As Japan moves toward the twenty-fi

As Japan moves toward the twenty-first century, the social costs of this process may not be too different from those already experienced in the US - rising homelessness and poverty, greater social stratification crystalized into classbased neighbourhood formations, and high rates of chronic structural unemployment. In the post-second world war years, the majority of Japanese people appear to have come to feel themselves to be somehow culturally and economically immune from such ‘western’ phenomena. Cultural differences are certainly important, but what remains to be seen is whether the repeated invocation of the formula of achieving social objectives through public sustenance of large-scale corporations will be Japan’s high road into the future or the cul-de-sac of the Japanese miracle.