National Tide 1980.

It has to be said that many important turning points in life often have signs.

But sadly, most people involved often turn a blind eye to it and are unaware of it.

On March 1988, 3, Japan's first all-weather rooftop stadium, "Tokyo DOME", commonly known as Tokyo Dome, was completed and officially put into use next to the Motokorakuen Stadium.

With 225 white double-layer curtains inside the stadium, this stadium has become a new attraction in Tokyo.

In April 1988, coin-operated shower boxes began to appear in major bathhouses in Tokyo. In the minds of the Japanese who love bathing, this has become a symbol of modern and convenient life.

In the same month, graduation season arrives in Japan.

Due to the unusually good economy, this year's graduates are finding jobs in a very different way than in the past.

The couriers started delivering packages to every household in the apartment long before graduation season.

The box is full of books that look like phone books, loaded with company information, industry introductions and job search guides, all of which are distributed free of charge to recent graduates by companies in need of jobs.

Many large companies also took the initiative to go deep into famous universities to actively invite outstanding students to join, and the competition for talent quickly escalated into a war.

Large companies with strong financial resources began to host their favorite talents in clubs, entertaining them with caviar and champagne.

On May 1988, 5, a Japanese television station completed its first live satellite broadcast from the top of Mount Everest, which made the Japanese believe that their satellite technology had caught up with the United States and the Soviet Union and become the third most powerful country in the world.

In short, everything that is happening in Japan right now has made the Japanese, who are immersed in the asset bubble, more confident and ambitious, and they firmly believe that Japan's national destiny will last forever.

In particular, Japan's economic data from the previous year was released. According to the data from 1987, Japan's per capita GDP reached US$21141, while the United States' per capita GDP was US$20000.

This means that in 1987, Japan's per capita GDP exceeded that of the United States, marking that the Japanese economy had reached a new peak at the time.

This shocking data made the entire Japanese nation go crazy.

Not only did most Japanese begin to believe that "Japan as Number One" by Ezra Vogel was indeed visionary, but also that the United States really was nothing.

It also makes all citizens more confident that Japan's economy is on the rise and that Japan's stock and real estate markets will continue to soar.

However, not many people noticed that Japan's Emperor Hirohito's health was frequently warning, and he had publicly told the entire nation many times that he was unwell.

The Japanese, immersed in their bubble of happiness, would never have imagined that Japan, now at the height of its prosperity, would actually use the life span of Emperor Showa as a dividing line.

Soon, with the end of the Showa era, the economy would take a sharp turn for the worse and never recover, entering a long bear market.

Moreover, they will face at least several decades of miserable days in the future, in which they will have to slowly pay off their debts.

Whatever you take today must be returned tomorrow without a penny missing.

This is perhaps what is meant by “I cannot see the true face of Mount Lu because I am already in it.”

Now in the whole of Japan, there is only one person like Ning Weimin who can know the future in advance. He can clearly see how stupid the Japanese are and their bleak future.

However, he would not interfere in this matter, but would rather watch it happen.

Because in his heart, this is a kind of karma.

Japan's prosperity came from the national disasters it repeatedly caused to China, and it even took advantage of the Chinese people's blood.

As the saying goes, fortunes change, and it will be my turn next year.

When China rises, countries like Japan where villains have succeeded should pay the corresponding price. This is the law of nature.

So on days like this, he not only tries his best to take time to accompany his wife, do prenatal checkups, and study how to raise children scientifically.

It means borrowing money desperately, increasing leverage to speculate in stocks, and increasing the scale of the Japanese bubble for the sake of the country and the people.

They even used the finally available time to secretly look at Japan's high-quality assets and quietly began to take advantage of the situation.

In April, MAGAZINE HOUSE Publishing Group publicly announced that its magazine "Ordinary PANCH" would soon cease publication.

Ning Weimin suddenly had an idea and decided to take over this famous popular publication.

It has to be said that MAGAZINE HOUSE Publishing Group is not an ordinary publishing company.

If there is one company that you cannot avoid when talking about Japanese magazines, it has to be this company.

The rise of this company not only carries a microcosm of the dramatic changes in Japan's post-war popular culture.

Moreover, the publishing group's magazine product line covers almost every aspect of Japanese life, nurturing generations of Japanese youth with its unique aesthetics and values.

It can be said that it was the most representative magazine publisher of Japanese trends during the bubble economy period in the 80s, or the most famous magazine publisher that led fashion trends.

Even after the bubble burst in the 1990s, magazine circulation gradually declined and many magazines under this publishing house ceased publication, but this still did not affect its position in the Japanese magazine industry.

Even after entering the Internet age, paper publications are still facing an unfavorable environment.

Its legendary Japanese lifestyle magazines such as POPEYE, anan, Casa BRUTUS and Ginza are still very popular and have always maintained a certain level of sales. There are almost no rivals in the Japanese magazine field that can match it.

Of course, having said that, Ning Weimin is not omniscient and omnipotent.

In his previous life, his understanding of Japan was not enough to pay attention to Japanese popular magazines and understand related industries in Japan.

It can be said that he had no knowledge of the MAGAZINE HOUSE Publishing Group before, and knew nothing about its future business conditions. These were not his focus at all.

He just started collecting information and investigating the background of this publishing group because he had developed a certain interest in taking over this publication.

But even so, it doesn't matter. It still won't affect his evaluation of this magazine and this magazine that is about to be discontinued.

On the contrary, some of the things he investigated and some basic information he learned aroused his desire to get his hands on this discontinued magazine.

For no other reason than that he found that the magazine publisher's industry status and rise in Japan were so impressive that it was completely leading the trend in Asia.

At the same time, because he had never eaten pork, he had seen pigs run, so he had a general understanding of the model of future popular magazines in China.

At least he had read a few copies of Rayli, Men's Wear, and Harper's Bazaar. Therefore, when he randomly picked up some issues of Pingfan PANCH and flipped through them, he felt like he had accidentally discovered the source of popular domestic magazines and found a legendary treasure.

He couldn't help but sigh from the bottom of his heart that this magazine, which was about to be discontinued, really suited his needs.

According to what Ning Weimin has learned, this time-honored publishing group was founded after Japan's defeat in 1945.

It was originally called "Fanren Society" and its first magazine was called "Pingfan".

The name comes from the magazine of the same name under "Heibonsha" founded by Japanese right-wing politician Yasaburo Shimonaka. The publishing license of this magazine was inherited from the "Army Pictorial" magazine.

Although, both Heibonsha of Yasaburo Shimonaka and Army Pictorial were ideological products advocating aggressive wars during World War II.

However, on the collapsing war machine, "Heibonsha" blossomed the most brilliant flower of Japan's post-war consumerist thought.

Tokyo in 1945 was a ruin. Japanese young people struggled day and night to make ends meet. The Japanese people's dreams of life and aspirations for the future were out of reach.

Looking at the young people in Tokyo who were working hard for a living, "showing the happy side of life to all the young Japanese people who are working hard to survive" became the lifelong pursuit of the two founders, Iwahori Kinosuke and Shimizu Tatsuo.

This concept has been carried through by them to this day.

And it must be admitted that the two founders of "Fanren Society" are not simple people.

When Iwahori Kisuke was studying journalism at Meiji University, he wanted to do writing work.

Tatsuo Shimizu is known as the "God of Magazines" by the outside world.

He is the only person who has been able to start three different magazines and have them sell over a million copies simultaneously.

They all noticed that after World War II, when Japanese society was extremely short of materials, cultural trends transitioned from the "high culture" era at the time of defeat to the "popular culture" era.

Therefore, the "Ordinary" they founded not only has a strong tendency towards entertainment consumerism and urban sophistication, but also fully takes into account the needs of the general public.

In 1952, they used "7s" to summarize the positioning goals of "Ordinary" magazine:

screen (movie) stage (stage) song (pop music) sex (sex) sport (sports) style (dress) story (novel)

This is the original template for almost all popular fashion magazines, and it is also the secret to the success of "Ordinary" magazine.

The magazine "Hyouhei" was the first to establish this point, and it achieved unprecedented and comprehensive penetration into Japanese popular culture during a period of drastic social transformation.

Due to the popularity of television, movie and music stars had unprecedented exposure and fan base, and Japan gave birth to a new generation of TV stars at that time, such as Hibari Misora ​​and Kinnosuke Nakamura.

"Pingfan" seized this opportunity and invested heavily in reporting all the gossip about popular stars on and off the stage, and became the most influential entertainment magazine in Japan in the 1950s.

In order to follow the popular Toei star Nakamura Kinnosuke, "Honkai" once sent an editor from Tokyo to Kyoto to shoot and collect materials. The editor followed Nakamura Kinnosuke around the streets of Kyoto every day. This report cost 100 million yen.

In order to take photos of artists with Mount Fuji as the theme, three editors stayed in a high-end hotel in Mount Fuji for several days, spending 250 million yen.

Although the styles of the Japanese publishing industry at that time, such as Iwanami Shoten, Chuokoron, Shinchosha, Bungeishunju, Kodansha, and Shogakukan, were mainly based on ideological enlightenment or literary criticism.

The publishing industry has a low opinion of publishing houses like "Fanrenshe" that rely on idol gossip and photos to make up half of their market share, and believes that they are really "annoying."

Therefore, the "Ordinary" series of magazines are considered by the traditional industry to be street reading materials with vulgar content.

But the founder, Tatsuo Shimizu, remained steadfast in his beliefs and ignored these prejudices.

He believes that the current popular thoughts and lifestyles are the driving force behind the progress of Japanese society, and that the popular culture of singing and dancing, feasting and revelry can represent modern Japanese society. The prejudice against "Ordinary" is cultural discrimination by Japanese intellectuals.

The facts were just as he expected. No objections could stop the people's needs or hinder the success of fashion magazines.

By the 1960s, Fanren Publishing House was renamed Pingfan Publishing and had become a super-large publishing company with three books selling millions of copies.

For example, the magazine "Plain PANCH", which targets a younger group and mainly consists of college students, was launched during this period.

The magazine benefited from the demographics of the time, launching just as Japan's first wave of postwar baby boomers entered university.

Compared to the frugal 20-somethings of the early postwar period, this wave of baby boomers wanted to participate in Japan's emerging consumer society and could afford it.

As a result, the first issue became an instant hit, selling 62 copies.

In less than two years, the circulation exceeded one million copies.

Around 1973, Pingfan Publishing was officially renamed MAGAZINE HOUSE Publishing Group.

At this time, the circulation of its earliest magazine, "Pingyou", reached a peak of 151 million copies per issue, making it the undisputed top entertainment magazine in Japan throughout the 50s to 70s.

Moreover, as a trend indicator in Japan at the time, many of the magazines under the MAGAZINE HOUSE Publishing Group had imitation products from its competitors.

For example, the leading magazine "Pingyou" imitated Shueisha's "Mingyou", and the later "Pingyou PANCH" imitated Shueisha's "Weekly Press", "anan" imitated Shueisha's "non-no", and "POPEYE" imitated Kodansha's "HotDog-PRESS"...

It can be said that the magazines of MAGAZINE HOUSE Publishing Group are the leaders of Japanese fashion magazines, and even the objects of imitation by Asian fashion magazines. Almost every magazine has corresponding imitators.

As sales increased, the editor of "Ordinary" became an enviable profession.

Going abroad to collect materials, with a large budget, attending media screenings, interviewing celebrities, staying in the best hotels, and going to the most high-end restaurants, all of this was exactly the life that young Japanese people yearned for during that period of economic takeoff.

Even during the bubble period of the 1980s, MAGAZINE HOUSE Publishing Group continued to maintain this success and continued to lead the fashion trends in the industry.

Therefore, the cessation of publication of "Ordinary PANCH" is definitely not because the magazine can no longer be run.

Although sales have been declining in recent years and the magazine's circulation has fallen below 500,000, the magazine is still far from making a loss.

The main reason for the suspension of publication is that the MAGAZINE HOUSE Publishing Group believes that there are many overlaps in its magazine products, and the distribution performance of "Plain PANCH" has fallen behind the top ten of its magazine products within the group.

For the group, this is just a piece of chicken ribs, tasteless to eat and a pity to throw away.

It would be better to simply cease publication, integrate high-quality resources, and then focus on producing better magazine products.

This provided Ning Weimin with a rare opportunity for mergers and acquisitions. (End of this chapter)