This paper is divided into three main sections. The first part focuses attention on an examination of Japanese training techniques and analyzes issues relating to the internationalization of Japanese institutions and the reverse movement of American institutions to Japan. Companies from both countries are compared, and differences in approach and emphasis are noted. The second part of the paper examines the general questions of educational competitiveness, addressing the subjects of social studies and foreign languages in the United States and Japan, with emphasis on the problems of foreign language deficits. These subjects and mathematics, science, and native language are examined on the basis of an article published in January 1987, in a major U.S. news magazine comparing performance of schools in Britain, the United States, Japan, France, West Germany, and the Soviet Union. Each country was rated by 22 education experts, and their judgments are commented upon. The third part of the paper focuses on geography as a forgotton subject in the assessment of social studies, with implications for the field of comparative education research. Experts were incorrect in placing the United States ahead of Japan in the areas of social studies and foreign languages. Concluding the paper are 46 endnotes and 2 appendices containing statistical data. (WTH)