Marzo:
Thanks. Flattery will get you everywhere. It should be noted, though, that pretty much all Westerners who’ve spent a while in Japan say these sorts of things about the press coverage in their native countries. I’m far from the only one to notice.

Julie:
Yes, I’d seen Fallows’s piece, and I actually agree with a lot of it. Sensationalism sells, and it’s much more exciting to cast Japan’s post-war history as some sort of econ Jacqueline Susann novel: dirt poverty at the beginning of the Occupation, followed by Rock-Center-and-van Gogh-buying hubristical excess, followed by punishing collapse. It really is stupid of commentators to imply that Japan is somehow on the verge of going under; its basic resiliency should be pretty well established by this point, two decades after the bubbles burst.

However, what went on the in the ’80s was equally stupid. Westerners in love with corporate Japan for its collectivism and bureaucratic Japan for its control-freak planning were constantly telling us that we sucked, that Japan was going to surpass us, that Japan was going to take us over, that we had everything to learn from Japan and it had nothing to learn from us, and blah blah blah. It is disingenuous in the extreme for them to repackage themselves now as the voices of consistent sobriety and reason, as they seem to want to do.

Mark:
Yes. Just, yes.

Neither can be demonstrated to any degree of reliability. I would, as a matter of personal policy, gainsay either unless presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

A condition which lasts a hundred years is STILL not permanent. It just encompasses more than a human lifetime, and for those whose lifespans fall within that century, it might as well be permanent. But to assume that in all cases is sheer folly.

M

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/10/poor-little-rich-japan/64722/