Lessons from Experiments with Deliberative Policy-making Localizing Public Dispute Resolution in Japan.

The instigators tend to be the educated middle class and disgruntled low-level officials, what one might call «the soft underbelly of the elite» – and the soft underbelly is hurting. Since the publication of Lost Japan in Japanese, I am sometimes asked to speak on panels or write for specialist publications, even to act as a consultant to government agencies. What I have found is that the mid-levels of many organizations – mostly people in their forties – are disillusioned and frustrated by their inability to make changes. Mid-level disillusionment is a highly subjective area. There are no statistics on this subject, and elite-track officials and company employees don't write books and articles, which leaves me with very little in the way of published quotable material. I have only my own experiences to go by. In 1994, I wrote an article lambasting the dreary displays and shoddy interiors of the Ueno National Museum. Soon afterward, at an opening, I met one of the top officials in the agency that runs the museum ...»