Japan Restored
Описание книги
How Japan Can Reinvent Itself and Why This Is Important for America and the World. In 1979, the book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America by Harvard University professor Ezra Vogel caused a sensation in the United States by pointing out that Japan was surpassing America as world economic leader; the book remains to this day the all-time bestseller in Japan of non-fiction by a Western author. The book was timely: Japan's subsequent «bubble era» of the 1980s saw the country booming. But since the economic bubble burst at the start of the 1990s, Japan has been in decline. Japan Restored by Clyde Prestowitz, taking up Vogel's baton, is written as a vision of Japan in the year 2050 when the country's economic recovery has made it a world leader in every area of human endeavor. Prestowitz looks back to the present year as such a low point for Japan that a special reform commission was set up that helped the country regain its former position as a leader in technology, in business, and geopolitically. Looking at education, innovation, the role of women, corporate organization, energy, infrastructure, domestic government, and international alliances Prestowitz draws up a fascinating and controversial blueprint for the future success of Japan. As the eyes of the world turn towards Japan in the run-up to the 2020 Olympics, Japan Restored is as timely as the 1979 Vogel book that inspired it.
Отрывок из книги
Thirty years ago, the name Clyde Prestowitz stood for the top Japan-basher who was warning the US to get its act together. But the true Prestowitz also had deep respect for Japanese values, was proficient in Japanese, and adopted a Japanese boy as his son. Now, in his latest book, he is advising the Japanese how to get its act together based on his own experience advising the US. It is a worthy read.
—Richard C. Koo, Chief Economist, Nomura Research Institute
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I left the Reagan administration in 1986 and wrote the book Trading Places: How America Is Giving Its Future to Japan, in which I tried to explain the major insight I had gained from my years of working in and negotiating with Japan. It was that Japan wasn’t cheating and the United States wasn’t falling down on the job. Rather, the two sides were simply playing different games. The US was playing baseball while Japan was playing football. Japan wasn’t cheating or playing bad football, and the US was playing good baseball. The difficulty was that the Americans kept acting as if and insisting that both sides were playing baseball. Because they weren’t, and because the Americans (for reasons both of economic orthodoxy and geopolitical convenience) refused to admit that, and because football is a rougher game than baseball, the Americans were taking a beating.
Upon completion of Trading Places, I moved on to writing about other issues such as the creation of the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement, and became more and more detached from Japan. Indeed, the term “Japan passing” came to be used in the 1990s to describe the phenomenon of people passing by Japan on their way to China, Korea, and Southeast Asia, overlooking the Japanese market in favor of greener pastures elsewhere. I became one of the passers.
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