Having lived and worked in both countries, neither is perfect, and both would do well to adopt a principle or two from the other, but statistically America's economy is a much better performer.
I would not argue with that, but I do not think its honest to automatically assume, Japan, at anything, and everything must be better.
One of the gripes I had with him, which we discussed, had to do with international business we were studying, I wanted to see if we could cover material that spanned from asia (china, south korea, south east asia) to europe, and to Latin America to the US. He addmitted that the international party of the class was a bit to japan/american centric, but also addmitted, in a vague way, his lack of "expertise" in those realms, and when questions came concerning europe, he tried to change the subject back to Japan, it's clear to his students, that his knowledge of business only concerns 2 countries in the world.