[yetanotherloss]

You jest but my friend is a professor in Toyama, Japan, and makes the occasional dark joke about moving the people out for a few days and having the US raze it again from time to time.

Sometimes getting rid of ossified organizations is a good thing, but there are probably better ways than high explosives.

[Aloha]

Arguably the Occupation of Japan was more important than the carpet bombing for changing Japanese culture.

We brought in many new ideas - both in business and in government - most of which persist in some form today - and the Japanese in many cases have taken those ideas, refined them mightily, infused them with some Japanese culture - and re-exported them to us.

The best example of this that I can think of, is Kaizen - the various scientific management techniques exported to Japan by W. Edwards Deming - which was re-exported to us as Kaizen.

[nerdponx]

This concept is related to the idea of "creative destruction": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction