"From another point of view, a new situation now seems to be arising in which Japan's prosperity is going to be incorporated into the expanding potential power of both production and consumption in Asia at large"
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Oe’s sentence reads like a diplomat’s memo, and that’s the point: the blandness is doing rhetorical work. “From another point of view” isn’t a friendly aside; it’s a pivot away from the familiar Japanese self-story of exceptionalism and postwar redemption. He’s inviting the reader to stop treating Japan’s prosperity as a national endpoint and start seeing it as a movable component inside a larger regional machine.
The key verb is “incorporated.” Not “shared,” not “celebrated,” not even “integrated” in a feel-good, multicultural sense. Incorporated suggests absorption into a system with its own momentum. Japan’s wealth becomes input: capital, technology, managerial practices, cultural influence. It also becomes output: demand, consumption patterns, and the soft power that comes from setting standards for what “modern” looks like. Oe’s framing is quietly double-edged. “Expanding potential power” sounds optimistic, but it’s power in the aggregate, not necessarily justice, stability, or democratic flourishing. Production and consumption are treated as twin engines, implying that Asia’s rise isn’t only factories but markets-and that prosperity can be as politically consequential as armies.
Context matters: Oe writes in the long shadow of Japan’s imperial past and its uneasy postwar identity, when economic success risked becoming moral alibi. The subtext is a warning dressed as reportage: Japan can’t pretend it’s merely an island economy with a unique destiny. Its prosperity will be entangled in Asia’s ascent, with all the obligations, frictions, and historical reckonings that entanglement brings.
The key verb is “incorporated.” Not “shared,” not “celebrated,” not even “integrated” in a feel-good, multicultural sense. Incorporated suggests absorption into a system with its own momentum. Japan’s wealth becomes input: capital, technology, managerial practices, cultural influence. It also becomes output: demand, consumption patterns, and the soft power that comes from setting standards for what “modern” looks like. Oe’s framing is quietly double-edged. “Expanding potential power” sounds optimistic, but it’s power in the aggregate, not necessarily justice, stability, or democratic flourishing. Production and consumption are treated as twin engines, implying that Asia’s rise isn’t only factories but markets-and that prosperity can be as politically consequential as armies.
Context matters: Oe writes in the long shadow of Japan’s imperial past and its uneasy postwar identity, when economic success risked becoming moral alibi. The subtext is a warning dressed as reportage: Japan can’t pretend it’s merely an island economy with a unique destiny. Its prosperity will be entangled in Asia’s ascent, with all the obligations, frictions, and historical reckonings that entanglement brings.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
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