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.
最近我访问东京期间，在不止一个场合，当我问起日本应如何应对manbetx20客户端下载 危机时，对方就如同忍者般敏捷地转到了明治维新前的日本这个话题上去。当人们提到19世纪中叶的这段时期时，常常将其描绘成人类堕落之前的田园世界。当时美国军舰队还没有敲开日本封闭的国门，日本还不需要可卑地到世界上去讨生活。曾经担任日本财务省次官的神原英姿(Eisuke Sakakibara)有个令人印象深刻的别称：“日元先生”。在他的描述中，当的日本安宁、有序、自然而友好。他表示：“这就是明治维新前日本的模样。我们应该恢复那种面貌。”