The Japanese industrial expansion since World War II has been considerable and has been noted by other industrialized nations around the world. Japan began from a position far behind the West, with her infrastructure devastated, and since has achieved a position of economic preeminence, challenging the United States and other industrialized nations for world leadership in innovation and industrial production, especially in high-tech industries of great import on the international scene today and into the future. The U.S. has recently started giving Japan greater attention in order to discern the management styles used in Japan and to emulate them to the greatest degree possible, and the increase in Japanese investment in the U.S., with the opening of a certain number of Japanese manufacturing companies in the U.S., primarily to produce Japanese cars. At the end of World War II, the Japanese economy had been devastated. The economic infrastructure of the country was destroyed; the government was discredited and under the control of foreign military leaders; and two cities had been reduced completely to rubble by the atomic bomb, Japan being the only nation ever to face the consequences of a nuclear attack. Today, Japan is one of the leading industrialized nations in the world, and in high-technology it is probably the leading country in the international marketplace. The foundation for the Japanese economic miracle was laid in the period after World War II when there was a transition of power from the Allied troops and military commanders who ruled the country as an occupation force until convinced that Japan had a viable government committed to democratic principles and prepared to work to create a strong economic base for the rebuilding of the country.
Japan was opened to the West in 1853 when Admiral Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay and found a country still in a feudal stage of development. This was a country that had isolate...