Japan’s recovery from defeat and destruction in World War II to become the materially wealthiest country in East Asia with the second highest total annual income in the world constitutes a great economic growth success story. Following postwar reconstruction, economic growth was repaid. From 1960 to 1990, Japan’s total GDP grew from 9 to 53 percent of the U.S. total and from 3.5 to 14 percent of the world total. In the 1990s and early 2000s, however, as the U.S. economy surged further ahead, the Japanese economy slowed. Although in 2002 its per capita income (GDP PPP) remained much higher than that of China ($27,380 to $6,790), the total Chinese economic product was 50 percent higher than the Japanese.