The other feature is the political and social changes that have accompanied economic modernization. These have transformed Japan from a tightly organized, highly aristo cratic, feudal society only a little over a century ago into a remarkably stable but extraor dinarily free, egalitarian and democratic society today. The people are basically contented and happy. Crime is far lower than in most urbanized countries. Though the land is intensely crowded, everything operates briskly and without confusion.
Society is stable and moves along smoothly.
The democratic political system, while operating in many ways quite differently from our own, produces the necessary decisions and efficiently provides the services it should. All in all, it would be hard to find any large country in our contemporary world that runs more efficiently, smoothly, fairly and openly than Japan. All this puts Japan in a unique position in the contemporary world. The most significant fact about Japan is that it is the only major non-Western country that has become a thoroughly industrialized and modernized society. Drawing on a different cultural heritage from our own, it has developed a pattern of modernization quite distinctive from those of the industrialized countries of the West.