s, the growth rate of consumer loans in Japan exceeded the growth rate of GDP. Bank employees carried a KPI of 100 million yuan a year on their backs. Momentumism prevailed all over the country. In layman’s terms, it means to have fun in time.
That generation of young people loves to say: Consumption is virtue.
Fiji and Bali are full of Japanese people waiting to take wedding photos; New York’s Fifth Avenue store is crowded with Japanese shoppers who consume 70% of the world’s luxury goods in a yearLuxury goods.
In 1990, the bubble began to break, but the Japanese people continued to move forward, and consumer loans supported the collapsed prosperity.
In 1991, Take Fuji broadcasted a TV commercial throughout Japan. 12 slim girls in tight black clothes performed jazz dances. There were also past drunken fans in their dances.
Two years later, Take Fuji’s total loan amount exceeded 1 trillion yen, the company became synonymous with the industry, and Takei Yasuo became the nation’s first taxpayer.
Take Fuji has placed many unmanned signing machines on the street. Loans are as simple as withdrawals. You only need to fill in the online form and complete the inquiry in front of the camera.
Those unmanned signing machines are soaked in the dark night, occasionally the screen will light up, the endorsement actress Hosokawa Naomi sings:
I like you who shine best.
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Take Fuji’s day began with employees bowing to the photo of Takei Yasuo.
Takei Yasuo ordered all stores across the country to display his photos. Employees should salute the photos and recite his famous aphorisms aloud.
After the company became the number one in Japan, he hired seven presidents, known as the Seven King Kong, but everyone knows that Take Fuji is still under his rule.
He likes people calling his father, and in those years, some employees shouted sincerely:
At that time, many members said that he treated us like a father, and we must work hard for his father.
He advocates overtime work and encourages working on weekends, but he dislikes overtime pay. At one time, he owed 3.5 billion yen in overtime pay, and the defendant went to court to settle it.
He led the team to build a team, would rant about adding water in the wine, and take the executives to Ginza. He had to strive for half the price before he was proud. At the funeral of his mother, he returned gifts to the employees who gave gifts and returned company souvenirs worth 300 yen Watch.
After becoming the top rich, the media began to focus on his extraordinary words and deeds. He is extremely superstitious and often asks fortune tellers to develop strategies. There is a Japanese six-day calendar on the table, and he arranges work according to good and bad every day.
He sings with incomplete pentatonic, but is keen to sing with celebrities, such as the chorus of “Northern Spring” by Zeng La.
Of course, it is his wealth that is reported the most. Those luxurious lives have made him an idol for the whole people.
In the 1980s, Yasuo Takei spent 8 billion yen to build a villa in the western suburbs of Tokyo. The mansion covers an area of 1,840 square meters, and a pillar is worth 3 million.
By the heated swimming pool of the villa, there are always celebrities gathered. In the living room on the first floor, high-priced foreign wines are placed randomly.
Every month, he travels to the Yamanashi County golf course twice in a bulletproof car. As more and more Japanese hide their golf clubs, the white ball he hits is flying over the mountains.
The Japanese, who was dreaming in the great age, looked enviously at Takei on the cloud, but often ignored the gloom under the cloud.
After the bubble burst, the unemployment rate in Japan surged to 4.5%, and even if they found a job, their income was stagnant. From 1991 to 2000, it was called the lost decade by the Japanese.
In the past ten years, Japan’s personal consumption accounted for more than half of GDP. It is difficult to stop the gap between desire and stagnant income, and consumer loans have become fillers.
At the same time, the proportion of bad debts has also risen. The words selling blood, selling kidneys, and selling eyeballs began to appear in the calls of Wu Fuji. Many people ran away to escape debts and wandered on the streets.
In those few years, the JR Chuo Line of Tokyo Metro was once the most popular suicide site. The silent people in the carriage stopped abruptly in the sway, and it was known that someone had jumped the track.
When the Japanese economy was at a trough, consumer lending reached its peak. On December 2, 1998, Take Fuji was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
In the second year, on the Forbes list, the 69-year-old Yasuo Takei overtook Sun Zhengyi and became the richest man in Japan.
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At the beginning of the listing, there were rumors that Wu Fuji sold undisclosed stocks to bank chiefs, customs chiefs, parliamentarians and media experts to interweave the gray network.
In the gray shadow, Take Fuji has long been a behemoth. In 2001, Take Fuji had 1,900 points.The company, with 15,000 employees, has 1.700 billion yen waiting for interest-collecting loans.
Takei Yasuo is very proud. “Nikkei Business” interviewed him. He said: Why do you fail to manage such a simple thing?
However, despite the scenery, Take Fuji’s fate has quietly reversed.
In 2002, a 56-year-old taxi driver borrowed more than 10 million yen in Takefuji, and finally broke into the Takefuji branch, spilling gasoline and setting fire.
The fire eventually killed 5 people and injured 4 people, causing a sensation in Japan.
The media digs into the arson case and launches a follow-up report “The Cruel Story of Take Fuji”, which tells the cruel world set up by out-of-control leverage.
The famous Japanese journalist Shigero Saito gave this generation the name “Satisfying the Poor”, who is not worried about food and clothing, but is in debt. He said in the book:
We all live in a society of mass consumption, and propaganda that stimulates desire is sweeping us like a flood. We were involved before even thinking.
Consumer loans can expand domestic demand. There is nothing wrong with them as a tool. However, after losing control, they can change the direction of a country.
In those years, the popular comic “Dark Golden Ugly Island Jun” was based on lending.
The protagonist Chou Dao-jun also lends to the housewife. He has a famous saying: You can borrow money, but you will go to hell.
In the whirlpool of public opinion, Yasuo Takei became the protagonist of the scandal.
From 2000, Yasuo Takei hired detectives to wiretap financial reporters, and later developed into wiretapping all employees of the company. Since then, Take Fuji has been revealed to have given the police beer vouchers.
On December 2, 2002, the fourth anniversary of Take Fuji’s listing, Takei Yasuo was escorted into a white van by the police.
Six days later, Yasuo Takei pleaded guilty, resigned as chairman, and was eventually sentenced to three years in prison and four years of probation.
For Take Fuji,Takei Yasuo’s retreat was not a fatal blow. The real end came in 2006.
In the beginning of 2006, the Supreme Court of Japan stipulated that all consumer finance companies must have an annual interest rate within 20%, and the loan amount must not exceed one-third of the borrower’s annual income.
At the same time, the regulations also require that the previously overcharged interest be refunded to the borrower. For this alone, Take Fuji has to refund US$24 billion to approximately 2 million people.
The domino collapsed. In the summer of that year, the Asahi Shimbun took the lead and refused to publish the loan shark advertisement.
On August 10, 2006, Takei Yasuo died of liver failure at the age of 76.
At the funeral, all Japanese business celebrities were present, but they talked more about “Take Fuji can buy the bottom, it’s a piece of cake.”
In the second year, Take Fuji put away the girl in black advertisement. The new version of the advertisement included sentences such as “Stop borrowing too much” and “Use the loan correctly and don’t forget.”
However, everything has changed. If the pause button was pressed for consumer credit in Japan, the number of credit companies in Japan dropped sharply from 11,800 to 1926 within a year.
The dream tide receded, and the floating ants returned to the ground to get into the nest, and the tycoon who wielded the lever became the first group of disappeared.
No matter how beautiful the tide is, you must obey the will of the sea.
2006, known as the first year of Japan’s consumer loan reform, was also the starting point of many long stories.
The young generation who has no future overdraft has become the old Feites, the snail-inhabited otaku, and the herbivores of the Buddhist family. The sluggish desire for consumption has triggered consumption inflation for 30 years.
Those who have ever had a frenzy in their hearts, the more they ran, the slower they ran, and the heavier they ran, and finally settled in the amber of time.
In 2009, Take Fuji stopped providing new loans, and in the capital market, international rating agencies adjusted its credit rating to junk.
In September 2010, Takefuji filed for bankruptcy and was delisted and delisted one month later. Two years later, the demolition of the skyscraper with coin holes started.
Today, all traces of Take Fuji are left with only one telephone hotline, waiting for the former borrower to call to get the extra interest.
The ruins of the empire in that gray shadow disappear, leaving only the last bell.