WINNERS AND^473management, attention to detail so as to eliminate error (zero defects).
Competitors in older industrial nations woke up late and looked
around for someone to blame—anyone but themselves. Their first ex
cuse was that the Japanese were not playing fair, that they enjoyed ac
cess to foreign markets but refused to open their own. The complaint
had merit, although the Japanese were only following earlier Euro
pean and American examples: protect until you're so strong you don't
have to worry about competition. In the late Tokugawa and Meiji pe
riods (1850s to 1900), when Japan was prevented by treaty from im
posing customs duties, much of the resistance to foreign goods came
from deep-rooted, culturally determined consumer preferences. Also
from bureaucratic regulations that tormented importers; the open-
door period was a school in nontariff barriers to trade. Once Japan was
free to set tariffs, it set them high enough to shelter home industry.
After World War II, world trade policy changed direction. The dis
astrous experience of the thirties, when industrial nations closed doors
and windows and beggared neighbors, had led most economists and
politicians to recognize the advantages of free trade, not only for eco
nomic prosperity but international harmony. Sentiment along these
lines was, to be sure, far from unanimous, but with the United States
leading the way, diplomacy and expertise urged everyone to open up.
America here was following the British precedent of a century earlier:
now that it was the richest, most powerful economy in the world, it re
nounced old protectionist habits; though in a nation of frequent elec
tions and political deals, it was not always easy to find and erase the
heresies. (Some of these vested interests bordered on the ludicrous.
During the war, Americans had learned to make a sort of vermouth to
replace the French and Italian versions. With peace, this infant indus
try found it could not compete with the genuine article. So it called for
protection on national security grounds and almost got it. )
Japan went along with this move to freer trade, but no country was
so effective in enforcing nontariff barriers.* The ingenuity of Japanese
contumacy became legendary. Baseball bats were drilled on arrival to
make sure they were all-wood. High-tech new medical equipment was
generously allowed in, but the procedures using these machines were
excluded from health coverage (the ban was lifted once the Japanese
* On these (malpractices, which many American economists are inclined to discount
or trivialize and others dismiss as "Japan-bashing" (an expression invented to dispose
of awkward charges without having to answer them), see Lincoln, Japan's Unequal
Trade. The word "bashing" is a favorite resort of the intellectual scoundrel.