Mitsuaki Okabe, an economist at Keio university, has predicted that Japan will make the radical restructuring necessary to change.

He told the Australian Canberra times that "...The pressure for fundamental economic reform was building in Japan and at some point there would be an explosion of change... It will happen whether we like it or not and there will be costs.... There will be a loss of stability in employment, a less harmonious society and an increase in self-centred, egotistical attitudes..."

Coming one day after our peice yesterday on continuing bail-outs of real estate companies in Japan, Okabe's comments are more positive, and also underline that the key barrier to change is not only business culture, but also culture as a whole.

"...The problem is that we have failed to adjust to the new environment where the globalised economy is more competitive - our systems are not designed to produce innovative new products and we can no longer survive, as we have in the past, by taking existing products and improving on them..."

He called the Japanese system, "...where banks and manufacturing companies maintained powerful ties with a system of cross shareholding, as a barrier to innovation in the past. These cosy relationships had produced such phenomena as lifetime employment and an economic system that operated differently from that in the West..."

But is it necessary in a global world to be self-centered and egotistical. It's a big change for a Japan that became successful on the heels of life-time employment, corporates as employee nanny's, and an incestuous relationship between government and leading business powers? To the Japanese mindset that may be the perception which shows that changing values are even harder than changing structures. Developing new positive Japanese values that also embrace the new economic order are just as key though less ephemeral. It surely can be done without becoming more egotistical and self-centered, but instead be helping individuals become more inependent from their source of income, and developing their own positive personal values beyond the security of corporate safety nets. It will take as long as it did to build the previous culture, but it must happen...