"The questions raised during Japan's difficulties through the 1990s have forced a rethinking of Japan's recent history, and an intense debate about its future course. ... ... The starting premise is that the Japanese system was never so superhuman nor so mysterious as it had appeared. It was a smoothly run machine, all right. But it was a political machine—much like New York City's or Huey Long's apparatus in Louisiana, one that would be quite familiar to students of American history. Japan's machine did, in some respects, manage economic policy with remarkable consensus and efficiency. Yet the costs for holding the system together were huge, in the form of blatant favoritism, monumental amounts of pork, and gold-plated corruption. In many ways, Japan Inc. was a gaudy, inefficient mess."