In the background there looks to be a western european woman, no doubt selling some sort of “Oprah” approved product.

If Japan and China want to butt heads over nationalistic exceptionalism then so be it…Go Jiang faction!(It also seems in accord with Chung) But at least here it seems the picture is worth 1000 english words, but one Japanese term: Muda.

Everything about the picture from the tile floor to the interior warehouse style heating/cooling ducts to the neon lights speaks to a sort of stuck in a Wal-Mart, world is flat, end of history. (everything about the products offered for sale, and their intended function/ utility, seems peaceful).

That all these products seem to exist in a sort of sterile market, where no shoppers are seen lends a different aspect to the picture, one where perhaps western branding of modernity and its indicia has been impossed upon China, by its desire to manufacture and produce for the west. (Where are the chineese who are buying it?) So China equals tons of inventory…low consumer demand? (mismatched products?)

“To get a taste of how impassioned the anti-Japan protests in China have gotten, thankfully so far without any Japanese getting killed.”

So now it is okay to use words like “Impassioned” and other exagerations without an actual body count?

End of History.

The “I dreamt that I was Hitler” is just plain strange…It only makes sense as an effort to extend rhetorical exageration of relatively peaceful conditions. It is also the sort of “poetry” that would be banned in Germany(against provisitions of the German Constitution, bright line eternal rule against dreaming you are Hitler.).

Of course Germany, Japan and China are 2/3rds of the Axis and 2/3rds of world manufacturing. The wars they are most likely to engage in according to the economists would be trade wars, especially given the fact that all three to varying degree “suffer” from government stimulated productivity/overproduction. (Thus the key part of the picture, lack of chinese consumers…too much indicia of the western ideal/consumer demand). Tons of products not enough customers or “dollars”. Which makes sense in a way because Germany, Japan and China to a lesser extent are really grand projects of american exceptionalism(monetary system) post world war II.

The Cannon I suppose is important to China the more nationalistic version…but it might soon object to american style stores too full of products and inventory (so much inventory that you can build permanent monuments out of it…the real reason american stores have fewer cannons, it is just an inneficient use of shelf space+inventory(partial agreement with the Japanese on Muda.)

Also the chinese hate the Japanese because the Chinese have “huge advantages” in inventory and production. But the Japanese denigrate all of this as Muda. While Japanese Muda is at least somewhat arguable, China hasn’t figured a way to make this exceptionalism argument. So all of China’s virtues are mocked as examples of Muda.

Basically “production” without a consumer, parts without a product, things designed without a proper spec… But the Japanese and here Toyota, Honda et al, don’t really let the Chinese compete, and the new models they come out with aren’t designed to use Chinese inventory (which was often times produced via corporate espionage). China equals millions of parts, no unified vision as to how to put them together. China =warehouses full of inventory that is almost the “right stuff” in a line of manufacturing business where precision counts for more than it does in Aristotle.

China is thus the anti-lean manufacturing model, and thus the Japanese in addition to being regional export competitors are also propigators of a general philosophy of technical precision that denigrates every aspect of the Chinese economy as Muda.

Of more importance than the cannon is the fact that all those products are sitting on a shelf and exist in such a quantity that a cannon could be made of them. Overproduction, waiting, unnecessary inventory…three aspects of Muda condensed into a single picuture in a store without customers! An epic failure which brings shame to the Chineese people and its flag, compounded by the presence of european models presumably selling goods designed for China? (no in fact, all the goods are designed for Japan, or the U.S. or Germany.. export economy goods insulting to Li and Chung, This is alienated Muda, that strangely enough is non-alienable(sellable).

So in a trade war type of way one could say that the Japanese concept of Muda is very much in tension with China’s economic reality and the principle of Li and Chung. So china hasn’t found its angle, its exceptionalism, its pricing power, and so much of Japanese exceptionalism is Chinese weakness.