NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/environm/13975

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-29 | 1.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uniwa!DIALix!tillage!gil
From: [e-mail] (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 12:16:33 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents
Lines: 30


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

 > At the end of World War II, Japan lost all its Asian possessions,
 > and subsequently pursued a policy of industrial and commercial
 > excellence, which turned out to be successful.  The policy included
 > a continued political and military dependence on the U.S.  It will
 > take some fancy footwork to regard this as just a continuation of
 > the previous imperial plan.

You are yet ignoring the traditional social structure of Japan, John,
which of course does not reveal *a plan*, but plans within plans
within social norms and cultural dynamics carried on for generation
after generation, which brings so many workers to give such loyalty
to their company over the whole of their lives which simply cannot be
matched by Americans. The issue here is concerned with how Japanese
excellence manages to so consistently undercut US excellence, *not*
with how Japan manages a greater economic growth than Zimbabwe.

 > Perhaps the Japanese plan consists of advancing the interests of the
 > country using whatever means seems appropriate at the time.  If that's
 > it, then every country has the same plan.

I should hope that by now every country should have much the same
plan in order to survive at all, but the issue remains on the extent
to which that plan has infiltrated the masses and tuned the engine to
run for centuries, not merely the next 5 or 10 years.

Gil