NEW YORK — The tragic flaws discovered in Toyota cars have crowded out other news about Japan and the U.S.-Japan relationship during this 50th anniversary year of the formal U.S.-Japan security alliance.
Some have gone so far as to claim that Toyota Motor Corp. represents the Japanese nation-state and that its flaws presage larger flaws of a society in decline. Just as articles 30 years ago hyped up images of Japan as a large sumo about to gobble up America, some critics now paint in the opposite direction, creating images of a nation near death.
Both extremes use the wrong indicators to assess Japanese society, and both obscure the important and deep relationship — economic and otherwise — between the peoples of both nations. There is no doubt that Japan has its share of social problems, and that Toyota's troubles have had ripple effects beyond the corporation, but there is more to Japan than this dismal one-sided perspective.