The Secret of Success

Japan has been able to achieve such phenomenal progress as compared to its conqueror, that the latter has ultimately been forced to concede to Japan’s superiority. The acceptance of reality is the greatest secret of success in this life. Yet, how many do we see around us who persist in seeking success through a denial of reality! An Economic Pearl Harbour In December 1941, during the World War II, the U.S.A.’s top naval base, Pearl Harbour, on the Pacific island of Hawaii, was attacked without prior warning by the Japanese. So severe was the bombardment that, of the hundred odd naval vessels anchored there, only a handful survived. This had the immediate effect of bringing America into the war as one of the Allied Powers. Up till that point, the U.S.A. had no direct involvement in hostilities save as a supplier of armaments to the enemies of Japan. The Japanese attack had been uncalled for and ill-considered, but they did not realize the magnitude of their error until 1945, when America finally took its revenge by dropping the first ever atom bombs on two of Japan’s major industrial centres, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thus annihilating Japan as a military power. The Americans then kept a tight military and political hold over Japan. But the latter country, astonishingly, recuperated from the horror of large-scale atomic devastation, and proceeded to adapt itself to an entirely new set of circumstances. Before the Second World War, it had relied on the power of weapons. But after witnessing the destruction they caused, it relinquished their use and set about reconstructing the country along entirely peaceful lines. Having once adopted this course, the Japanese showed great versatility, resilience and assiduity, and their success has been such that Japan is now