61166    However, will it be possible for these visions to become reality without taking drastic steps such as going back to the drawing board and selecting the people's "representatives" for a start?

61167    It will be another matter if we just give up and see no other way but to continue to depend on bureaucracy.

61168    Let us stop being taken by politicians' flattery such as, "Our people are smart. They have always made sensible choices."

61169    As long as we allow ourselves to be misled by such sweet talk, nothing will change with politics.

61170    On a very hot day in the end of August last year, a speaker who was an economic heavy-weight passed away.

61171    It was Mr. Naohiro Amaya who preached the "Chonin Kokka Ron" during his tenure as an official at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.

61172    "As our country is a nation of merchants, we bow our heads like ears of rice plants."

61173    While it was a zareuta (witty poem) that Mr. Amaya wrote while he was in charge of negotiations with the United States at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, his true value lied in "Amaya's view of history."

61174    He analyzed the phase of Japan's economy at a half-century after the end of the war in the style of the writer Ryotaro Shiba by saying, "having kept its eye on clouds over the top of the hill, it has finally arrived at the peak."

61175    As Mr. Amaya stated, Japan ran and ran in a single-minded effort to reach the top with its eye fixed on the clouds at the top of the hill.

61176    However, Japan's methodology was opposite of that of the US.

61177    The US has always supported market fundamentalism, whereas in Japan there was "government control" first.

61178    Since the Meiji era up to present, the practice in Japan has been that as the private economy developed and matured, government control was removed with a focus on the manufacturing industry.

61179    It is believed that it was the exquisite balance between the industrial policy and market economy was the key to the success of Japan.

61180    However, the deregulation did not go forward very well in some areas.