LOS ANGELES -- For as long as I write this column on Asia, which enters into its 10th year next month, I doubt I'll ever witness anything as amusing or telling as the flareup that took place at the close of the University of Southern California's Asia Conference last month.
Until the very end, the two-plus-day event -- on "Japan's New Economy for Foreign Investors" -- had gone swimmingly. Everyone on the panel, from Toshiaki Ogasawara, the well-known publisher of The Japan Times, to the dynamic USC Annenberg School Dean Geoffrey Cowan, had agreed that Japan's economy was indeed a globalized flower garden opening up to outsiders faster than an overnight burst of spring. The consensus in the large hall at the elegant Shilla Hotel in Seoul was seemingly harmonious -- until a single dissonant voice boomed out.
The consensus-breaker was a normally placid Thai businessman who, like a Buddhist monk, ordinarily kept his true thoughts to himself. But he just couldn't take it any more and lambasted the entire panel for being in denial about the reality of Japan. He recounted a recent all-too-typical business trip in which he encountered at every step Japanese brick walls, closed Japanese minds and zipped-up Japanese markets.