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To many business people and public officials in the West, the postwar success of the Japanese economy is both an impressive and a puzzling achievement. The success is obvious and measurable; the reasons for it, far less so. Seeking explanations, Western observers often fasten with wide-eyed enthusiasm on the mysterious workings of "Japan, Inc.," that fabled edifice of business-government cooperation. To it they ascribe a continuous application of single-minded energy; from it they expect a continual flow of industrial miracles. In this article, Peter Drucker, long recognized as an authority on Japanese business, takes pointed issue with this familiar myth. No such thing exists, he argues, at least not in the form commonly attributed to it. The accomplishments of Japanese industry are the result not of some all-powerful structure but of Japan''s having defined more ably than any other industrial nation some of the essential rules for managing complex organizations in the modern world.