ABSTRACT
Densely populated, underdeveloped countries with ambitions to join the ranks of the highly industrialized are nowadays strongly inclined to think of Japan as a model—as the classical example of how the task can be, and should be, accomplished. No doubt useful lessons can be learnt from Japanese experience—and not only by underdeveloped countries. But I am sceptical about whether others, by treading Japan's path or by using the devices that she found effective, can attain her success. Hers, I believe, is a special case. The more I hear of the conditions and problems of underdeveloped countries today, the firmer is my conviction of this truth. It is not merely that world economic conditions at the time when Japan set out on her modern career were very different from those of the present (and that fact itself has a close bearing on the course of development), but also that the institutional factors that contributed to Japan's success (and these factors are of overwhelming importance in this context) cannot be duplicated by countries with a different historical experience. To echo Schumpeter's comment on trade cycles, every case of economic development is a ‘historic individual’ and had better be treated as such. This does not mean, as I have already said, that useful lessons may not be learnt from Japan; but I fear that many of them are such as to awaken only grudging response in the modern mind.
