and you can stand right there if you want -- but i'm going on.

[terrorcandy]

"Second, the fact that Japan is now a financial quagmire is irrelevant to how it actually achieved a stunning industrial catch-up with the Western world and secured its place among the great industrial powers of our day. To go from literally ashes to being the world's second-largest economy is not a mere academic curiosity that can be swept under the media rug just because things do not look as glamorous as before. What happened in Japan is real, and whatever patterns or strategies the Japanese government followed, especially in the early postwar period, are still of great relevance to backward industrializers."

Saadia Pekkanen
Picking Winners? From Technology Catch-Up to the Space Race in Japan