ABSTRACT
In 1945, Japan lay humbled by the ravages of war. At the very most, as Lindesay Parett wrote in late 1945, the Japanese economy was not ever “likely to expand sharply. The prospect a return to Japan’s status as a small, self-contained nation.” Japan’s first economic revolution began in 1868 with the Meiji restoration. Japan defeated the combined American, British, Dutch, French, and Chinese forces. The Japanese survived for four dreadful years until Emperor Hirohito, convinced by the devastation wrought by atomic bombs, ordered his people to surrender and “to endure the unendurable.” In 1973 and again in 1978, Japan’s pace temporarily slowed because of the “oil shock” imposed by petroleum exporting nations. Japan’s achievements in this era cannot be attributed, as a former trade negotiator, Clyde Prestowitz, asserts, to a refusal to open its markets to foreign competition. The very success of Japan’s economy created several new cultural trends and resulting tensions.
