This innovative work demystifies the Japanese economy by considering it as a strategic system. Showing how the Japanese "miracleaEURO is actively planned, directed, and implemented by a constellation of institutions, government policymakers, and big business, Huber argues that Japan, Inc., can best be compared to a modern military system rather than exclusively to a free-market economy. The author highlights particularly the similarity between Japan's strategic economy and some of the structures and policy dynamics of the U.S. military and shows how Japans economic strategies have the capability of adversely affecting its trading partners.

Originally published in 1990 by the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute. From April to June 1945, U.S. and Imperial Japanese Army (lJA) forces fought fiercely for control of the island of Okinawa. The Japanese Imperial General Headquarters (IGHO) had determined after U.S. strikes on Truk in February 1944 that sooner or later the Americans would seize Okinawa as a forward base for the invasion of Japan. The IJA 32d Army was established on Okinawa in March 1944 to forestall this eventuality and immediately faced the challenge of how to deal not only with superior numbers of U.S. troops but also with overwhelming American firepower by air, land, and sea. The 32d Army's innovative staff had one year in which to invent and implement a new form of underground warfare that would be proof against the Americans' abundant bombs and tanks. Their methods were devised in the field in defiance both of the IJA's traditional light infantry doctrine and of IGHO's preoccupation with air power.

In the long history of warfare, a recurring theme is the combined use of regular and irregular forces to pursue victory. The American colonists relied upon regular Continental Army troops and local militia in their war for independence. British troops commanded by Wellington fought alongside Spanish peasant guerrillas against Napoleon in Spain. The Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong organized local militia units, regional forces, and a regular army for use in their struggle to topple the Nationalist government. In these and many other cases, the practice of employing regular and irregular forces together was not only applied, but also instrumental in bringing victory to the side that at the beginning of the conflict seemed clearly inferior to its opponent.