ABSTRACT
Japan’s rapid rise and dramatic fall are without precedent. In the late 1980s, confident predictions were made that the country was on the verge of becoming the world’s leading economy. Bountiful literature proclaimed its economic and technological prowess, and warned of the imminent demise of American economic leadership. Japanese competition had decimated the US automobile industry, and threatened to do the same in semiconductors, computers and even aerospace. The meteoric rise of Japanese capital and the strengthening of the yen seemed to presage a Japanese take-over of America’s-and the world’s-prime real estate, film studios, vineyards and financial institutions. As a seemingly steroid-fuelled Japan, and East Asia as a whole, rose, so the West appeared to decline. Japan emerged as a visionary leitmotif, on the point of fulfilling its leadership potential in Asia.
