Hide Ishiguro’s apt comments are most welcome: my analysis was certainly somewhat abbreviated at many points. However I would like to defend myself against the implication that I was supporting the traditional right-wing view in Europe. The essence of the bourgeois viewpoint, in Britain at least, is to blame Britain’s ills on the working class, ignoring the rotten condition of the British capitalist class, and to bestow (envious) praise on the Japanese managerial stratum, while ignoring the Japanese working class. I do not for one moment support this view. Wages play only a small part in determining a country’s competitiveness—if Britain is falling behind now it is not because of high wages for the British workers. My discussion of wages was meant as a criticism of Japanese capitalism from within, not as a Chauvinist comment on Japan’s international position.
It is true (ia) that there is much less concentration of industrial wealth in private hands in Japan than in Britain. However, two points need to be made. First, effective control can be wielded without majority share ownership: Ishida runs Toyota (cars), Ishibashi runs Bridgestone (rubber) and Inayama runs Yawata (steel) as firmly as if they had a 1oo per cent interest. Secondly, the number of people at the top who effectively take decisions is just as small in Japan as in any other capitalist country. Concentration in the sense of personal ownership may be less but concentration in the sense of control is every bit as great.
Measuring disparity (ib) is, 1 agree, difficult. However, Matsushita, although he holds no more than 5 per cent of the shares in the family firm, still manages to haul in a tidy income—£493,991 in 1965, or £1,335 per day. One of his residences is a nice 27-roomed mansion in the country outside Osaka. Besides, the expense account system which Hide Ishiguro refers to has reached an unparalleled level of development in Japan, as the size and prices of the colossal entertainment areas in every Japanese city attest. Naturally, there are no statistics on this, but all commentators admit it is both proportionately and absolutely the biggest expense account economy in the world. This is a privilege of the upper echelons of the society.