Japan used to be held up in the United States as a model example, both of efficient economic management and efficient enterprise management. That economic management image disappeared with the "bubble" burst of the early 1990s.
The claims to superior Japanese enterprise management then took a beating in the late '90s as Japanese managers rushed to study what they saw as superior U.S. management.
Now Japan is emerging in the U.S. as yet another model — this time as a negative example of how not to cope with financial crises brought on by a real estate bubble collapse.