On a visit to Tokyo this week, on more than one occasion when I asked how Japan should tackle the economic crisis, my interlocutor turned with ninja-like alacrity to the topic of pre-Meiji Japan. The period before American warships forced the country open in the mid-19th century was regularly invoked as a prelapsarian idyll, a time when Japan did not have to deal with the grubby business of earning its crust in the world. Eisuke Sakakibara, the former vice-finance minister indelibly branded Mr Yen, describes a country that was peaceful, orderly, unspoilt and friendly. “That was what pre-Meiji Japan was like. We should go back to that,” he says.
最近我訪問東京期間，在不止一個場合，當我問起日本應如何應對經濟危機時，對方就如同忍者般敏捷地轉到了明治維新前的日本這個話題上去。當人們提到19世紀中葉的這段時期時，常常將其描繪成人類墮落之前的田園世界。當時美國軍艦隊還沒有敲開日本封閉的國門，日本還不需要可卑地到世界上去討生活。曾經擔任日本財務省次官的神原英姿(Eisuke Sakakibara)有個令人印象深刻的別稱：「日元先生」。在他的描述中，當的日本安寧、有序、自然而友好。他表示：「這就是明治維新前日本的模樣。我們應該恢復那種面貌。」