A sign greets passengers arriving at Japan's second-biggest airport: "Welcome to Japan, an International Country in an International World." Just two problems with the notice -- one minor, one major.
First, it's written in Japanese, leaving anyone who speaks anything else in the dark. Second, the message itself -- that Japan, the world's No. 2 economy, is an international country.
It is, by many measures, and certainly thinks of itself as such. Japan maintains close diplomatic relations in all corners of the Earth, its people are avid world travelers and the yen is one of three truly global currencies. And in times of war, Japan is one of the first allies to which superpowers like the US turn for support.
Yet, looked at another way, the reality is very different.
For all Tokyo's pledges to open up its economy to a world dying to get inside, Japan Inc is still struggling to keep things as closed as possible. The reason: Japan has more to fear from globalization than virtually any other nation.
"One cannot underestimate the shock that true globalization would bring to a social system and economy like Japan's, which depends so much on being cut off from the world," Alex Kerr argues in his book, Dogs and Demons When you think of nations vulnerable to globalization, it's developing ones like Indonesia and Nigeria that come to mind. But Japan's unique brand of financial socialism puts it at even greater risk -- or so officials here think. Truth is, Japan has much to gain from opening its economy.
Tokyo has never had much use for competition -- certainly not from abroad. Keeping out imports, or taxing them beyond affordability, is how it keeps the whole enterprise together. That way, companies, no matter how monopolistic or inefficient, can employ the masses and pay them handsomely. Unemployment stays manageable and Japan Inc remains in business.
The fear is that letting in the raw forces of globalization -- capital, goods and people moving freely among countries -- would disrupt things and hurt living standards. Politicians also fear giving foreigners too much influence will disrupt Japan Inc and lessen its control over the enterprise.
It says everything about Japan's fear of globalization, for example, that its first and only free trade agreement is with tiny Singapore. The island nation of 4 million has no agricultural sector and, therefore, isn't a threat to one of Japan's most protected industries.
The trade pact is but one example of how "Fortress Japan" remains largely intact in a world being joined together by globalization. At its core, the concept of free trade is about countries scrapping uncompetitive industries and focusing on what they can produce efficiently and profitably. If you can import textiles, rubber or vegetables cheaper than you can make them, do it. Japan, in many ways, still fights that logic.
"The arrival of knowledge-based economies, combined with the rapid pace of globalization and the profound changes it's engendered, demand flexibility and adaptability which Japan hasn't yet achieved," says Donald Johnston, secretary-general of the OECD.
Take rice, long a symbol of the nation's closed markets and its cultural roots. You'd think that Japan's nutritional staple would be affordable, but it's anything but. The nation's powerful rice industry -- with help from the government -- doggedly protects local producers. Japan's farm subsidies are the highest in the developed world, a dynamic that shuts out other Asian rice producers and forces Japanese households to pay as much as eight times the going global market price.
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