YAOUNDE, Cameroon -- During a conversation at a dinner in Shanghai recently with some Chinese friends, the comment was made that Japanese businessmen in China were now known quite willingly to accept various forms of bribes and kickbacks. The man who was making this comment, who knows Japan quite well through having done a lot of business there, remarked that while in the past Japanese businessmen in China were notorious for giving bribes, they did not normally accept them. Now, however, since they do not know what will happen to them upon their return to Japan -- with lifetime employment no longer secure and career prospects often bleak -- putting together a bit of a nest egg has its attractions.

This is one example, out of myriads, of what is increasingly referred to as the "crisis of capitalism." It is a crisis of confidence, a crisis of legitimacy, a crisis of ethics and a crisis of performance. It is a global phenomenon, to which Japan has contributed unfortunately a good deal.

Capitalism has no great inspirational appeal. One can be a romantic socialist, an idealistic environmentalist, a passionate pacifist, an enlightened humanist, but try putting any of these qualifiers in front of capitalist and it sounds strange, indeed oxymoronic. Great poems, novels, operas have been written about people who die for love, for a noble cause, or for their country, but one cannot imagine an epic on someone dying to enhance shareholder value and with the words "market economy" on his lips.