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IJW's avatar
Oct 19Edited

"Humphrey: This is a British Democracy Bernard!

Bernard: How do you mean?

Humphrey: British democracy recognizes that you need a system to protect the important things of life and keep them out of the hands of barbarians! Things like the opera, radio 3, the country side, the law, the universities .... both of them. And we are that system! We run a civilized aristocratic government machine tempered by occasional general elections. Since 1832 we have been gradually excluding the voter from government. NOW we got them to a point where they vote every 5 years for which bunch of buffoons that will try to interfere with OUR policies, and you are happy to see all of that thrown away??

Bernard: Nooo nooo I..."

I mean it is not hard to imagine that Japanese are entertained by shows about bureaucrats when Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister are probably one of my favorite comedy shows.

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John Smithson's avatar

After college and law school in the late 1980s I moved to Japan and stayed for almost a decade. I spoke and read Japanese, studied at Tokyo University, and worked at Japanese and American law firms in Tokyo. My feeling is a little different than your review suggests.

For one thing, MITI doesn't exist anymore. It has become METI and is a shadow of its former self. MITI steadily lost power as the dollar-yen exchange rate started to shift after the Smithsonian Agreement in 1971 (again, that year!). It took a while for things to change much, but the cumulative effect has been dramatic. The government largely lost control of the economy.

You can see it in the books being written. Back in the 1980s books lauded Japan's successes:

-- "Japan as Number One: Lessons for America", by Ezra Vogel.

-- "Trading Places: How We Are Giving Our Future to Japan & How to Reclaim It", by Clyde Prestowitz.

-- "MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975", by Chalmers Johnson.

-- “The Japan That Can Say No: Why Japan Will Be First Among Equals”, by Ishihara Shintaro and (Sony founder) Morita Akio.

All interesting, well-written books (except for maybe the last). But all turned out to be pretty worthless in their prognostications and nostrums. We don't see books like that anymore.

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