As the order of these strategies suggests, the Grand Design places the highest priority on the natural residential regions that will serve as the frontiers of a rich and beautiful living and cultural environment.
True Psychological Independence from the United States
The realization of the Grand Design may help to eradicate the deep complex that the Japanese people have had towards the United States since the end of World War II. In that war, Japan lost to the United States, not to Britain, France or the Netherlands, succumbing in the end to America_s overwhelmingly superior material productivity. Through its rapid economic development in the post-war period, Japan has succeeded in overtaking the United States in one industry after another (including textiles, steel, automobiles, household electric goods, and semiconductors). But industry is a means rather than an end in itself. The ultimate test is how well the products of industry are put to use to enable people to lead happy and fulfilled lives. It is not the productivity of American industry itself but the American way of life that the Japanese people have aspired to, but as long as they lack confidence in the Japanese way of life they are unlikely to achieve psychological independence from the United States. Until then, the mentality of the post-war period will continue. Through the creation of a _beautiful garden island_ based on the twin principles of wealth and civilization Japan can aim to free itself from dependence on America, which has achieved great power status by the conventional means of building economic and military strength. From the perspective of the global environment, the American way of life based on mass production, mass consumption and mass disposal is an abortive flower that bloomed at the end of modern era in western history. Japan has paid the price of imitating it with grave environmental problems such as pollution and waste disposal. The time has come to recognize that the pursuit of this particular way of life as the universal standard for society will lead to the extinction of the human race.
