After more than a decade in Tokyo, I am struck by the countless foreign diplomats and businesspersons who lament Japanese parochialism. They forget the huge obstacles Japanese face in understanding the world scene.
"Western software" from Europe and the new worlds it spawned in the Americas and Oceania have lorded over the world for centuries. What Pericles said of Athens applies to the West: "We have compelled every sea and every land to yield to our daring enterprise, and we have strewn the world with everlasting reminders of deeds both bad and good."
Western intellectual hegemony is stronger than before. China is more open to Western influence than before, as illustrated by the inflow of Chinese students to the West and much deeper personal intercourse between the Middle Kingdom and the West. Other regions, such as Central Asia, in the "non-West" are also in greater contact.