The Amazing Race/Multinationalism, Japanese Style/Why Has Japan Succeeded?
Kovler, Peter
the job of Chief Justice (the editor, a political scientist, as is Shapiro, accurately notes that Burger is a "man of limited capacity and no discernible coherent philosophy"). Liberals may...
...and Japanese industry and although many of the points have been made before, Davidson writes with clarity and offers the needed reminders of how Japanese firms do not overemphasize short-term profits...
...It is truly a matter fit for ironists...
...Indeed, he does a little bit better when he states: "The whole truth is that Japanese firms are willing to forgo profits, period...
...None should be in your suitcase for a holiday, but each is worthwhile if you have time and patience...
...it has now turned into an American domestic economic menace -- a subject which will certainly be argued over at length in the upcoming election year...
...The world lives by its incarnation of God in itself...
...Ozawa has chosen the narrow but extremely important area of Japanese multinationals and what makes this book a bit more interesting than so many others is that it does not focus strictly on the American trade problem with its effects on the U.S...
...Less interesting for this reviewer is Ozawa's examination of the "theoretical considerations" behind Japan's multinationals...
...Among the other services of Brown's carefully crafted book -- which assays to articulate the relationship between poetry and religious reflection -- is the longoverdue retrieval of the vatic Whitehead, the philosopher whose speculative flights were rooted above all in the uncommon insights of parable, symbol, story, and myth...
...spends so much time and effort on military prowess...
...Again, all of America seems to be marking time as well...
...In the middle are the other four warhorses (excluding Sandra Day O'Connor who is too new to be conveniently categorized) who are intelligent and moderate men...
...The third professorial offering comes from Michio Morishima of the London School of Economics...
...Drucker's knowledge of corporate structures invests Iris new novel with reality, a feeling intensified by the human weaknesses of people involved in an epic crisis...
...If there is one flaw in all three books, it is attributable to the academic approach...
...all are packed full of useful information and analyses...
...This combination is not inspiring to an institution often led by luminaries such as John Marshall and Hugo Black who were fairly unreasonable and unpragmatic visionaries with great powers of persuasion...
...In Brown's last chapter, this restored Whitehead, for whom understanding was always " a process of penetration, incomplete and partial," is employed to disabuse those theologians (like Schubert Ogden) who suffer the Cartesian dream that conceptualization can ever function as the criterion of meaning for either Scripture or human experience...
...Ozawa points out how in the mid-fifties Japanese companies began to establish brands in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina...
...Although a more complete picture could include more investigation on the seedy side of industrial development, goodness knows, we don't need a foolish form of simplified muckraking...
...What happens finally is convincin and tiauntin :' g --Publishers f~.Veekly At bookstores or call TOLL FREE (8OO) 638-3030 Harper a) Row 18t7 1 June 1984:347 have become more important in American society...
...The result is predictable, fragmented, often conflicting decisions which are almost useless as precedents and which manifest"a powerful aversion to making fundamental value choices...
...WESTERN TECHNOLOGY AND THE JAPANESE ETHOS Mlehio Morishima Cambridge University, $19.95, :207 pp...
...Neoscholastics did in Aquinas in the same way...
...PETER KOVLER formerly served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Commerce in the Carter administration...
...Commonweal: 348...
...As usual, the Court's caution probably mirrors contemporary American political thought (or is it " d r i f t " ? ) . America's intense ideological individualism -- ironic and at most rhetorical in an age of large organizations -- is nowhere more clearly manifested than in the activities of a Court which has created a species of what might be called "situational law...
...labor force, etc...
...Clearly, though the book does not emphasize this, the Burger Court is a transitional body -- marking judicial time, except in some areas of criminal justice where, as in its distaste for the Fourth Amendment, a counterrevolution has already occurred...
...WHY RAS JAPAN SUCCEEDED...
...The story of the emergence of Japanese multinationals is interesting, particularly because of the way the Japanese took advantage of the economics of other nations...
...in the early sixties Japanese "overseas" initiatives became more regional as Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore became "hot" countries for Japanese industry...
...Only ,one time in all these endeavors is there a brief mention of such practices as payoffs and other ugly but real problems...
...MICHAEL ZEIK teaches in the history department at Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York...
...OAYE TUCHMAN, professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center C.U.N.Y., is presently VisitingProfessor of Feminist Studies and Sociology at Stanford University...
...Unfortunately, however, Ozawa is most interesting in his presentation of Japan's response to the 1973 OPEC oil embargo...
...The statement is Alfred North Whitehead's, if you will, by the poet in Whitehead who built a theoretic system which remythologized the clockwork cosmos favored by his former positivistic colleagues in England...
...Japan & the professors THE ANAZING RACE William Dsvidson John Wiley, $17.95, 225 pp...
...Professor Morishima makes an important point on how the Japanese may not really, serve as a model for other nations...
...PATRICK IORDAN was formerly one of the editors of The Catholic Worker in New York...
...However, the book's last "four chapters are informative, even if written in uninspiring prose...
...None is easy reading...
...Among the other credible arguments is the fact that a weakening American industrial spirit in the "post-industrial society" has played a part in allowing Japanese domination in certain sectors: "Non-economic values and objectives Ripped a p a r t b y malice, envy an~i rumor a great Catholic u n i v e r s i t y faces a.profound moral crisis...
...When former Prime Minister Tanaka is convicted for accepting $2 million in bribes and when there is suspicion of other types of illegal acts -- one Wonders how much the economic professors can II REVIEWERS PHILLIP CORWIN, a poet and novelist, works for the United Nations...
...MARGARET WIMSATT teaches English at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque...
...they thought he'd lost his senses in the New World...
...The Asian "bulwark of democracy" has actively participated in thwarting the aspirations of hundreds of thousands of American blue collar workers...
...He attributes the weakening American economic effort to several factors, and is careful to highlight the fact that the U...
...He describes the rise in the last two decades of Japanese indus~y, the U.S...
...FATHER DAVID TOOLAN, S,J., is assistant editor of Commonweal...
...Naturally, he emphasizes the differences between U.S...
...In the New World, unfortunately, a worshipful host of Whiteheadian scholastics have spent inordinate time dissecting the great man's concepts, thus losing the poet and myth-maker in him -- and outwitting their own senses...
...Davidson is particularly strong in making his argument that we are in economic competition with Japan, just as we are in the military sphere with the Soviet Union...
...IS1DORE SILVER teaches constitutional law and history at the John Jay College of Crimihal Justice in New York City...
...As an example the USW takes up the consumer electronics btlsiness: "that industry lost 63,000 jobs to targeting by Japanese and other governments," say the steelworkers in making a case for a fair resolution of "American international trade problems...
...A more academic work comes from Terutomo Ozawa, an economics professor at Colorado State University...
...Unlike the other two books, Davidson's main focus is on the economic relations between the United States and Japan...
...One sees this reflected in United Steelworkers' advertisements where Japan is accused of taking deadly target practice...
...Peter Kovler S APAN'S miracle economy has been a spectacular foreign policy success for several American administrations...
...That choice is both Whitehead's strength and his weakness...
...The potential for such values gaining pre-eminence in Japan is also discussed...
...Such words should be carefully weighed by Americans who suggest we might be able to use an American form of MITI...
...NULTINATIONALISM0 JAPANESE STYLE Terutomo Ozawa Princeton, $8.95, 289 pp...
...really tell us...
...Even through those early days, Ozawa explains the concerted efforts by the Japanese to get Japan to the point of economic strength...
...JO-ANN MORT, apoet who lives in New York, has had reviews and poetry published in Stand, Jewish Frontier, In These Times, and other journals...
...Japan, of course, is almost totally dependent on outside sources for oil and it is fascinating to read the details of Japan's "oil d!plomacy -- from initial panic to opportunism...
...He persuasively argues at the very end of his book that "a policy which has been proved to be successful for Jap~an may turn out to be unusable in Britain andvice versa, because of the differences in their ethoses, in their ways of behavior of their people, and in all the other cultural characteristics which they have inherited from their respective pasts...
...She is the author of Making News...
...But that work is for others to undertake...
...Few of them could fathom his system...
...In a book titled Why Has Japan Succeeded...
...I I In brief Ill I TRANSFIGURATION: POETIC METAPHOR AND THE LANGUAGE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF by Frank Butch Brown...
...In attempting to explain how we got into this mess, here are three books...
...Liberals may eagerly accept Blasi's characterization of Justice Rehnquist as "more a debater than a thinker," but will blanch at the description of Justices Marshall and Brennan as "more clever than profound...
...One can only hope that such a competitive spirit continues to be tempered with "noneconomic values...
...While a chapter on the Information Technology Sector can get bogged down in rather excessive detail, the book ends strongly with discussions of "probable world scenarios...
...University of North Carolina, $24, 230 pp...
...response, and he provides the reader with a few predictions in future areas of Japanese industrial initiatives...
...It is almost an axiom today that the choice of a language (science, mathematics, logic, poetry, o r story) is the choice of a world, an ontology -- and Whitehead fans typically forget that his guiding choice was the language of the Romantic poets...
...Davidson is, on the whole, rather optimistic about the effects of what he sees asa t~versal of American industrial effort...
...If Reaganism is extended to the High Court, then things may change drastically, especially if a new (or perhaps the old) Rehnquist becomes a l~der.Then, what Blasi terms "rootless activism" may be transformed into something much more novel and disquieting than what we have become accustomed to...
...From Professor William Davidson at the University of Virginia there is the / book with the best title -- The Amazing Race...
...Western Technology and the Japanese Ethos, the author gives us an extensive look at the origins of the Japanese productivity zeitgeist...
Vol. 111 • June 1984 • No. 11
