Japan has few natural resources, but its economy is the second largest in the world. This book examines business practices and government policies which have contributed to the phenomenal growth of the Japanese economy since the early 1960s.

Criticism of current Japanese macroeconomic and financial policies is so wide spread that the reasons for it are assumed to be self-evident. In this volume, Adam Posen explains in depth why a shift in Japanese fiscal and monetary policies, as well as financial reform, would be in Japan's self-interest. He demonstrates that Japanese economic stagnation in the 1990s is the result of mistaken fiscal austerity and financial laissez-faire rather than a structural decline of the "Japan Model." The author outlines a program for putting the country back on the path to solid economic growth - primarily through permanent tax cuts and monetary stabilization - and draws broader lessons from the recent Japanese policy actions that led to the country's continuing stagnation.

Since the end of the Pacific War, Japan has, broadly speaking, pursued two economic policies: a "democratization" policy laid down by the Allied Powers, and subsequently a "de-democratization" policy formulated and vigorously pursued by the independent government. Yamamura here addresses himself to two central questions: What were the objectives and results of each policy? And why and how did the earlier one give way to the later? Yamamura never loses sight of his main theme--the transformation of the economic "democratization" policy of the Occupation period into the growth policy pursued by the Japanese government thereafter. He is concerned not so much to provide a comprehensive study of Japanese economic policy as to examine selected facets of it--for example, taxation policies, anti- and pro-monopoly legislation, the position of the Zaibatsu, and the social costs of economic concentration. He deals with topics that are hotly debated in Japan and elsewhere, but his tone is never polemical, and his judgments are cool and scholarly. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.

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.

The influential articles reprinted in this set, with a major new introduction, offer a rich variety of perspectives on this vital and controversial period in twentieth-century Japanese history.

Despite the destruction of its social and economic infrastructure during the Second World War, Japan's subsequent remarkable recovery and growth propelled it rapidly into the ranks of the developed nations. In order to trace this post-war transformation formally, the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) convened a committee of independent academics to compile a seventeen-volume History of Japanese Trade and Industry Policy, of which this volume acts as a summary. Translated for the first time into English, it examines the planning, drafting, and implementation of various policies adopted by MITI against their economic and industrial background in the period from 1945 to 1979. It provides an objective overview and analysis of the development of international trade and industry policy that will be of interest to economists, political scientists, policy-makers, and public administration lawyers alike.

This book deals with the major problems that Japan and East Asian countries have faced during the turbulent years of their reconstruction and development from 1945 to the present time. The Development Report of the World Bank 1993 on the same subject was given the subtitle East Asian Miracle. I have never thought, however, that the impressive achievement of East Asian development was a miracle in any sense. Indeed, as this book tries to show, Japanese and Asian development has been the fruit of the sweat, tears, and blood of all East Asian nations. The efforts and sacrifices involved in the process of their development after World War II are no less than those during the war itself. One should not overlook the fact that almost all the peoples of East Asia have achieved not just economic development but indeed new nation-building after hundreds of years of coloni al submission. It is my assertion in this book that even economists' analyses of Asian development should pay attention to not only the logos but also the pathos of develop ment in this last half of twentieth century. Ever since I became the director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University in 1969, I have written extensively in English as well as in Japanese on the various problems arising in the Japanese and other Asian economies.