Japan is in the midst of change in its social value system.
Ordinary people and business executives, successfully overcoming the two oil crises in the 1970s and expanding the nation's economic presence overseas in the 1980s, once held strong confidence in Japanese-style corporate management, a traditional social culture and government-private sector relations.
Expressions of admiration for the Japanese economic performance, such as the 1979 book "Japan as Number One: Lessons for America" by Ezra F. Vogel, intensified a sense of self-conceit among Japanese people. I often heard business executives saying at the time they no longer had anything to learn from American and European business operations.