THE MEIJI RESTORATION 391
better and they were free. Japan, like other advanced industrial coun
tries, eventually solved the problem by turning to oil.)*
Along with government initiatives and a collective commitment to
modernization, this work ethic and these personal values made possi
ble the so-called Japanese economic miracle. It was as though an en
tire population subscribed to bygone samurai values—the banalization
of bushido. It would be a mistake of course to see this belief system as
universal, but any serious understanding of Japanese performance must
build on this phenomenon of culturally determined human capital. It
was the national persona that generated a harvest of ingenious adapta
tions of Western technologies, that made much of litde, that drew ex
traordinary output from people who, in other societies, would have
resorted to massive sabotage and exit. Those who wonder at the resis
tance opposed by Japanese armed forces in the closing months of
World War II and ascribe it to fanaticism or suicidal impulse are miss
ing the point. This is a society whose sense of duty and collective oblig
ation, in all realms, sets it apart from the individualism cultivated in the
West. Individualism was an enormous advantage in the pursuit of eco
nomic wealth in the centuries preceding the Industrial Revolution, not
only in Europe but, as we have seen, in Tokugawa Japan. But once the
Japanese saw the path they wanted to follow, their collective values
proved a fabulous asset. (And a gross temptation.)
A common mistake of would-be scientific history is to assume that
today's virtues must also be tomorrow's and that a given factor, if pos
itive once, must always pay. History doesn't work that way. The re
quirements of start-up and breakthrough economies are not the same
as those of front-runners and cruisers. Japanese success lay in the suc
cessful fight against petrification and nostalgia under Tokugawa and the
pursuit of a national effort under Meiji and successors. Different strate
gies in different circumstances.
- Reading, Japan, p. 51. Japan does not have the oil, but has the money to buy it.
Russia does have the oil, but it does not have the money to install oil burners; or to
pay the coal miners for that matter. As of December 1996, wages were seven months
in arrears.