Japan after the Economic Miracle

Japan after the Economic Miracle PDF Author: P. Bowles
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401142777
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
As Japan comes to grips with a decade of economic malaise after its spectacular post-war growth record, how will Japanese society react? Contributors to this volume examine the challenges ahead for Japan in the fields of politics, economics, sociology, environment and business. This multidisciplinary inquiry looks for areas of continuity and for new directions in government, business and social policy and practice. Also examined is how Western students should approach the study of Japan; what new directions should institutions take to ensure that students learn about the `real' Japan? Written by Canadian academics, the articles in this volume will be of interest to academics and policy-makers studying or teaching about contemporary Japan.

Japan after the Economic Miracle

Japan after the Economic Miracle PDF Author: P. Bowles
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401142777
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Get Book

Book Description
As Japan comes to grips with a decade of economic malaise after its spectacular post-war growth record, how will Japanese society react? Contributors to this volume examine the challenges ahead for Japan in the fields of politics, economics, sociology, environment and business. This multidisciplinary inquiry looks for areas of continuity and for new directions in government, business and social policy and practice. Also examined is how Western students should approach the study of Japan; what new directions should institutions take to ensure that students learn about the `real' Japan? Written by Canadian academics, the articles in this volume will be of interest to academics and policy-makers studying or teaching about contemporary Japan.

MITI and the Japanese Miracle

MITI and the Japanese Miracle PDF Author: Chalmers Johnson
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 080476560X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 818

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Book Description
The focus of this book is on the Japanese economic bureaucracy, particularly on the famous Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), as the leading state actor in the economy. Although MITI was not the only important agent affecting the economy, nor was the state as a whole always predominant, I do not want to be overly modest about the importance of this subject. The particular speed, form, and consequences of Japanese economic growth are not intelligible without reference to the contributions of MITI. Collaboration between the state and big business has long been acknowledged as the defining characteristic of the Japanese economic system, but for too long the state's role in this collaboration has been either condemned as overweening or dismissed as merely supportive, without anyone's ever analyzing the matter. The history of MITI is central to the economic and political history of modern Japan. Equally important, however, the methods and achievements of the Japanese economic bureaucracy are central to the continuing debate between advocates of the communist-type command economies and advocates of the Western-type mixed market economies. The fully bureaucratized command economies misallocate resources and stifle initiative; in order to function at all, they must lock up their populations behind iron curtains or other more or less impermeable barriers. The mixed market economies struggle to find ways to intrude politically determined priorities into their market systems without catching a bad case of the "English disease" or being frustrated by the American-type legal sprawl. The Japanese, of course, do not have all the answers. But given the fact that virtually all solutions to any of the critical problems of the late twentieth century--energy supply, environmental protection, technological innovation, and so forth--involve an expansion of official bureaucracy, the particular Japanese priorities and procedures are instructive. At the very least they should forewarn a foreign observer that the Japanese achievements were not won without a price being paid.

America and the Japanese Miracle

America and the Japanese Miracle PDF Author: Aaron Forsberg
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807860662
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
In this book, Aaron Forsberg presents an arresting account of Japan's postwar economic resurgence in a world polarized by the Cold War. His fresh interpretation highlights the many connections between Japan's economic revival and changes that occurred in the wider world during the 1950s. Drawing on a wealth of recently released American, British, and Japanese archival records, Forsberg demonstrates that American Cold War strategy and the U.S. commitment to liberal trade played a central role in promoting Japanese economic welfare and in forging the economic relationship between Japan and the United States. The price of economic opportunity and interdependence, however, was a strong undercurrent of mutual frustration, as patterns of conflict and compromise over trade, investment, and relations with China continued to characterize the postwar U.S.-Japanese relationship. Forsberg's emphasis on the dynamic interaction of Cold War strategy, the business environment, and Japanese development challenges "revisionist" interpretations of Japan's success. In exploring the complex origins of the U.S.-led international economy that has outlasted the Cold War, Forsberg refutes the claim that the U.S. government sacrificed American commercial interests in favor of its military partnership with Japan.

Women and the Economic Miracle

Women and the Economic Miracle PDF Author: Mary C. Brinton
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520075634
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This lucid, hard-hitting book explores a central paradox of the Japanese economy: the relegation of women to low-paying, dead-end jobs in a workforce that depends on their labor to maintain its status as a world economic leader. Drawing upon historical materials, survey and statistical data, and extensive interviews in Japan, Mary Brinton provides an in-depth and original examination of the role of gender in Japan's phenomenal postwar economic growth. Brinton finds that the educational system, the workplace, and the family in Japan have shaped the opportunities open to female workers. Women move in and out of the workforce depending on their age and family duties, a great disadvantage in a system that emphasizes seniority and continuous work experience. Brinton situates the vicious cycle that perpetuates traditional gender roles within the concept of human capital development, whereby Japanese society "underinvests" in the capabilities of women. The effects of this underinvestment are reinforced indirectly as women sustain male human capital through unpaid domestic labor and psychological support. Brinton provides a clear analysis of a society that remains misunderstood, but whose economic transformation has been watched with great interest by the industrialized world.

The Allied Occupation and Japan's Economic Miracle

The Allied Occupation and Japan's Economic Miracle PDF Author: Bowen C. Dees
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134247893
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
There is virtually nothing - until the arrival of this study - addressing the significance of the enormous contributions in science and technology towards the realization of Japan's 'economic miracle' during the occupation period. Describes the Scientific and Technical Division of McArthur's GHQ.

Japan, the System That Soured

Japan, the System That Soured PDF Author: Richard Katz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317467183
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
After seven long years of economic malaise, it is clear that something has gone awry in Japan. Unless Japan undertakes sweeping reform, official forecasts now warn, growth will steadily dwindle. How could the world's most acclaimed economic miracle have stumbled so badly? As this important book explains, the root of the problem is that Japan is still mired in the structures, policies, and mental habits of the 1950s-1960s. Four decades ago while in the "catch-up" phase of its economic evolution, policies that gave rise to "Japan, Inc". made a lot of sense. By the 1970s and 1980s, when Japan had become a more mature economy, "catch-up economics" had become passe, even counterproductive. Even worse, in response to the oil shocks, Japan increasingly used its industrial policy tools. not to promote "winners", but to shield "losers" from competition at home and abroad. Japan's well-known aversion to imports is part and parcel of this politically understandable, but economically self-defeating, pattern. The end result is a deformed "dual economy" unique in the industrial world. Now this "dualism" is sapping the strength of the entire economy. The protection of the weak is driving Japan's most inefficient companies to invest offshore instead of at home. Without sweeping reform, real recovery will prove elusive. The challenging thesis articulated in this book is receiving widespread media attention in the United States and Japan and is sure to provoke continuing debate and controversy.

Dr. Osamu Shimomura's Legacy and the Postwar Japanese Economy

Dr. Osamu Shimomura's Legacy and the Postwar Japanese Economy PDF Author: Kozo Horiuchi
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811057621
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
This book elucidates the economic conditions and policies during the post War Japanese economy from the view point of an influential policy maker. Dr. Osamu Shimomura is one of the most eminent economists in Japan. He entered the Ministry of Finance and played a crucial role in actualizing the High-Growth era from the late 1950s to the early 70s. "The Doubling Income Plan", which is issued by the Ikeda cabinet, originates from him. It should be noted that while most economists held pessimistic view on the future, Shimomura is brave and foresighted. Shimomura’s theory is not merely one of the pioneer works in macroeconomics, but also suits the economic conditions of Japan. Shimomura extends the principle of effective demand, which means that his theory includes effects of capital accumulation to production capacity. While one may argue that Harrod (1939) and Domar (1946) have already achieved that, Shimomura’s theory centers policy recommendations for sustaining the high economic growth against the productivity growth that would cause excess supply in the market. Succinctly, Shimomura is a Keynesian who believes the vigor in its private sector but recognizes that Japanese economy urgently needs the government’s auxiliary macroeconomic policies. This book emphasizes that the rapid Japanese growth owes mainly to affluent entrepreneurship filled in the economy not to the sheer government’s planning. Dr. Shimomura’s theory endorses our assertion.

In the Shadow of the Miracle

In the Shadow of the Miracle PDF Author: Arthur J. Alexander
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739156314
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Japan is living in the shadow of its economic miracle. Its stagnation and decline relative to other advanced economies since the early 1990s is a consequence of business and government difficulty in breaking away from once-successful practices. The Japanese postwar economic miracle created the world's second largest capitalist economy. This remarkable performance, in the face of such enormous obstacles, helped solidify, even sanctify, the institutions, methods, and political arrangements associated with the economic miracle. Based upon a decade of research articles distributed in the Japan Economic Institute's weekly report on Japan, In the Shadow of the Miracle analyzes the sources of Japanese growth and the nature and scale of its current economic problems. Chapters examine the steps being taken by Japan's government and business leaders to address the mounting national economic problems and the impact on Japan of the wider Asian financial crisis (1997-99). A final section addresses the question of whether Japan is fundamentally different from other advanced economies.

Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age

Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age PDF Author: Laura E. Hein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317465954
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
The development and use of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki number among the formative national experiences for both Japanese and Americans as well as for 20th-century Japan-US relations. This volume explores the way in which the bomb has shaped the self-image of both peoples.

The Growth Idea

The Growth Idea PDF Author: Scott O'Bryan
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824837568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Our narratives of postwar Japan have long been cast in terms almost synonymous with the story of rapid economic growth. Scott O’Bryan reinterprets this seemingly familiar history through an innovative exploration, not of the anatomy of growth itself, but of the history of growth as a set of discourses by which Japanese "growth performance" as "economic miracle" came to be articulated. The premise of his work is simple: To our understandings of the material changes that took place in Japan during the second half of the twentieth century we must also add perspectives that account for growth as a new idea around the world, one that emerged alongside rapid economic expansion in postwar Japan and underwrote the modes by which it was imagined, forecast, pursued, and regulated. In an accessible, lively style, O’Bryan traces the history of growth as an object of social scientific knowledge and as a new analytical paradigm that came to govern the terms by which Japanese understood their national purposes and imagined a newly materialist vision of social and individual prosperity. Several intersecting obsessions worked together after the war to create an agenda of social reform through rapid macroeconomic increase. Epistemological developments within social science provided the conceptual instruments by which technocrats gave birth to a shared lexicon of growth. Meanwhile, reformers combined prewar Marxist critiques with new modes of macroeconomic understanding to mobilize long-standing fears of overpopulation and "backwardness" and argue for a growthist vision of national reformation. O’Bryan also presents surprising accounts of the key role played by the ideal of full employment in national conceptions of recovery and of a new valorization of consumption in the postwar world that was taking shape. Both of these, he argues, formed critical components in a constellation of ideas that even in the context of relative poverty and uncertainty coalesced into a powerful vision of a materially prosperous future. Even as Japan became the premier icon of the growthist ideal, neither the faith in rapid growth as a prescription for national reform nor the ascendancy of social scientific epistemologies that provided its technical support was unique to Japanese experience. The Growth Idea thus helps to historicize a concept of never-ending growth that continues to undergird our most basic beliefs about the success of nations and the operations of the global economy. It is a particularly timely contribution given current imperatives to reconceive ideas of purpose and prosperity in an age of resource depletion and global warming.