The American bestiary iden- tifies two sub-species of the

Japanese economic ani-
mal. The more familiar is
the company employee,
recognizable by its collar (white or blue) connected by a short leash to its employer, Japan, Inc. The second sub- species, only recently discovered, is the small shopkeeper. Its haunts are marked by the little non-tariff trade barriers that these creatures erect around their abodes, the hundreds of thousands of mom-and-pop stores that dot the Japanese landscape. T...