ABSTRACT
Japan emerged as one of the global economic superpowers in the twentieth century. It is a country of 125 million persons speaking a distinctive language, Japanese, with a history of at least three millennia. It has an illusive property for Europeans: it is an island at the Far East of Asia, which had an isolationist policy during the time when Europe was colonizing much of the world over the past four centuries. Since the Meiji restoration in the nineteenth century, the doors of Japan have been opened to all countries, and their ideas have been undergoing rapid change with globalization, which is itself driven by the communication devices which Japanese industry has exported around the world.
