ABSTRACT
Japan, Inc., is in disarray. Individual Japanese companies compete just as aggressively as before on the world market. But no distinctive Japanese policy exists any more, least of all in economics. Instead, short-term fixes and panicky reactions to the unexpected are the norm. As in the West, these are no substitutes for policy, and they are having little, if any, success. Part of the problem is that none of Japan's available choices looks attractive: none would produce consensus. They would instead cause division among the nation's major groups - bureaucrats, politicians, business leaders, academia, and labour. Japanese newspapers are full of plaints about 'weak leadership'. But that is only a symptom. The root problem is that the four pillars on which Japanese policy has been based for over thirty years have collapsed or are tottering.
