Hard working citizens, low taxes, and minimalist government will continue to be the absolute fundamentals of prosperity. Japan's situation is more complex. Japanese leaders, politicians, senior bureaucrats and industrial barons, have a profound responsibility to their people who, in turn, owe unswerving loyalty to their liege lords. Individual Japanese firms battle ferociously, just like the samurai armies of the pre-Tokugawa era. Yet there's a powerful sense of community in Japan, of national polity.
Unemployment is anathema in Japan.
The greatest shame for a Japanese industrialist is to fire his worker-soldiers. Asia's financial crisis may force the Hashimoto government and business establishment to finally end life support of Japan's terminally ill banks and industries, pull the plug, and let them die. Meanwhile, Japan is also under mounting pressure to westernize its complex, creaky, inefficient distribution system. Redundant layers of small wholesalers and distributors sell to innumerable, tiny mom and pop stores. Hence Japan's notorious, sky-high retail prices.