[Sawdring]

Sometimes I like Kissinger and sometimes I don't. I remember when he did this:

Kissinger resigns as head of 9/11 commission

He had too many foreign entanglements to head the commission. I read a couple of his books and he always mistrusted the Japanese compared to the Chinese. If history is a guide, I would think it should be the opposite.

[muawiyah]

No, the Japanese have a long history of turning on a dime ~ of being great warriors involved in warrior things and thinking like warriors, and then in the next moment sitting around cutting craftpaper and folding rice paper.

The Chinese have a track record of being more practical and less prone to total societal transformations.

Part of this arises out of the multi-ethnic character of the Japanese body politic. (The ethnicities are still there but they were reflected in land ownership, class structures, and the position of the ruling caste ~ the royal family and the Daimyo families (mostly descended from the 6th century invaders who came from Siberia to take over both Korea and Japan)).

I doubt Henry studied the Far East enough to have figured out much more than a cursory outline.