As the Asian economies rebound from their 1997-1998 lows, we hear much less about the alleged collapse of something called "Asian values" and its crony capitalism. Which is good, since there never was such a thing as "Asian values" in the first place.
Asia has three, very different, value systems. One belongs solely to Japan. As an isolated, deeply feudalistic nation for much of its history, its values were not very different from the same collectivist, warrior-spirit, practical-oriented values that used to be found in northern European societies.
In its village-mentality ("mura ishiki"), anti-intellectualism, old-boy networks, muddle-through attitudes, liking for ritual and royalty, instinctive honesty in personal relations, fussy attention to detail (the trains run on time) and hands-on manufacturing excellence, it resembles pre-20th century Britain -- another isolated island nation with a long history of advanced feudalism.