What is national character, and how does it differ from custom, manners and fashion? People talk about "the Japanese" as if referring to a nationality with an immutable quality that has existed and will continue to exist throughout the ages; and yet, Japan and the Japanese of the past are so different from what we see here now. Or are they?
In the summer of 1980, I spent a couple of days with a senior editor at a large Japanese publishing house that was bringing out my novel, "The Death of Urashima Taro." We were going over the manuscript by day and discussing Japanese literature and life by night.
"How do you think Japan will change in the 1980s and after?" I asked him.
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