Subject: The Washington Post Outlook: Japan Restored
From: Clyde Prestowitz <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2015 14:49:12 -0500

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The Washington Post
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"Clyde Prestowitz's new book is one of the more thought-provoking forays into Asian-Pacific
geopolitics to have been published in recent years - at least as noteworthy for 
its messenger as for its message." -The Washington Post

Prescription for resuscitating Japan [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001XDjtFDeke-mnxmwWLwxuQJuuVTIyLmm3K-7RB4TULVyiv0RJ2vqKu1zuO14Q_D-BCVgXpbtSEuW4Y4iR7ue1JcfLXwqPQERyO_HbGhGSp9sLb3ewWWE8uabUlRAXB9vNwwzk33tYKo4Xyee_-4zxhvp9_xTE3ZGz9dMzz91Mj7rQkfP25kWUX7byAqdO2mxWdDNhmu5QrirfPkFDB6lMqFEhGiz2Wwi6cnAerjdKMQj9_kfs-n6r8B8A_7zTI4xDyN6mNEJyFuZpxtqOCNs6fKbIFTk7bPA_Pmkl-6G25VYymaa-nRZHs7OZXd8nhcf5jQFo8N2PdQA=&c=ZRbKYRTrQ0GDK3KpIuNZ3w3hHSoNLo874JVT6kNddGn5ja2-CaXVAg==&ch=OZ-H6GjElO9Qyv-mDSykWRRcgSfA3bY674FQUEvg5efmlb87kFakvg==]
By Ali Wyne
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Ali Wyne is a contributing analyst at Wikistrat, a global fellow at the Project 
for the Study of the 21st Century, and a graduate student at Harvard's Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard. He is a coauthor of "Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's 
Insights on China, the United States, and the World."
Clyde Prestowitz's new book is one of the more thought-provoking forays into Asian-Pacific
geopolitics to have been published in recent years - at least as noteworthy for 
its messenger as for its message. Nearly three decades ago, after stepping down 
as a counselor to Commerce Secretary Malcom Baldridge, Prestowitz wrote "Trading
 Places: How We Are Giving Our Future to Japan and How to Reclaim It" as a warning
to U.S. policymakers. Scrutinizing Japan's postwar industrial strategies that had
made the country into an (apparent) economic juggernaut, he found that the United
States assumed - or, worse, had persuaded itself to believe - that Japan was simply
emulating America's market-driven, consumer-oriented growth path. But, Prestowitz
discovered, Japan had decided to make the government the driver of its economic 
recovery through the subsidization of its core industries. The "real challenge to
American power is not the sinister one" from the Soviet Union, he declared, "but
 the friendly one from the Far East."
Today the United States indeed faces a challenge from the Far East - not from an
 amicable Japan but from an increasingly capable and incrementally revisionist China.
It is no longer attempting to outcompete Japan in manufacturing; if anything, it
 fears that protracted economic stagnation there will gradually limit Japan's ability
to buttress a stable Asian-Pacific balance of power. A recent New York Times analysis
captured the depth of Japan's long slump: "Japan's economy has contracted so many
times in the last few years that the meaning of recession has started to blur."
In "Trading Places," Prestowitz explored postwar history to understand how Japan
 had come to achieve such dramatic economic gains. In "Japan Restored," he works
 backward from an imagined future to deduce how Japan can reestablish and bolster
its position as a central player in the world's strategic balance. That future would
require a series of transformations that would reverse long-standing - and in some
cases seemingly immutable - trends.
The first set of transformations is internal. Prestowitz envisions a revitalized
 Japan in 2050 where women will have an average of 2.3 children in their lifetimes,
and the population will be on track to surpass 150 million. The economy will be 
growing by 4.5 percent annually instead of contracting, as it currently is. Defense
spending will have increased from 1 percent of gross domestic product to 3 percent.
By 2050, Japan will have achieved "low-cost energy independence" and "indisputably
become the most innovation-friendly nation on earth." It also will have "made enormous
steps toward becoming a ... completely bilingual country," and women will "account
for just under half of the directors of corporate boards, about 75 percent of all
doctors, and 35 percent of CEOs."
But domestic renewal alone will not be enough to achieve the rejuvenated Japan Prestowitz
imagines. The country's external environment will have to undergo a comparably sweeping
set of changes. In 2050, under Prestowitz's scenario, Japan will jointly administer
the Senkaku Islands with its longtime antagonist China. And India, Prestowitz writes,
will have "become far more important than China." A U.S.-underpinned world order,
meanwhile, will have yielded to one that centers on the Asia-Pacific region. Perhaps
most arresting, "What some hoped would be the Second American Century - and what
 many predicted would be the Chinese Century - [will have] become the Japanese Century."
There are at least two ways to assess a book that asks the reader to take such leaps
of faith. The first is to evaluate the plausibility of its projections. "Japan Restored"
is unlikely to convince a majority of readers on that score. The ambition of its
 effort virtually ensures that major elements of its extrapolation strain credulity,
if not defy possibility (it is telling that Prestowitz devotes well over 90 percent
of the book to detailing the elements of his thought experiment and establishing
 their feasibility).
The second way to judge "Japan Restored" is to read it not as a conjectural exercise
but rather as a call for national restoration. Seen in this light, the book offers
a valuable look at the profound hurdles ahead for the country. Japan will have to
undergo fundamental, systemic shifts to achieve Prestowitz's vision of 2050 and 
perhaps even to avoid terminal decline. As Prestowitz notes, Japan is literally 
"dying" in demographic terms. "In just a few years it will be too late" for the 
country to reverse its population decline.
The good news is there are two precedents for the requisite disruption: the Meiji
Restoration of 1868, which led Japan to change course after some 2 1/2 centuries
 of isolation, and the country's much-vaunted industrial "miracle" after the ruin
it suffered in World War II.
Given the gap between Japan's present malaise and the crucial place it occupies 
in the world order, it is hard to object too strenuously to Prestowitz's articulation
of aspirational, even fantastical, objectives. The concluding chapter of "Japan 
Restored" provides several reasons policymakers and citizens alike have a stake 
in the nation's resuscitation. Some are familiar: Japan is the world's third-largest
economy, a major source of direct investment overseas and the second-largest holder
of U.S. treasury debt. Less known, Japan has also been central to the development
and refinement of the global supply chain. And its cuisine, art, culture and manners
have influenced the world. Well known, if not often appreciated, Prestowitz writes,
"Japan has been a successful non-Western democracy and thus a powerful model for
 developing countries in the rest of Asia and around the world."
Should the Japanese leadership decide to establish something along the lines of 
Prestowitz's hypothetical "revitalization commission," it will find a number of 
creative and forward-thinking prescriptions in his book - some of which would surely
prove impractical but all of which merit consideration.
Japan Restored
How Japan Can Reinvent Itself and Why This Is Important for America and the World
By Clyde Prestowitz
Tuttle. 287 pp. $22.95
Ali Wyne is a contributing analyst at Wikistrat and a coauthor of Lee Kuan Yew: 
The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World (2013).
To read the article in  [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001XDjtFDeke-mnxmwWLwxuQJuuVTIyLmm3K-7RB4TULVyiv0RJ2vqKu1zuO14Q_D-BCVgXpbtSEuW4Y4iR7ue1JcfLXwqPQERyO_HbGhGSp9sLb3ewWWE8uabUlRAXB9vNwwzk33tYKo4Xyee_-4zxhvp9_xTE3ZGz9dMzz91Mj7rQkfP25kWUX7byAqdO2mxWdDNhmu5QrirfPkFDB6lMqFEhGiz2Wwi6cnAerjdKMQj9_kfs-n6r8B8A_7zTI4xDyN6mNEJyFuZpxtqOCNs6fKbIFTk7bPA_Pmkl-6G25VYymaa-nRZHs7OZXd8nhcf5jQFo8N2PdQA=&c=ZRbKYRTrQ0GDK3KpIuNZ3w3hHSoNLo874JVT6kNddGn5ja2-CaXVAg==&ch=OZ-H6GjElO9Qyv-mDSykWRRcgSfA3bY674FQUEvg5efmlb87kFakvg==]The
Washington Post [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001XDjtFDeke-mnxmwWLwxuQJuuVTIyLmm3K-7RB4TULVyiv0RJ2vqKu1zuO14Q_D-BCVgXpbtSEuW4Y4iR7ue1JcfLXwqPQERyO_HbGhGSp9sLb3ewWWE8uabUlRAXB9vNwwzk33tYKo4Xyee_-4zxhvp9_xTE3ZGz9dMzz91Mj7rQkfP25kWUX7byAqdO2mxWdDNhmu5QrirfPkFDB6lMqFEhGiz2Wwi6cnAerjdKMQj9_kfs-n6r8B8A_7zTI4xDyN6mNEJyFuZpxtqOCNs6fKbIFTk7bPA_Pmkl-6G25VYymaa-nRZHs7OZXd8nhcf5jQFo8N2PdQA=&c=ZRbKYRTrQ0GDK3KpIuNZ3w3hHSoNLo874JVT6kNddGn5ja2-CaXVAg==&ch=OZ-H6GjElO9Qyv-mDSykWRRcgSfA3bY674FQUEvg5efmlb87kFakvg==],
please click here. [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001XDjtFDeke-mnxmwWLwxuQJuuVTIyLmm3K-7RB4TULVyiv0RJ2vqKu1zuO14Q_D-BCVgXpbtSEuW4Y4iR7ue1JcfLXwqPQERyO_HbGhGSp9sLb3ewWWE8uabUlRAXB9vNwwzk33tYKo4Xyee_-4zxhvp9_xTE3ZGz9dMzz91Mj7rQkfP25kWUX7byAqdO2mxWdDNhmu5QrirfPkFDB6lMqFEhGiz2Wwi6cnAerjdKMQj9_kfs-n6r8B8A_7zTI4xDyN6mNEJyFuZpxtqOCNs6fKbIFTk7bPA_Pmkl-6G25VYymaa-nRZHs7OZXd8nhcf5jQFo8N2PdQA=&c=ZRbKYRTrQ0GDK3KpIuNZ3w3hHSoNLo874JVT6kNddGn5ja2-CaXVAg==&ch=OZ-H6GjElO9Qyv-mDSykWRRcgSfA3bY674FQUEvg5efmlb87kFakvg==]
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