der the Tokugawa, which may or may not be valid; however, their more intriguing analysis is that, over the long cultural haul the Tokugawa Period may have had implications not just for non-Japanese and "may have resulted in somewhat unsustainable views of their own culture by Japanese" (Soutar, Graineger, and Hedges 213; emphasis added). That would help explain Japan's susceptibility to influence from the West during the modern period.
One area of significant western influence on Japan is economic. This can be linked to the postwar occupation and US-financed recovery of the country. However, there is a view that emergence of an increasing valorization of individualism in Japan can be associated with western-style economic development. To be sure, distinctions have been made between western-style capitalism (à la Max Weber's theory about the Protestant ethic and capitalist dynamics) and what Berger refers to as the "communal capitalism" of East Asia, which valorizes conformity over rugged individualism. Against Berger's idea is the view that the modern
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