ABSTRACT
As a postindustrial power, Japan has grown economically closer to the advanced industrial democracies of the West than to the newly industrializing countries. Perhaps no country has offered the fascinating variety of international experience that Japan has enjoyed and suffered in modern times. Rapid, often urgent, shifts in international status have left deep impressions on Japanese images of the outer world and outsiders' images of Japan. Certainly for Japan, the Tokyo summit was an historic turning point marking a shift from one set of problems—those of development and modernization—to another set of problems—those of the postindustrial era. The Japanese might well be forgiven for confusion over the various US positions with regard to Japan's economic performance. In the rapid-growth era of the 1960s, Washington complained to Tokyo about excessive growth rates and aggressive export drives. Tokyo pointed to the comparatively poor education record in the United States and singled out inadequate worker training.
