ABSTRACT
There is, perhaps, a danger in looking at documents like the information society reports, of falling for what might be called 'the conspiracy theory of Japan'. This view, currently popular among certain sections of the western media and business worlds,1 tends to attribute to Japan's leaders and people extraordinary cohesion, consensus and far-sightedness, and to interpret any officially inspired attempts at futurology as evidence of complex Japanese strategies for world economic domination.
