LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- I do not live in Japan, although I first set foot (a rather small foot at 4 years old) on Japanese soil in 1949 and knew the country throughout the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s, when I either lived there temporarily or commuted frequently. My visits this century have been far fewer -- not more than once or twice a year and usually only for a few days (I shall explain the reason for this in a future article). I have no pretense, therefore, to being an "insider."

My column has two main objectives: to provoke (hence, the provocativeness is deliberate) and to see Japan from a distance. I spent a number of years looking at the globe from a Japanese perspective, now I am looking and describing Japan from a global perspective.

And I do spend a good deal of time "globe-trotting." In the first six months of this year, for example, I have been three times to Sarajevo, twice to Ljubljana, once each to Monterrey (Mexico), Dakar, Miami, Shanghai and Beijing, and have made regular trips to London, Paris, Bergen and other Western European cities. All of these trips involve lecturing, or participation in international policy forums, and/or interviews with government officials, business leaders, academics, civil society etc. I am frequently in Geneva (about 40 minutes from Lausanne), the location of the World Trade Organization and numerous other international agencies.