LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- It is natural when one has domestic problems to look for foreign scapegoats. The United States' paranoia over Japan's trade surplus and foreign-investment binge in the 1980s is a good example. While most nations reflect this general syndrome up to a point, the Japanese seem to be pretty much in a league of their own. What dispirits a lot of foreign observers of Japan as well as many disaffected Japanese is the absence of vigorous internal debate within establishment circles about the country's homegrown problems. Talk to officials and they are almost invariably on the defensive. Talk to lots of other people and they are almost invariably resigned and often defeatist.

A recent example of this pattern of looking for external scapegoats arises from the decision by the credit-rating agencies to downgrade Japan. The hysteria it provoked in Japanese official circles, the expressions of great grievance and outrage, were, I believe, a welcome opportunity for policymakers to once again indulge in external witch-hunting as an excuse for domestic paralysis.

The director of public relations for the Ministry of Finance, Yosuke Kawakami, wrote a very long letter of spiteful self-righteous indignation to the Financial Times berating the credit agencies for "undermining their credibility" ("Rating agencies may be undermining their own credibility," June 12).