The Japanese are about to launch a multibillion [dollar] program to impose Western phonetic literacy on the whole of Japan. This program will scrub off the entire face of Japan, eroding its oral culture and its iconology and ritual. The ripping-off of the entire Japanese identity will release a fantastic flood of violence and a corporate question for new identity on a competitive scale unimagined in human history.
Contribution to William Olmans’ On Growth, 1974, p 77
Year: 1974
Chapter:
Japan, Japanese
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan