Japan, Refutation of Neoliberalism

From what I've read the current financial crisis has pretty much started the end of the lifetime employment model. It should also be noted that in the "good old days" jobs were dividing to high gain low risk (e.g. the lifetime ones) and low gain high risk. Those in the latter category are the ones who's pension records were lost by the prefectures.

Other observations: a lot of Japanese techies spent weekends in Korea on the QT helping Samsung etc. get up to speed on producing DRAMs.

Leaving Japan for very long has traditionally been a form of permanent exile. Those who come back aren't viewed as "Japanese" anymore.

In the dozen or so years I spent in and around the MIT community, I knew of exactly two undergrads from Japan, which is pretty remarkable given how attractive you'd think it would be to study there.

Then again, to a great degree the Japanese model for lifetime jobs was a total focus on the college entrance exam. That's all that really mattered, e.g. if you wanted to work for the Finance Ministry you'd get into e.g. Tokyo University, partly chill out for four years, and then enter the "real world" (such as it is). Doctors do a 3? year vocational college program (no liberal arts), but I don't know how much engineers and scientists learn their stuff in college.

For scientists it hardly matters, if they want to do real work in their prime they've got to emigrate since seniority rules in academia. It's telling that until last year or so every Japanese Nobelist had to emigrate to do the work that won him the prize.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Japan, and the closing item sounds about right to me:

"Anti-semitic books are usually regarded as a type of 'Tondemo bon' (トンデモ本, dodgy/outrageous books), which covers a very wide range of occultist subjects, such as UFO's and psychic power, and generally taken very lightly."

Japan is also less pagan than you're think, e.g. there are a surprising number of recent Christian Prime Ministers.

Calling it "non-capitalist" may go a bit too far as well.