Currency fears in comic book plot
By Yuri Kageyama
Associated Press
TOKYO — The plot is sinister: U.S. officials trick Japanese authorities into intervening in the exchange market to buy the falling U.S. currency — not to save vulnerable Japanese exporters from the dangers of a high yen, but to keep America's economy from sliding.
Associated Press
This story line from a comic book now selling in Japan may be implausible. Nonetheless, it highlights growing fears here over seesawing currency fluctuations.
The popular, long-running Japanese "manga" action-hero serial Golgo 13 has turned to a story line in which Japanese authorities are tricked into pouring billions of yen into U.S. Treasury bonds to rein in their currency — and to bolster the U.S. economy.
There's little doubt that if the yen rises too much against the dollar, Japan's fragile export-driven recovery could sputter. Prices for Japanese products abroad would soar and earnings of major companies would plunge.
It's true that Japanese authorities have been dipping into the market for months. They have been spending a fortune buying and bolstering the value of the dollar while keeping the yen lower.
Now that dry economic reality has been turned inside out to become improbable fictional fodder for fans of Golgo 13 — a "manga" action-hero serial that's featured in the biweekly Big Comic magazine.
Manga is a style of comic wildly popular in Japan among adults as well as children. The huge manga market is estimated to be 516 billion yen ($4.8 billion) a year, according to The Research Institute for Publications.
In the Golgo 13 serial, the main character is a macho sniper-assassin whose illustrated exploits reflect the social, political and financial events on the world scene.
The latest three-part series centers on a dramatic battle between the yen and dollar.
In the real world, analysts say there's no doubt that Japan's shopping spree for dollars is helping the U.S. economy.
"It's keeping U.S. interest rates low and helping push up American share prices," said Mamoru Yamazaki, economist at Barclays Capital Japan in Tokyo.
But Yamazaki believes that the intervention campaign has been excessive, fueled by exaggerated fears about a surging yen among Japanese officials and media.
"Sometimes a strong yen can be a good thing, like from a consumer's point of view," he said, referring to how a strong yen would push down import prices.
"Excessive intervention is distorting the market."
The Japanese authorities spent a record 20 trillion yen ($182 billion) to intervene in the currency market last year to curb the dollar's slide. In the first two months of this year alone, they spent about 10 trillion yen ($91 billion).
Even so, the dollar has fallen more than 10 percent from last year. All the while, Japan has been aggressively snatching up U.S. Treasury bonds to keep their currency from getting too strong.
Officials are saying little.
"Our stance remains unchanged," Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki told reporters last week. "We believe foreign exchange rates should move stably in reflection of fundamentals."
It's hardly the dialogue of an action hero. But the creators of Golgo 13 have spiced things up.
The work includes sex scenes and blood-spattering violence. Although the assassin Duke Togo has yet to appear in the latest episode, he generally kills his victims by shooting them from a distance.
Its high-profile Washington figures, including one apparently inspired by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, are depicted as intensely worried about the dollar's level and the state of Japan's economy.
"The Japanese move too slowly," the character says in one scene.
"They're so slow. That's why there's no progress on their reform program."
An overly weak dollar will not only set off a job exodus to China and India but will cause capital to flee from America, she and other American characters fret.
The story suggests that the White House has concocted a diabolical trap so Tokyo will cough up a massive amount of cash to finance ballooning deficits for the U.S. budget and global trade balance while preventing a crash in U.S. Treasury bonds.
Big Comic editor Naosumi Nishimura says Golgo 13 appeals to Japanese readers because it is a fantasy based on realistic portrayals of current events. Since its start in 1968, Golgo 13 has sold 200 million copies in various formats, including compilation books.
"Our politics are neutral," Nishimura said, adding that the bad guys and good guys shift from episode to episode.
