Behind Japan'ssuccess

Defining rules for managingin a pluralist society

Peter F. Drucker

To many business peopleand puhlic officials inthe West, the postwarsuccess of the Japaneseeconomy is hoth an im-pressive and a puzzlingachievement. The successis ohvious and measur-able; the reasons for it,far less so. Seekingexplanations, Westernohservers often fastenwith wide-eyed enthusi-asm on the mysteriousworkings of "Japan, Inc.,"that fabled edifice ofbusiness-government co-operation. To it they as-cribe a continuous ap-plication of single-minded energy; from itthey expect a continualflow of industrialmiracles. In this article,Peter Drucker, longrecognized as an author-ity on Japanese business,takes pointed issue withthis familiar myth. Nosuch thing exists, heargues, at least not inthe form commonly at-tributed to it. The accom-plishments of Japaneseindustry are the resultnot of some all-powerfulstructure hut of Japan'shaving defined moreahly than any other in-dustrial nation some of

the essential rules formanaging complex or-ganizations in the mod-em world.

Mr. Drucker is professoremeritus of managementat the Graduate BusinessSchool of New York Uni-versity, Clarke Professorof Social Science andManagement at theClaremont GraduateSchool, and professoriallecturer in oriental artat Pomona Gollege. Heis the author of numer-ous books and essays,including some 20 ar-ticles for HBR, and washimself the subject ofan HBR article-"WhyRead Peter Drucker?"(January-Fehruary 1980).His widely noted essay"What We Gan Learnfrom Japanese Manage-ment," one of the firstdiscussions of the topicto be published in theWest, appeared in theMarch-April 1971 issueof HBR.

///ustfdtions byKaren Watson.

"I am more afraid of the Japanese than I am of theRussians," a young lawyer said to me recently. "Tobe sure, the Russians are out to conquer the world.But their unity is imposed from the top and is un-likely to survive a challenge. The Japanese too areout to conquer us, but their unity comes from with-in. They act as one superconglomerate"—a con-glomerate Westerners often call "Japan, Inc."

To the Japanese, however, Japan, Inc. is a joke,and not a very funny one. They see only cracks andnot, as the foreigner does, a monolith. What theyexperience in their daily lives are tensions, pressures,conflicts, and not unity. They see intense, if notcutthroat, competition both among the major banksand among the major industrial groups. And theJapanese are themselves involved every day in thebitter factional infighting that characterizes theirinstitutions: the unremitting guerilla warfare thateach ministry wages against all other ministries andthe factional bickering that animates the politicalparties, the Cahinet, the universities, and individualbusinesses.

Perhaps most important, where the foreigner seesclose cooperation between government and busi-ness, the Japanese often see only government at-tempts to meddle and dictate. "We pull at the samerope," the chief executive officer of one big com-pany remarked, "but we pull in opposite directions."

The Japanese government is not always success-ful in making industries work together in the na-tional interest. Despite 20 years of continual pres-sure, the supposedly all-powerful Ministry of Inter-national Trade and Industry (MITI) has simply notbeen able to get the major computer manufacturersto pool their efforts—something that the govern-ments of Germany, France, and Britain have all ac-complished.

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One foreigner after another extols Japan's harmo-nious industrial relations, but the Japanese publiccurses the frequent wildcat strikes on the govern-ment-owned national railways. Only where the la-bor miions are exceedingly weak—that is, in the pri-vate sector—are labor relations harmonious. AsJapanese labor leaders point out somewhat acidly.Western companies without unions (IBM, for ex-ample) tend to have the same kind of equable laborrelations as do Japanese companies. In the publicsector, where unions are strong (a legacy of the U.S.occupation after World War II], there is no sign ofthis fabled harmony.

Still, the Japanese have achieved the necessaryconsensus to participate effectively in the worldeconomy. Contrary to popular belief in the miracleof Japan, Inc., the competitive success of Japaneseindustry is not the result of some uniformity ofthought and action. It is the result of something farmore interesting—habits of political behavior thatuse the diversity in Japanese national life to produceeffective economic action.

Take competitiveness seriously

One of these habits is to consider thoroughly a pro-posed policy's impact on the productivity of Japa-nese industry, on Japan's competitive strength in theworld market, and on Japan's balance of paymentsand trade. This has become almost second naturefor Japanese policymakers in the ministries, in theDiet, and in business as well as for analysts andcritics in the popular newspapers and universityeconomics departments.

Unlike the Americans, for example, the Japaneseare far too conscious of their dependence on im-ports for energy, raw materials, and food ever toshrug off the rest of the world or to push it out oftheir field of vision altogether. These broad consid-erations do not always carry the day—but again,unlike the Americans-every interested party inJapan takes them seriously.

The automobile industry

MITI has, sinee around i960, steadily opposed ex-pansion of the Japanese automobile industry be-cause, in large part, it views the private automobileas a self-indulgence and as the opening wedge of aconsumer society, which it finds abhorrent. In addi-tion, it has maintained, at least it did in the earlyyears, considerable scepticism about the ability of

Behind Japan's success 85

untried Japanese manufacturers to compete againstthe likes of GM, Ford, Fiat, and Volkswagen. It hasalso been quite fearful that a large automobile mar-ket in Japan would provoke irresistible demands toopen Japan to foreign imports, the one thing it hasbeen determined to prevent.

But MITI has also believed, quite sincerely, thatexpansion of the automobile industry would havean adverse, indeed a deleterious, effect on Japan'sbalance of trade, on her abihty to earn her way inthe world economy, and on her productivity gen-erally. The more successful the Japanese automobileindustry, MITI has argued, the worse the economicimpact on Japan. The automobile, it has pointedout, requires the two raw materials that are inshortest supply in Japan: petroleum and iron ore.It also requires the diversion of scarce resources,both food-growing land and capital, to highwaysand highway construction. Instead of an automobileindustry, what MITI has wanted is massive invest-ment to upgrade the railroads' freight-handling ca-pacity.

There are plenty of diehards left, and not onlyat MITI, who still maintain that letting the Japaneseautomobile industry expand was a serious mistake.Even with record sales to North America and West-ern Europe, the industry's export earnings, they ar-gue, are only a fraction of what the automobilecosts Japan in foreign exchange for petroleum andiron ore imports. A small part of the sums spent onhighways would have given the Japanese railroadsthe freight-carrying capacity that the country stilllaeks, for the enormous amounts spent on roadshave not been enough to build an adequate high-way system. Trucks clog the roads; port cities areovercrowded; and air pollution is increasing.

MITI lost its fight against the automobile. It wasdefeated in part by the automobile industry, whichforged ahead despite MITI's disapproval, and inpart by the infatuation of "Nabe-san," the Japanese"man in the street," with the motor car-despite itshigh costs, despite the lack of places to park, anddespite the traffic jams about which no one com-plains louder than Nabe-san sitting in the driver'sseat. But at least-and this is the point-the automo-bile's impact on Japan's productivity, competitiveposition, and balance of trade was rigorously con-sidered. Even the automobile company executiveswho fought MITI the hardest admit openly that itwas the ministry's duty to make sure that theseconsiderations were taken seriously, no matter howeager they might have been to proceed with produc-tion or how devoted Nabe-san might have been tohis automobile.

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Put national interest firstEstimating the impact of various policy alternativeson Japan's competitive position in the world econ-omy is only one of the habits of behavior expectedof Japanese leaders. They are also expected to startout with the question "What is good for the coun-try?" rather than the question "What is good for us,our institution, our members, and our constituents?"

The basis of leadership

In no other country are interest groups as well or-ganized as in Japan, with its endless array of eco-nomic federations, industry associations, profes-sional societies, trade groups, special interest clubs,and guilds. Each of these groups lobbies brazenly,openly using its voting power and money to ad-vance its own selfish ends in ways that would makea Tammany boss blush. Yet if it wants to be listenedto and to have influence on the policymaking pro-cess, every group must start out in its deliberationsby considering the national interest, not its ownconcerns.

No group is expected to be completely unselfishor to advocate policies that might cost it money,power, or votes,- Japan's Confucian tradition distrustsself-sacrifice as unnatural. Each group is, however,expected to fit its self-interest into a framework ofnational needs, national goals, national aspirations,and national values. Sometimes this expectationproduces blatant hypocrisy, as when Japanese phy-sicians claim that the only thought behind theirsuccessful demand for near-total exemption fromtaxes is concern for the nation's health. Still, thephysicians pay at least lip service to the rule thatdemands that the question "What is the nationalinterest?" be asked first.

By failing to do even that and, instead, assertingthat what is good for labor is ipso facto good for thecountry, Japanese unions have largely forfeited po-litical influence and public acceptance, despite theirimpressive numbers. Conversely, a substantial pro-portion of Japan's business leaders has for ioo yearssubscribed to the rule that the national interestcomes first, a rule first formulated by the nine-teenth-century entrepreneur, banker, and businessphilosopher Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931). As a re-sult, business management is respectfully listened towhenever it discusses economic and social policies,even by the two-fifths of the Japanese populationwho faithfully vote for avowedly Marxist or stri-dently antibusiness parties and candidates.

The demand that Japanese leadership groups—es-pecially Japan's business leaders—take responsibilityfor thinking through the policies that the nationalinterest requires forces them to lead. It forces themto take the initiative and to formulate, propound,and advocate national policies before they becomeissues. Indeed, it forces them to define what theproper issues are.

The Western approach

In the West, particularly in the United States, theconventional economic interests are expected to bepreoccupied with their own concerns, their ownneeds and wants. As a rule, they are rarely pre-pared to act in a matter of general rather than fac-tional interest. They can only react. They cannotlead; they can only oppose what someone else pro-poses. Whenever a legitimate matter of general con-cern comes up, someone within the group is boundto see it as a threat; another will oppose doing any-tbing at all; and a third will drag his feet.

In Japan, new proposals are also likely to run intoopposition within particular interest groups, but thespecial concerns of their members are held in abey-ance until the national interest has been thoughtthrough. In the West, these special concerns arc thefocus of policy debate; in Japan, they are peripberal.The Western approach can lead to inaction or todoing "another study"—until someone from the out-side proposes a law or a regulation that can then befought as "unacceptable." But this is only rearguardaction and damage containment. Inevitably, itleaves the definition of issues to others, eventhough, as the Japanese see clearly, to define issuesis the first duty of a leader.

The Japanese do not, of course, always dischargethis responsibility successfully. Both the bureau-cracy and the business leaders of Japan were totallyunprepared for the explosion of environmental is-sues 10 years ago, an explosion for which they hadhad plenty of warning. Today they still prefer toignore the challenge posed by the movement ofwomen into professional and managerial jobs—amovement that is gathering momentum and isgrounded in irreversible demographics.

For the most part, however, the Japanese have beensuccessful in defining critical issues. In contrast,U.S. leaders spoke of lowering the mandatory re-tirement age at the very moment when the growingpower of older Americans made first California andthen the U.S. Congress enact laws postponing re-tirement or prohibiting mandatory retirement alto-gether. Business leaders in Japan anticipated the is-

Behind Japan's success 87

sue, faced the high costs involved, and without anyprompting from external constituencies raised themandatory retirement age. "It's what the countryneeds" was the explanation they gave.

The Western "self-interest first" approach workedreasonably well as long as national policy could ef-fectively be formed through adversary proceedingsthat balanced the conflicting demands of large, well-established interest blocs. But since politics in theindustrial West is currently fragmented and sincethe balance of national power has all too often cometo rest in the hands of small groups of single-causezealots, this traditional approach is clearly no long-er adequate. Perhaps the Japanese model, underwhich both leaders and special interests derive theirlegitimacy from their stewardship of the nationalinterest, might better serve the unavoidable plural-ism of modern industrial society.'

Know how to sit

In addition to taking competitiveness seriously andbalancing local interests for the general good, theleaders of Japanese business have a duty, or so Shi-busawa taught them, to understand the views, be-havior, assumptions, expectations, and values of allother major groups in their society. At the sametime, the leaders feel they have an equal duty tomake their own views, behavior, assumptions, ex-pectations, and values known and understood. Thisdoes not require public relations in the Westernsense but rather private relations—relations madenot by speeches, pronouncements, and press re-leases but by the continual interaction of respon-sible men in policymaking positions.

Irving Shapiro, chairman and CEO of E.I. du Pontde Nemours, the world's largest chemical company,was widely quoted in the U.S. press last year forhaving pointed out that he now had to devote four-fifths of his time to "relations" with policymakersin the Congress and the Washington bureaucracyand could only spend one-fifth to manage his com-pany. The only thing that would have surprised aJapanese CEO in a business of comparable impor-tance is the one-fifth Shapiro has available to runhis company.

Very few CEOs of large Japanese companies haveany time available for managing their companies.

I. For more discussion of this, sec my lecent book, Managing in TiirbtilentTimes |New York: Harper & Row, 1980)1 especially "Business Enterprise asa Political Institution," p. 105 and "Managing in a Political Environment,"p, 116.

All their time is spent on relations, even the timespent on internal company business. They keepcontrol of things by giving careful attention to per-sonnel decisions in the upper ranks and by requir-ing meticulous financial and planning reports. Butthey do not "manage"—that is left to lower levels.

The top people spend their time sitting, sippingcups of green tea, listening, asking a few questions,then sitting some more, sipping more cups of greentea, listening, asking a few more questions. Theysit with the people from their own industries, withsuppliers, with the trading company people, withthe managers of subsidiaries. They sit with top peo-ple from other companies in their groups—as, forinstance, in the famous five-hour luncheons inwhich the presidents of all companies in the Mitsu-bishi group come together once a week. They sitwith people from the banks, with senior bureau-crats from the various ministries, with people fromtheir own companies in after-hours parties in Cinzabars. They sit on half a dozen committees in halfa dozen economic and industry federations. Theysit and sit and sit.

In all these sittings they do not necessarily dis-cuss business, surely not their own business. Indeed,to a Westerner their conversation at times appearsquite pointless. It ranges far afield, or so it seems,moving from issues of economic policy to personalconcerns, from the other fellow's questions andproblems to the topics of the day, from expectationsfor the future to reappraisals of the past.

Their aim, of course, is not to solve anything butto establish mutual understanding. When there isa problem, one knows where to go. One knows whatthe other person and his institution expect, whatthey can and will do, and what they cannot or willnot do. When either crisis or opportunity arrives,these immobile sitters are able to act with amazingspeed, decisiveness, and at times ruthlessness, forthe purpose of all this sitting is not to produce mu-tual liking, agreement, or trust. It is to produce anunderstanding of why one does not like another,does not agree, does not trust.

Seek no final victories

The last of these habits of Japanese economic be-havior is to base human interactions not solely onadversarial relations but also on common interestand mutual trust.

Yet, adversarial relations in Japan have historical-ly been fiercer, more violent, less forgiving, and less

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compassionate than in the West. Neither "lovethine enemy" nor "turn the other cheek" is to befound in any of Japan's creeds. Even nature is violentin Japan, a country of typhoons, volcanoes, andearthquakes.

Where the Westerner sees no need for feudingor recrimination—as, for instance, when in timespast a painter or an artist parted company with histeacher and established his own style or school-Japanese convention dictates that relations be an-tagonistic or at least be made to appear so. This tra-dition extends today to divorce, which has reachedepidemic, almost Californian, proportions, especial-ly among young, educated couples. An "amicable"divorce is apparently not considered proper. It mustbe made to look adversarial even if the two peoplepart by mutual consent and on reasonably goodterms.

But all these are situations in which a relation-ship is to be dissolved permanently. However, whenpeople or parties must live together, let alone whenthey must work together, the Japanese make surethat their relationships have at their core a mu-tuality of interest. Then, whatever conflict or dis-agreement exists can be subsumed in the positivebond of broadly shared concerns.

One of the main, though rarely voiced, reasonsthat the Japanese automobile companies have beenreluctant to build plants in the United States istheir bafflement at management-union relations inthe American automobile industry. They simplycannot understand them. "Our unions fight man-agement," a young Toyota engineer, an avowedleftist and socialist with strong pro-union leanings,recently told me. "But yours fight the company.How can they not know that for anything to begood for the company's employees, it has to be goodfor the company? Where this is not taken for grant-ed—and it's completely obvious to every one of us—no Japanese could be a manager; but no Japanesecould be an employee or a subordinate either."

One usually does not have to live or work close-ly with a competitor; hence, competition tends tobe ruthless between companies in the same fieldand between groups of companies—for example, be-tween Sony and Pimasonic or between Mitsui Bankand Fuji Bank. But whenever there has to be a con-tinuing relationship with an opponent, the Japa-nese tend to seek common ground. And it is herethat asking the questions to which all those endlesssittings are largely devoted begins to pay handsomedividends.

Great care is taken by all parties that there be nodamage done to common interests. Great care is also

taken that there be no final victory over the indi-viduals or groups with whom one has to live andwork. The Japanese know that to win such a waris to lose the peace. Whenever groups in Japan haveto live together, both sides will be more concernedwith making their confiict mutually productive thanwith winning in any absolute sense. Yet these samepeople will go all out for total victory against anopponent with whom they do not share commoninterests and who therefore can be destroyed.

Ideals Si realities

These four habits, or rules, of competitive success-taking competitiveness seriously, considering thenational interest first, making external relationshipsimportant, and not seeking final victory over op-ponents with whom one still has to live—are, ofcourse, ideals and precepts. They are normativerather than descriptive of universal practice. EveryJapanese can point to dozens of cases in which theniles have been broken or disregarded with im-punity. Not every Japanese necessarily accepts themas being right.

Some of Japan's most successful entrepreneursand companies—Honda, for instance, or Matsushitaas well as Panasonic or Sony—have shown scant re-spect for some of the rules. These leaders do notgive a great deal of time or attention to outside re-lationships, nor do they much care whether theyare accepted into "the club." They do not automat-ically agree that putting the national interest firstin one's thinking is the responsibility of the busi-ness leader. They have even, on occasion, beenquite willing to infiict crushing defeats on oppo-nents with whom they have still had to live andwork.

There is also a good deal of criticism within Japan,especially within business circles, of some of therules, and there is grave doubt whether they arestill fully appropriate to Japan's needs. Can top man-agement, some leaders ask, devote practically all itstime to outside relationships without losing touchwith the swiftly changing realities of economics,markets, and technologies? Others grumble that ef-forts to find common ground with other groups,with govermnent in particular, have led to spinelessappeasement and bureaucratic arrogance.

These rules, in other words, have weaknesses,limitations, shortcomings; they neither enjoy uni-versal approval nor apply without exception. Evenso, they have been unusually effective in strength-

Behind Japan's success 89

ening Japan's industrial performance. What, then,lies behind their acceptance and success?

The case for tradition

The most common answer given in Japan as wellas in the West is that these rules represent unique-ly Japanese traditions and values. But this is surelynot the whole answer; in fact, it is largely the wronganswer. Of course, rules of social and political be-havior are part of a culture and have to fit it or atleast be acceptable to it. How the Japanese imple-ment their rules is very Japanese indeed, but therules themselves represent a rather than the Japa-nese tradition. They represent a choice among wide-ly different, but equally traditional, alternatives.

Some of the rules, moreover, have only a ques-tionable foundation in Japanese tradition. The pres-ent industrial harmony of Japan, though usually at-tributed to long-standing cultural values, is in sharpcontrast to the ofttimes violent history of relationsbetween Japanese superiors and subordinates. Aslate as the 1920s (that is, through the formativestage of modern Japanese industry), Japan had theworst, most disruptive, and most violent labor re-lations of any industrial country in the world.

For the 150 years before modern Japan was bomin the Meiji Restoration of 1868, relations betweenthe lords and their military retainers, the samurai,on one side and the peasant labor force on the othermeant at least one bloody peasant rebellion peryear. There were more than 200 such rebellions dur-ing the period, each of them suppressed just asbloodily.

"Government by assassination" rather than thecareful attempt to find common ground was stillthe rule for relationships among competing groupsin the 1930s. Nor Is it entirely coincidental thatstudent violence and terrorism began in Japan inthe 1960s and took their most extreme form there.If it is meaningful to speak of a Japanese culturaltradition, violence and internecine warfare are everybit as much a part of it as the quest for harmonyand mutuality of interest.

The business heritage

These rules of economic life did not evolve in avacuum. They were strongly opposed when firstpropounded and were considered quite unrealisticfor a long time. The greatest figure in Japanese busi-ness history is not Eiichi Shibusawa, the man whoformulated the ethos of modern Japanese society.It is Yataro Iwasaki (1834-1885), the founder and

builder of Mitsubishi, who was to nineteenth-cen-tury Japan what J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie,and John D. Rockefeller combined were to theUnited States. Stoutly denying Shibusawa's claimthat business leaders should take responsibility forthe national interest and for embedding confiict ina bond of common interest, Iwasaki rejected out ofhand Shibusawa's vision of society. Shibusawa wasgreatly respected, but his teachings had little infiu-ence on practical men of affairs, who were far moreimpressed with Iwasaki's business success.

As a guide to industrial behavior, these rules wongeneral acceptance only after the Second WorldWar. When a defeated, humiliated, and almost de-stroyed Japan began painfully to rebuild, it askedthe question "What are the proper rules for a com-plex modem society, a society that must partici-pate in a competitive world economy and be de-pendent on it?" Only then did the answers thatShibusawa had given 60 years earlier come to beseen as right and relevant.

The historical context

Historians will long debate why Shibusawa's an-swers, having failed to discover a receptive audiencebefore the war, found one so soon after it. Indeed,historians will be as busy trying to explain whathappened in Japan in the 1950s as they have beenfor years trying to explain what happened in Japanat the time of the Meiji Restoration. In both casesthe central questions are much the same: How dida humiliated Japan organize itself to become a mod-ern commercial nation while remaining profoundlyJapanese in its culture? How were the appropriateelements of that culture mobilized without violat-ing the rest?

One might speculate that the shock of total de-feat and the humiliation of being occupied by for-eign troops—especially since no foreign soldiers hadever before landed on Japanese soil—created a will-ingness to try things that had never been tried be-fore. One might speculate further that, althoughthere was no single leader, no one great figure, toput Japan on a new path, the pressing needs ofJapanese workers supplied some of the motivatingforce.

The workers-many of them the unemployed, dis-charged veterans of a defeated army—desperatelyrequired a new sense of "home" and "community."They needed a defense against the strong pressuresput upon them by the liberal labor experts of theAmerican occupation, pressures to join left-wingunions and to become a revolutionary force in Japa-

90 Harvard Business Review January-February 1981

nese society. Having lost economic and, in manycases, emotional security, they looked to conserveas much as possible of their former lives, yet toconserve it in terms appropriate to the changedworld about them.

Facing up to a pluralist society

Why Japanese management was able to respond tothese needs in such an effective manner no one yetreally knows. The form that response took—Shibu-sawa's four habits, or mles, of economic behavior-did not draw on exclusively Japanese sources. Infact, the habits could just as well be explained withreference to purely Western teachings and tradi-tions.

That business leaders are responsible for think-ing in terms of the national interest was preachedin the West around 1900 by such un-Japanese lead-ers as Walter Rathenau in Germany and MarkHanna in the United States. That an enemy whocannot be destroyed must never be defeated or bu-miliated but must be made into a friend was firsttaught around 1530 by Niccolo Machiavelli. Andthat confiict must be embedded in a web of sharedinterests is also to be found in Machiavelli. It is tobe found as well in the work of Mary Parker FoUett,that most proper of proper Bostonians who mademuch the same argument in the 1920s when shefirst applied political theory to management and toconflict resolution.

All these Westerners—Rathenau and Hanna,Machiavelli and Follett—asked the same basic ques-tions: How can a complex modern society, a plu-ralist society in an era of rapid change, be effective-ly governed? How can it make productive use of itstensions and confiicts? How can it evolve a unityof action out of the diversity of interests, values,and institutions? And how can it derive strength andcohesion from being surrounded by, and even de-pendent on, a multitude of competing powers?

Though the West has asked these questions, ithas not taken them seriously enough. Why not? Per-haps the Great Depression had something to dowith it, for before the Depression a number of lead-ers did take them seriously. Both Herbert Hooverand Heinrich Brlining, the last chancellor of demo-cratic prewar Germany, saw the common interestof all groups as the catalyst of a genuine nationalunity. In contrast, Roosevelt's New Deal saw theprinciples of countervailing power and adversarialrelations as the basis for a very different kind ofunity. Compromises acceptable to all because theydo not offend any one group too much offer a prom-

ise of national unity based on the least common de-nominator, not the largest view of national interest.

But this is speculation. What is fact is that thesecret behind Japan's economic achievement is nota mysterious Japan, Inc., a creation that belongs, ifanywhere, in some Hollywood grade B movie. Farmore likely, it is that Japan-at present alone amongthe major industrial nations—has addressed herselfto defining the mles for a complex, pluralist societyof large organizations in a world of rapid change andincreasing interdependence.^

Better than the best

In the feudal days ofJapan, it was the ambi-tion of every samurai orwarrior to serve his lordbetter than did any ofhis fellow-samurai, andevery local lord made ef-forts to stand higher inthe favour of the Shogunand the Emperor thandid any other lords inthe country. Now thatshe has entered theworld-arena, it is hergreatest ambition to bebetter than the best inthe world in any lineof culture. In the pre-war days the worldcharged Japan withexporting commoditiescheaper than their manu-factures would cost inother countries. She wasnot dumping them atall, but, on the contrary,she endeavoured to

supply the world withcheaper articles thanwere supplied by anyother countries in theworld. In art, science,literature, trade, industryand what-not does everysingle Japanese aspireto stand higher in hisown profession and oc-cupation than anybodyelse, and in her effort tohe better than the bestlies indeed the secret ofthe great progress thatJapan has made and willmake to rise up from herdefeated ruins.

From"Secret of Japan's Prog-ress" in We Japanese,Being Dcsctiptions of Many0/ ihe Cusioms, Manners,Ceremonies, Feslivah,Arts and Ciafts of thelapanese IMiyanoshlia,Haknne, Japan: FujiyaHotel, Ltd., 1934).