Daily Inspiration Quote by Lawrence R. Klein

The line reads like the blandest kind of academic travel note, but its real work is credentialing: Klein is quietly establishing that his relationship to Japan (and what he still calls the "Far East") isn’t a late-life fascination or armchair curiosity. It began in 1960, on institutional business, at a major university, on a "joint model building project" - the kind of technocratic collaboration that, in the postwar world, doubled as soft diplomacy.

The intent is almost defensive in its modesty. Klein doesn’t claim expertise through cultural immersion or ideology; he claims it through shared tools and shared problems. "Model building" signals a faith in quantification at the height of Cold War modernity, when economics was becoming less a branch of political argument and more a portable technology. You could export forecasting methods the way you exported factories: as a promise that growth could be managed, predicted, and optimized.

The subtext is also about status. To say Osaka University in 1960 is to situate himself inside Japan’s rapid reconstruction and its bid to be seen as a first-tier scientific and economic partner. His "continuing interest" sounds personal, but it’s also a narrative of professional reach: an American economist tracking the center of gravity moving toward the Pacific.

That dated phrase "the entire Far East" matters. It betrays an older map of the world, one in which Asia is defined relative to Europe and America. Klein is offering openness, but from the vantage point of a mid-century Western expert whose curiosity travels along the routes of institutions, models, and influence.