Author Archives: Eamonn Fingleton

The Myth of Post-industrialism

By Eamonn Fingleton America’s shuttered factories and the false hope of post-industrialism. (This article first appeared in the November-December 2022 issue of The American Conservative.) In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the American nation … Continue reading

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The rise of East Asia and an epochal threat to American freedoms

By Eamonn Fingleton (This article appears in the January-February 2022 issue of The American Conservative. To read it in pdf form,  please click here.) In April 1998 Sony Corporation chairman Norio Ohga made world headlines with this comment: “The Japanese economy … Continue reading

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The long arm of Japanese industrial policy: Northern Ireland’s experience

In Dublin, Ireland, where I have lived in recent years, many observers view East Asian economics as a remote issue of little interest in Western Europe. As I discovered the other day, it is an attitude shared even by some … Continue reading

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On VJ Day, a hard look at an atom bomb apologist

By Eamonn Fingleton If you Google “Laurens van der Post” and “Hiroshima”, you’ll turn up hundreds of thousands of results. This confirms something that some observers have known for years: that though the South African-born author Laurens van der Post … Continue reading

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Was the Hiroshima bomb justified?

By Eamonn Fingleton It is a question that comes up every year: was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima justified? This year — the 75th anniversary of the attack — the question seems more pertinent than ever. The bombing, which took … Continue reading

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Some of my Forbes commentaries

  If you click through on the headings below, you can get to the articles concerned. Most of them focus on international trade or American decline or both. For my first item, however, I chose something different — partly because it … Continue reading

Posted in American decline, China, Global economy, History, Japan, Manufacturing, Press, Service economy, Sino-Japanese relations, Trade | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Now Blogging at Forbes

I am now blogging at Forbes – you can find my most recent articles here. The RSS Feed for my Forbes blog is here.

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Boeing Goes To Pieces

This article was first published in the January-February 2014 issue of The American Conservative. At a welcoming banquet in Japan in the 1980s, Ford Motor chairman Philip Caldwell received a memorably double-edged compliment. “There is no secret about how we … Continue reading

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The myth of Japan’s “lost decades”: An invitation to Ambassador John Roos

Why do Americans keep misunderstanding Japan? Much of the blame must be placed at the door of the State Department. And that is why last week I extended an unusual offer  to  the current U.S. ambassador to Tokyo. As part … Continue reading

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The Japanese Electronics Industry: A Rebuttal

A message for Richard Katz and other Japan declinists: Look at the big picture. Probably no commentator has been more outspoken in proclaiming the demise of the Japanese economic model than Richard Katz, author of The System that Soured. While many … Continue reading

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