“America, determined that Japan should never again pose the sort of difficulties so recently and painfully worked through, set about restructuring the national psyche. America did not, however, follow through. The full-on demolition of existing power structures and their replacement with alien, egalitarian equivalents was suspended in the face of a perceived threat from communism. ¶ Japan entered the postwar world as though it were two creatures constrained within the same skin. The sheer cumulative trauma, these ongoing, unimaginable and violent time shifts, had produced a mutant culture. The Japan that emerged in the latter half of the century to out-manufacture, out-market and out-sell the Americans was in large part the inadvertent creation of America. ¶ The Americans, still thinking themselves the victors, had unknowingly generated a cargo cult that knew how to win.” - × × ×