How Japan Does It

• Share

(10 of 10)

than 5.5%. Though Japan has run a trade deficit for the past two years, largely because of oil imports, the nation's balance of payments deficit has been improving. As a result, the yen will no doubt continue to remain one of the world's strongest currencies.

As a postwar business dynamo, Japan shows that a large and complex society can function smoothly in a tumultuous world environment if people are willing to make some compromises in order to obtain larger objectives. Though the way Japan manages its affairs is, in many respects, the unique outgrowth of the country's historical experience, certain of its lessons can be applied in industrial economies everywhere, and particularly in the U.S.

Americans are reared with a commitment to individual liberty and freedom. But the U.S. was forged in a frontier spirit of cooperation and collective enterprise that was as simple and forthright as a barn-raising. Western thinkers from John Locke to Oliver Wendell Holmes believe that individuality at some point has to give ground to group needs. It has taken a successful country on the rim of Asia to remind the U.S. that teamwork, however it is organized, is still the prerequisite for a prosperous society. —By Christopher Byron. Reported by S. Chang and Edwin M. Reingold/Tokyo