LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Following the appearance of one of the recent articles in this series on Japan in the global era, a colleague of mine, Dominique Turpin, who has been doing research on Japanese industry for some 20 years, came into my office and said, "Jean-Pierre, when are you going to start proposing solutions?" Some readers may be wondering the same thing. There are three answers to that question.
The first and simplest is that this series is due to run a year and that the emphasis on solutions will begin in the autumn.
The second is that, as I told Turpin, a lot of Japanese policymakers, policy thinkers and foreign pundits, are proposing solutions without sufficiently analyzing the problems and assessing their extent. Japan is not just an economic mess; it is also a very sick society. And one of the main causes for this sickness has been Japan's inability to adjust to the paradigm shift that has occurred with the advent of the "global era."