Japan's big deviation from what "capitalism" has meant since the 1980s, in the US and Britain, at least—which is to say, neoliberal economics—wasn't quite as we

Japan's big deviation from what "capitalism" has meant since the 1980s, in the US and Britain, at least—which is to say, neoliberal economics—wasn't quite as weird to "westerners" at the time it was really at its height, I think, because we hadn't so entirely shifted our Overton window to put neoliberalism smack in the middle. But now, for sure, it doesn't look like what's usually promoted as healthy capitalism around here. Instead of "my half-understanding of Ricardo means I'm sure this will make us all better off" free trade and laissez-faire domestic economic policies, they pursued lopsided (export-focused) trade, plus heavy government intervention and public-private partnerships aimed at accelerating technological development and reducing domestic technical competition among the zaibatsu, in order to make them more competitive in foreign markets. Their "miracle" economy spanning decades involved a ton of government guidance and spending and seemingly-weird shit like deliberately keeping domestic prices higher than they otherwise could have been—with the guidance part maybe being the most surprising bit, to those who've internalized certain limited ideas about what can and (surely!) cannot work well in economic policy. It worked incredibly well and was the first draft of what would become the blueprint for the "Asian Tiger" economic strategy. [EDIT] Big deviation in the postwar era and (kinda) up to today, I mean. Obviously it was doing some different stuff during and before WWII.