• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1099 0

was very good at that- One journalist, praising the Japanese for their efficiency in keeping secrets, commented, «Patents are only for a time; a secret is forever.» But in the new economy people don't have time to wait forever. Time moves too fast; today's secret is tomorrow's failed idea. The explosion of software and new Internet technologies bursting out of Silicon Valley has been a collaborative effort in which a young engineer calls up his friend and says, «I have these parts of the puzzle, but I'm missing other parts. What do you think?» His friend listens, supplies another piece, and everyone benefits. In Japan, such free and easy give-and-take is nearly inconceivable. Hobbled by secrecy, new ideas in Japan will continue to come slowly – and in the new economy there is no greater sin than to be slow.

One could say that Japan poses a fascinating challenge to the very idea of the modern state at the start of the twenty-first century. Information – its processing, analysis, collection, and distribution – stands at the core of postindustrial technology. Or does it? Japan has made a big bet otherwise. Wisdom in the West has it that high quantities of precision data and the ability to analyze them are what make banks and investment houses succeed, nuclear power plants run safely, universities function well, archaeologists build up a credible picture of the past, engineers design efficiently, doctors prescribe drugs properly, factories produce safe cars and hygienic milk, and citizens play a responsible role in politics. From that perspective, one would expect that the lack of such information – a preponderance of fuzzy information – would become an increasing liability.

The value of factual data would seem to be only common sense, and for all that traditional Japan valued the ideal above the real, canny merchants in Edo days well understood the importance of keeping their accounts straight. The seventeenth-century novelist Saikaku comments, «I have yet to see the man who can record entries in his ledger any which way or ignore details in his calculations and still make a successful living.» One could argue that the modern Japanese bureaucracy's utter disdain for facts is something new-a tenet from traditional culture that was carried to extremes. It could result from something as simple as the fact that officials got away with it. In Saikaku's day, sloppy accounting soon dragged a shopkeeper into trouble. In present-day Japan, bureaucracies with unlimited funding and no public accountability can hide their mistakes for decades.

Nevertheless, authoritarian leaders in East Asia favor the modern Japanese model of development. They see merit in having the bureaucracy keep information secret and manipulate it for the national good, not letting the public get involved in wasteful disputes over policy. For these leaders, freedom of information is chaotic, controlled information more efficient. Until now, the dialogue on this issue has been carried on between Asian authoritarians and Western liberals largely in political terms: whether people deserve or have a human right to be informed. In Japan's case, it might be helpful to disregard these political aspects for a moment and question whether such control of information really does make government and business more efficient. Those who favor information managed by the bureaucracy assume that while the general public stays in the dark, all-knowing officials will guide the nation with an unerring hand.

For Japan, the results of such a policy are now coming in, and they indicate that, far from being all-knowing, Japan's bureaucracy no longer has a clear understanding of the activities under its control. What we see is officialdom that is confused, lazy, and behind the times, leading to incredible blunders in the management of everything from nuclear plants to drug regimens and pension funds. Until a decade ago, very few people noticed that there was anything going wrong in Japan; rather, the emphasis was on Japan's «efficiency.» It is now becoming possible to see what happens