◆ Any tempting fruit, behind the marked price.
Correct answer bureau exhibit
There is a phenomenon manga in Japan that has been serialized for 15 years and has sold more than 17 million copies.
The name of the manga is Dark Gold Ugly Island Jun.
After the Chineseization of the works entered China, each Douban score was about 8.0 points.
Adapted into TV series and movies, it is also acclaimed and popular, and some people commented:
"This kind of work can change your life more than any chicken soup for the soul."
But behind such a work, there is a big scar of Japanese society: loan sharking.
Today, I will use the manga as a clue to talk about Japan's crazy usury.
01
Interest rates 1825% annualized
The protagonist of the manga is named Ugly Island, and Dark Gold is his profession.
To put it bluntly, he was a loan shark.
Usury is found in almost every country, and has been hit to varying degrees but has always been prohibited, and for Japan, usury is a major tumor that is difficult to cure.
The biggest feature of Japanese usury is ultra-high interest short-term borrowing.
In Japan, most borrow a period of 10 days. Usually 10,000-50,000 yen (660-3300 yuan) amount, the most common interest rate is divided into:
Toichi (10 ten 1 income interest), annual interest rate 365%,
Tosan (10 ten 3 years interest), annual interest rate 1095%
Togo (10 ten 5 interest), annual interest rate 1825%
The maximum annualized interest rate of loans under Japanese law must not be higher than 20%, which shows that the interest rate of usury is staggeringly high.
Leaflets distributed by usury
Speaking of loan shark practitioners, many Chinese the traditional impression of the image is a large gold chain small watch, three small barbecues a day, a tiger after the front pattern dragon, walking and swaying and whirring.
The image of Japanese loan shark practitioners is not like this.
Although Ugly Island always had a smirking look, he demanded that his men be polite to those who came to borrow money. It is simply to bring the essence of Japan's service industry to the extreme.
The whole lending process is full of cordial and friendly atmosphere, and the lending procedure is very simple, just leave the user's identity certificate, and then ask for home address, work address, telephone and other information.
But there is often another side hidden behind this politeness, sometimes just to increase the trust of users, so that users can relax their vigilance.
In fact, in the most prosperous period of Consumer Finance in Japan, there are attentive men and women who issue portable paper towels everywhere in the streets, and many people who do not know the truth will be surprised that the Japanese are really thoughtful, but after getting the tissues, they will find that most of the advertisements published on it are such usury businesses.
In order to find a more accurate target customer, the usury has set its sights on gambling venues such as horse racing and marble rooms, as well as advertisements and periodicals and magazines. There are a lot of people out there who are stuck in the gambling vortex and can't help themselves.
In the first act of the manga, the marbles room has not yet opened, and there are housewives who come to ugly island company early.
Each person only borrowed 30,000 yen (1987 yuan) from Ugly Island, which seems to be not much money, but this group of housewives are heavy marbles room addicts, and they are uncomfortable without playing for a day, and if they have no money, they can only find loan sharks like Ugly Island to borrow, always thinking that they will turn over by winning money.
As I said in the previous article, the winning rate of the marble room is under control, and the average layman cannot win at all, and this group of housewives will only fall deeper and deeper.
Since Ugly Island is a usury loan, the interest rate is even more exaggerated and frightening, and each housewife only borrows 30,000 yen, but the IOU is marked with 50,000 yen.
Because 15,000 yen of interest and 5,000 yen of handling fee have been deducted.
If the housewife who borrowed money did not win 50,000 yen today, then tomorrow they will have to pay another 15,000 yen of interest, and if they do not repay the money for 2 consecutive days, the 30,000 principal lent by Ugly Island has been recovered, and the 50,000 principal on the IOU has not been cleared at all.
It is this infinite snowball interest rate method that makes many housewives eventually owe millions of usurious loans, they do not go to work and have no financial resources, naturally they have no ability to repay, and their husbands will pay off the arrears. Therefore, there are not a few people who go to the tragedy of family destruction and death.
In the eyes of loan sharks such as Ugly Island, housewives are the most precious guests.
02
Sell yourself to pay off your debts, and when you die, you will be in debt
Some people will ask, since you know that these housewives are not able to repay, are you afraid that they will not pay back?
Since ancient times, it has been closely related to the violent collection industry. The same is true in Japan, since you dare to lend money to you, there is naturally a way to get the money back.
In the first act of the manga, Miss Kayama, a housewife who borrowed 30,000 yen in the morning, arrives at ugly island company in the evening and wants to borrow another 10,000 yen to go to the marbles room tomorrow, but ugly island does not give her any chance and threatens to go to his husband for money.
She is fighting with her husband over the issue of divorce compensation, and naturally does not want her husband to know about this ugly matter, afraid that it will be unfavorable to the judgment.
In order to repay the loan, Miss Gasan had to sell herself to repay the money.
It is said that the younger and more beautiful women are, the easier it is to get a loan.
In fact, in real life, there are not a few people who owe huge debts and are forced to devote themselves to the customs industry.
Young women still have a way to sell themselves, and older women may only have a dead end.
Usury – illegal high interest rates & violent expropriations
In 2003, in The city of Yao, Osaka, Japan, a 69-year-old woman committed suicide by crashing into a car with her 61-year-old husband and her 81-year-old brother because she was unable to pay her high debts.
The reason why the old man embarked on the road of no return is because her husband has a disability in his feet, and he usually works as a cleaner, with almost no income, and the old woman can only live on odd jobs, and her life is overstretched.
Because she had filed for personal bankruptcy in the early years, the old woman in the formal financial institution could no longer borrow a loan.
In order to pay for the rent and her husband's treatment, she could only choose a more relaxed informal lending institution, so under the rhetoric of usury, she borrowed 30,000 yen (1980 yuan) from a loan shark company, and only 15,000 yen (990 yuan) actually arrived in the account, which was a high beheading interest.
The old woman also naively thought that she could repay the loan in two days, and she happily told her friend that if the short-term loan was repaid immediately, the interest rate was only 2,000 yen.
Who knew that the usury told her that she would have to pay 15,000 yen in interest every week and asked for a total of 153,000 yen (10,124 yuan) to be sent to the designated account.
From 15,000 to 153,000, the old woman's loan snowballed.
In the eyes of the police, usury is not a major case
The police told her that the interest rate of the usury loan has exceeded the scope of the law, but because of the principle of civil non-intervention of the Japanese police, it is believed that borrowing usury is the fault of the borrower itself, and the result is that the police have not taken timely action against the loan shark operator.
The loan shark practitioner who did not receive the payment jumped off the wall and intensified, constantly urging the old woman to pay back the money and threatening to kill her. At night, unidentified men often knocked on the door violently, not only harassing the old woman, but also harassing the 81-year-old brother who was the guarantor, his neighbors and the old woman's place where she worked odd jobs.
Under constant coercion, the old woman's spiritual defense line completely collapsed, and after leaving a suicide note accusing usury, she and her husband and brother searched for short-sightedness.
XXX please contact us, we come to visit every day
The violent collection methods of Japanese loan sharks can be described as various and extreme.
In addition to the most common day and night telephone harassment, door-to-door to the unit to make trouble, the most poisonous one is to use the name of the borrower to order a variety of takeaways, pizza, door-to-door customs, ambulances, the most cruel is to directly order the funeral industry door-to-door service...
According to statistics, 35% of the number of suicides in Japan every year is plagued by multiple debt problems, and after being harassed by violent collection, they have no choice but to embark on the road of suicide.
03
Japan, once a paradise for usurers
Personal consumption is an important force driving economic growth.
The Japanese government has given it a heavy responsibility.
According to relevant data, in the 1990s, Japan's personal consumption as a share of GDP had exceeded 52%, and then oscillated upwards, reaching 57.8% by 2005.
Therefore, Japan has also tolerated the development of these loan sharks to some extent.
In 1983, Japan enacted the Law on the Regulation of the Loan Industry.
A lot of consumer finance companies popped up.
These Japanese consumer finance companies have the characteristics of short review time and borrowing and repayment.
In particular, in the 1990s, Japan's bubble economy burst, and many people were blacklisted by regular banks because of the collapse of housing prices and stock markets.
To borrow money, you often have to find these consumer finance companies.
Of course, many of them are just under the guise of consumer finance companies, which are actually usury.
At the height of Japan's lending industry, consumer finance companies made windfalls.
In 1999, Takei Yasuo, the founder of Takefuji, Japan's largest consumer finance company, was the richest man in Japan, ranking first in Japan with a value of $7.8 billion.
But everything has advantages and disadvantages, while stimulating consumption, consumer finance has also brought about three most serious problems, also known as the "three evils of gold consumption": long lending, high interest rates, and violent collection.
In 2005, Japan had 2.3 million borrowers with more than five debts, and 184,000 insolvent individuals.
Although the Japanese government has promulgated the Interest Rate Restriction Law and the Capital Contribution Law, there is a clear gray space between the two laws to be used.
The Interest Rate Restriction Act clearly stipulates and limits the borrowing interest rate, which cannot exceed 20%, but the other law, the Capital Contribution Law, stipulates that as long as the borrower agrees, the annual interest rate does not exceed 29.2%.
The gray area of 20%-29.2% is the "back garden" of financial companies that seek high profits. Moreover, this part of the proceeds is completely within the scope of the law.
As for those pure usury loans that are not registered with the Japan Financial Services Agency at all, and even the address and telephone information are false, and the annualized interest rate is thousands of things.
For the lawbreakers and criminals with real hammers, the crackdown in Japanese law is also very low.
Marx once confessed in Capital that with 100% profit, it dares to trample on all human laws, and 300% profit, it dares to commit any crime, even at the risk of hanging its head.
Obviously, in Japan, usury is very lucrative, comparable to drug trafficking, but the punishment is pitifully low.
Osaka forced the death of a family of three involved in coercion and intimidation, and the punishment was generally too low
For example, a loan shark company in Osaka that forced a family of three to die, those involved in the coercion and intimidation were sentenced to up to 4 years in prison and fined 1 million yen.
The loan shark company has issued loans to 58,000 people, with a total income of as much as 5 billion yen, which is really not enough to scratch the itch.
Therefore, many people say that Japan is a paradise for loan sharks.
04
Borrow money for a while
Usury can also develop in Japan also has a deep social psychological soil.
Japanese people prefer to borrow money from financial institutions rather than from relatives and friends. Pay rent, water and electricity, children and the elderly see a doctor and take medicine, and in China, they can still rely on brothers, sisters and friends to help.
Japanese people have long developed a character of not adding trouble, so that their friends and family members rarely have loan relationships, and they will not open their mouths to relatives and friends unless they have to.
When Japanese college students come to China for exchanges, they find that Chinese college students often borrow money from each other, and they do not write IOUs at all, let alone charge interest, which is a very incredible situation in the eyes of Japanese students.
If they borrow money from friends, they are likely to be unable to mix in the circle of friends, so when they are in a hurry to use money, they are more willing to seek help from private financial institutions.
Another reason is on the supply side.
After the bubble economy, Japan's financial system once lost too much blood, and the plummeting land price made the bad debts of the previous banks pile up. Japanese economist Takaaki Mitsuhashi once said that because of the bursting of the bubble economy, the entire loss of bad debts was as much as 200 trillion yen (13.3 trillion yuan).
To deal with these bad debts, the bank needs to sacrifice its own capital, if the funds are not enough to deal with these bad debts, it can only rely on the government to inject capital, but in that case, the bank's leadership will be held accountable, so the bank leaders do not want to accept the government's injection, resulting in a delay in the treatment of bad debts.
At the same time, formal lending institutions such as banks have become very low in risk appetite, in short, they are not willing to lend money to ordinary individuals, let alone those who have swiped their credit cards and entered the blacklist.
Disposition of non-performing creditor's rights in Japan
And loan shark companies, relying on the relationship between the two sides of the black road, can often get loans with extremely low interest rates from banks, and then lend them to ordinary people who are in urgent need of money at an annualized interest rate of several hundred or thousands.
05
Money can be borrowed from you, but you'll go to hell
In the face of the surging social problems caused by usury, Japan formally implemented the Amendment to the Loan and Gold Industry Law in 2010 to improve the market access system and regulate usury.
The grey area between 20-29.2 per cent we mentioned was abolished, and more than 20 per cent was criminally liable by the offender and the excess interest portion needed to be returned.
At the same time, in order to avoid borrowers borrowing multiple times, the law stipulates that the balance of borrowers' loans should not exceed 1/3 of the annual income, such as full-time housewives, students who are still in school and other non-income groups, and the scale of loans is greatly limited.
For example, Japan's consumer finance industry suffered a blow, with the size of the consumer financial market reaching 1.2 billion yen in 2011, which was almost 40% smaller than in 2000 before the amendment of the Lending and Gold Act, and the supply quota of consumer finance companies was also reduced to 2.4 trillion yen in 2010, about 1/4 of the original size.
But usury is still not banned in Japan.
Last year, it was even revealed that five young cadres in their 20s had left the Japanese Coast Guard to go into the loan shark business.
In fact, Japanese Coast Guard employees have a tradition of using their status to take low-interest loans and partner with institutions to lend usury.
But usury, for individuals, is the so-called, borrowing money for a while, repayment regrets the intestines.
The ugly island mentioned at the beginning of the article also said:
Money can be borrowed from you, but you'll go to hell.
Any tempting fruit, behind it is marked with a price.
Positive solution, a knowledgeable, in-depth, sincere financial situation of the times. Here, penetrate the fog of information, here, discover the real China. The director is a lover of various reports, collecting thousands of reports from various industries, paying attention to the key word "industry" in the reply of the Bureau, and obtaining the latest reports from multiple industries.