It's a little before 9 a.m., and Masahiko Aoki is discussing complex adaptive systems and path dependency. It's an odd conversation even though the topics are familiar ones for Aoki, a professor of economics at Stanford University and an author of several standard texts on the Japanese economy.
It feels strange because he is holding forth in his spacious office on the 11th floor of the annex of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, whose predecessor -- the Ministry of International Trade and Industry -- was supposed to be immune to that sort of theorizing.
According to "MITI and the Japanese Miracle," Chalmers Johnson's pathbreaking work on the bureaucracy, MITI was a hard-edged place that focused on policy and the nitty-gritty of economic reality. But it's a new era in Kasumigaseki. For proof, just head to the Research Institute for Economy, Trade, and Industry, which Aoki now heads. Aoki makes a good poster boy for the new order: With his shock of unruly white hair, his collarless Miyake shirt and elegant sport coat, he is anything but the traditional image of the Tokyo bureaucrat.