Kudos to May for her neo-industrial strategy for the UK

AS SOMEONE who has lived for 25 years in Japan where monozukuri (manufacturing) has been a tradition and almost a religion since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, I was happy to learn on a recent visit to my home country, England, that our new prime minister, Theresa May, has opted to emulate Japan in this regard.

One could argue rather that Japan copied Britain since England was the "cradle" of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. But the country's former world- renowned manufacturing skills were not so much "lost" as thrown away in the decades following World War II.

Britain's great machinery-making, shipbuilding, motor vehicle manufacturing and other industrial skills were yielded in those years to Japan (and, increasingly, nowadays to China and others) in the naive and irresponsible belief that the future lay in service industries.