Japan as mirror: Neoliberalism's promise and costs

Japan's postwar emergence as the world's second largest economy and America's role in shaping it have made it a compelling reflecting glass for American capitalism. And yet American commentators have varied widely with respect to what they see when gazing into this mirror. At the height of Japan's economic prominence, many saw simply a "better" version of the United States, an advanced capitalist system rooted in the free market, with admirable systems of education, manufacturing, and management. But later, in the wake of the bursting of the economic bubble in the early 1990s, U.S. economists emphasized Japan's differences, notably the state's role in managing business and finance, dismissing Japan as fruitful terrain for critical self-examination in the West.