Japan
has changed dramatically in the 1980s. Japanese science
and technology have reached a level of development that
many consider above that of Europe and roughly at par
with of the United States. Economically, Japan has more
or less completed the catch-up process with the
industrial West and is coming under pressure from the
newly industrialized economies of East Asia. In fact
Ishii Takemochi in his "Japanese Dream" thesis notes
that the smooth growth curve of the economy has been
seriously dented neither by the two oil crises of the
1970s nor by the explosive climb of the yen since the
mid-1980s. Ishii predicts that
Japan will become the world’s technological leader
in the twenty-first century. At that point, he suggests,
Japanese
technology will be put to work
creating
lifestyles that have powerful
appeal to the people in other countries, thus
offering a "Japanese dream" to supplant the "American
dream" that has dominated this century.
Japan’s
manufacturing process is the envy of its competitors
worldwide. Apart from that, the speed with which
emerging technologies get incorporated into new
products, flexible manufacturing techniques, and the
rapidity with which products evolve to meet market needs
– all indicate a highly adaptable, pragmatic society
that can respond swiftly to challenge.
Others
look to the future with less optimism. Representative of
this camp is Minamoto Ryôen, who has studied the
development of
Japanese national character in the modern period and
the years leading up to it. Calling attention to the
indigenous tradition of practical science that assisted
Japan’s rapid technological progress, Minamoto asserts
that
Japanese civilization entered an overripe phase as
far back as the high-paced economic growth years of the
1960s.
Thinking
on the same lines was Yukio Mishima, the nationalist
writer who committed ritual
suicide in 1970. He wrote; "Japan will disappear; it
will become inorganic, empty, neutral-tinted; it will be
wealthy and astute; it will remain only as a giant
economic power in a corner of the Far East." Many
thinkers seem to find a prophetic ring to these words. |
