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| Sequel to the Debate that Never Was |
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Friday, September 26th, 2003
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For more than four years I have offered a challenge to my many intellectual opponents: meet me for a debate on the true state of the Japanese economy. Days before the event finally seemed like happening, a glitch arose.
As my friends in Washington already know, the Koll-Fingleton debate had to be postponed because of a last-minute glitch. The problem concerned the funding needed for my prospective opponent Jesper Koll to travel from Tokyo to Washington (where the event was to have been hosted by the Congressional Economic Leadership Institute). Unfortunately an understanding that Koll's travel money would be forthcoming from a wealthy American donor broke down at the last minute.
All this is a bit disappointing, not least because by the time the funding glitch emerged I had already bought my ticket and was committed to a fairly expensive trip. The good news is that we are rescheduling the event and this time Koll has undertaken to travel at the expense of his employer, Merrill Lynch. Watch this space for details of the new schedule.
For me the rescheduling has a silver lining in that I hope to be in much better voice than I would have been on September 10. Since the early summer I had suffered a strange voice defect that resulted in intermittent failure of my voice box, particularly when I tried to project my voice beyond conversational level. I have now had major surgery and the evidence is that the problem has been solved.
[Medical footnote: All this has rather dented my faith in Japanese medicine. My voice problem began after I contracted a strange viral illness in late May. The symptoms were similar to but much more severe than influenza -- and in particular they involved a rather alarming choking cough which persisted for a month. Despite much laryngoscopy, doctors in Tokyo failed to diagnose the cause of my speech problem. I took the opportunity of the trip to the U.S. to get a second opinion. Within ten seconds of putting a laryngoscope down my throat, a world famous ear-nose-throat specialist in New York diagnosed subluxation of the crico-arytenoid joint -- basically dislocation of part of my vocal mechanism. This diagnosis was immediately confirmed by his colleague. The remedy was surgery which I underwent last week. As I understand it, my full vocal functions should recover within a few weeks. It may take longer for my faith in Japanese medicine to recover.)
Eamonn Fingleton is the author most recently of In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity (Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
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Contact Eamonn Fingleton |
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