This lecture will begin with a look at the political turmoil and unrest in Japan during the 1950s and 1960s that were resolved—or at least sublimated—by the 1970 paradigm. The early 1970s, just as this paradigm was taking root, witnessed major political and economic crises, the so-called “Nixon shocks” and oil shocks, which together formed a major turning point for postwar Japan. We will finish up by examining the bubble of the late 1980s and the crisis of national confidence that followed it in the 1995.