ABSTRACT
In foreign affairs, it was coincidental with the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, which for over four decades had determined so much of the Japanese view of the world and their place in it. But equally significant for many Japanese was the psychological impact of the death of the Showa emperor himself; for them it meant the end of what has been called "the long postwar". Economically, its end coincided with a serious crisis in Japan's financial institutions that rocked the nation's confidence in its economic success at a time when trade friction with the United States was reaching new highs. Ironically, Japan reached the modernity just as the "postmodern" began. In January 1991 a diplomatic agreement between Japan and South Korea was supposedly to encourage other school districts to permit Korean residents to take the certification tests.
