ABSTRACT
If the year 1992 was pronounced annus horribilis by the Queen of England, there was no doubt, even before it ended, that 1995 in Japan was likewise a saiyaku no toshi, an equally awful year, the worst in memory for most people. Economic and political problems had been expected: recession, political instability, corruption, perhaps even an other year of unseasonable weather and emergency rice imports. Even before the year began, there had been a sense of anxiety at the prospect of the commemorations that would mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war. But the shocks that were to break over the coming months-earthquake, urban terrorism, and wildly fluctuating currency markets-were unexpected and devastating, loosening or unraveling some strands central to the postwar national identity and sense of pur pose, and opening a feeling of uncertainty about the future that had been unknown through the long postwar decades. The agenda for the fifty postwar years-recovery, growth, and attainment of the status of an advanced country-had been clear and accomplished in full mea sure, but there was no consensus on how to formulate the agenda for the fifty that were to come, and there was a growing suspicion that the priorities of the past fifty might have been fundamentally ill chosen.
