Chalmers Johnson “had a penchant for upending conventional wisdom”—and for upsetting those who espoused it, said The National Interest. His book MITI and the Japanese Miracle was considered heretical at the time of its 1982 publication for its suggestion that Japan’s economy didn’t follow the U.S. free-market model but was instead a kind of “hybrid capitalism,” subject to extensive government planning and control. Today, Johnson’s view has become the conventional wisdom.
Johnson developed an interest in Asia while serving in the Navy during the Korean War, said The Japan Times. He went on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, with a thesis that examined the Chinese communist revolution. He concluded that the revolutionaries won over the Chinese peasantry not with communist ideology but with appeals to hyper-nationalism.
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