In 40 years Japan has developed from a war-devastated and poverty stricken country into the second largest economy in the world. This book analyzes how Japan attained its current financial and technological status and argues that Japan's supremacy over world economies will expand further.

Modern Asian economic history has often been written in terms of Western impact and Asia's response to it. This volume argues that the growth of intra-regional trade, migration, and capital and money flows was a crucial factor that determined the course of East Asian economic development. Twelve chapters are organized around three main themes. First, economic interactions between Japan and China were important in shaping the pattern of regional industrialization. Neither Japan nor China imported technology and organizations, and attempted to "catch up" with the West alone. Japan's industrialization took place, taking advantage of the Chinese merchant networks in Asia, while the Chinese competition was a critical factor in the Japanese technological and organizational "upgrading" in the interwar period. Second, the pattern of China's integration into the international economy was shaped by the growth of intra-Asian trade, migration, and capital flows and remittances. While the Western impact was largely confined to the littoral region of China, intra-Asian trade was more directly connected with China's internal market. Both the fall of the imperial monetary system and the rise of economic nationalism in the early twentieth century reflected increasing contacts with the Asian international economy. Third, a study of intra-Asian trade and migration helps us understand the nature of colonialism and the international climate of imperialism. In spite of the adverse political environment, East Asian merchant and migration networks exploited economic opportunities, taking advantage of colonial institutional arrangements and even political conflicts. They made a contribution to national and regional economic development in the politically more favourable environment after the Second World War, by providing the valuable expertise and entrepreneurship they had accumulated prewar. The character of the international order of Asia, governed by Western powers, especially Britain, but shared also by Japan for most of the period, was "imperialism of free trade", although it eventually collapsed by the late 1930s.

In 40 years Japan has developed from a war-devastated, poverty-stricken country into the second largest and most prosperous economy in the world, holding seven of the world's ten largest banks, huge surpluses with almost all of its trading partners, and scientific technology that is largely supplanting America's role as the dynamic technological and financial core of East Asia and the world economy. It has become the dynamic technological and economic core of East Asia and indeed the world.

This book examines regional dynamics in contemporary east and southeast Asia, scrutinizing the effects of Japanese dominance on the politics, economics, and cultures of the area. The contributors ask whether Japan has now attained, through sheer economic power and its political and cultural consequences, the predominance it once sought by overtly military means. The discussion is framed by the profound changes of the past decade. Since the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, regional dynamics increasingly shape international and national developments. This volume places Japan's role in Asian regionalism in a broader comparative perspective with European regionalism and the role Germany plays. It assesses the competitive logics of continental and coastal primacy in China. In starkest form, the question addressed is whether Chinese or Japanese domination of the Asian region is more likely. Between a neo-mercantilist emphasis on the world's movement toward relatively closed regional blocs and an opposing liberal view that global markets are creating convergent pressures across all national boundaries and regional divides, this book takes a middle position. Asian regionalism is identified by two intersecting developments: Japanese economic penetration of Asian supplier networks through a system of production alliances, and the emergence of a pan-Pacific trading region that includes both Asia and North America. The contributors emphasize factors that are creating an Asia marked by multiple centers of influence, including China and the United States.

This book studies specific regional issues and problems, exploring recent related political developments in Japan, and how these might impact on future foreign policy priorities and objectives. The expert body of contributors consider issues such as: the nexus between domestic politics and foreign policy; environmental aid and management; human rights and democracy and conflict management.

An international team of ten specialists in Japanese and American foreign relations address the crucial question: what role should Japan play in international affairs? This question has not found a fully satisfactory answer since the forced opening to foreign contacts in the mid-nineteenth century. Having copied foreign models and achieved a series of stunning successes -- and some failures -- in many aspects of private and public life, Japan today stands at a pinnacle of economic power and affluence. Despite this, both economics and politics are undergoing major strains and changes during the 1990s, and the quest for true internationalization is fraught with problems and only partially fulfilled. This book is a joint project of the American University in Washington and Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.