Japan’s Quest for Growth PDF Download

Author: Brian Salsberg
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
ISBN: 9781421540863
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
REMINGINING JAPAN: Contributors to this volume include some of the world’s most brilliant thinkers from fields as diverse as business, politics, academia, science and technology, journalism and art and design. In the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis of March 2011, Japan has become a bigger part of the world’s consciousness than it has been for years. But Japan also is grappling with other problems that, over the long run, pose a much greater challenge to its national well-being than the devastation in Tohoku.... How can the country compete with a rising China? Cope with a fast-aging society? Deal with its enormous debt? Rediscover its entrepreneurial verve? Regain its position as a leader in technology and innovation? In Reimagining Japan, McKinsey & Company, the world’s top management consulting firm, asked more than 80 global leaders and experts to consider these questions. In essays brimming with insight, affection and occasional humor, the authors offer their assessments of Japan’s past, present and --most important -- future. What sets Reimagining Japan apart is the breadth and diversity of its contributors. They range from Fortune 500 CEOs to acclaimed writers (including three Pulitzer Prize winners) to a star videogame creator, a soccer coach, a school principal and a manga artist. There has not been such a comprehensive book about Japan in the past generation - and perhaps ever. NOTABLE CONTRIBUTORS Bernard Arnault, Ian Buruma, Gerald Curtis, John Chambers, Steven Covey, John Dower, Bill Emmott, Victor Fung, Carlos Ghosn, Pico Iyer, Bob McDonald, Stephen Roach, Masahiro Sakane, Masayoshi Son, Howard Schultz, Klaus Schwab, Bobby Valentine, Steve Van Andel, Ezra Vogel, Robert Whiting, Tadashi Yanai and more than 50 others.

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.

Author: Sidney Xu Lu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108482422
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Shows how Japanese anxiety about overpopulation was used to justify expansion, blurring lines between migration and settler colonialism. This title is also available as Open Access.

Author: Michael A. Barnhart
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801468450
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
The roots of Japan's aggressive, expansionist foreign policy have often been traced to its concern over acute economic vulnerability. Michael A. Barnhart tests this assumption by examining the events leading up to World War II in the context of Japan's quest for economic security, drawing on a wide array of Japanese and American sources.Barnhart focuses on the critical years from 1938 to 1941 as he investigates the development of Japan's drive for national economic self-sufficiency and independence and the way in which this drive shaped its internal and external policies. He also explores American economic pressure on Tokyo and assesses its impact on Japan's foreign policy and domestic economy. He concludes that Japan's internal political dynamics, especially the bitter rivalry between its army and navy, played a far greater role in propelling the nation into war with the United States than did its economic condition or even pressure from Washington. Japan Prepares for Total War sheds new light on prewar Japan and confirms the opinions of those in Washington who advocated economic pressure against Japan.

Author: Warren S. Hunsberger
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9780765635198
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
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.

Author: Mr. Murtaza H. Syed
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1455214965
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 23

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Book Description
As labor input in Japan shrinks with population aging, capital accumulation and productivity gains will drive growth over the medium-term. At the same time, a changing global landscape calls for a shift in export-oriented investment toward new markets and a new generation of products, as well as increased investment by domestically-oriented firms. What policies could be adopted to help firms adjust to the imperatives of the post-crisis global economy and boost medium-term growth? Using disaggregated data, this paper investigates the determinants of investment and R&D spending by Japanese firms. The results suggest that policies could usefully focus on four areas. First, raising the return on investment, including through reforms to the tax code. Second, decreasing uncertainty through improved risk management by firms and by bolstering the business climate. Third, improving SME access to finance, notably by encouraging venture capital investment in innovative areas and more risk-based lending. And fourth, reducing excess leverage and supporting corporate restructuring to enable new investments to flourish.

Author: Susanne Klien
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438478054
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Offers an in-depth ethnography of paradigm shifts in the lifestyles and values of youth in post-growth Japan. Urban Migrants in Rural Japan provides a fresh perspective on theoretical notions of rurality and emerging modes of working and living in post-growth Japan. By exploring narratives and trajectories of individuals who relocate from urban to rural areas and seek new modes of working and living, this multisited ethnography reveals the changing role of rurality, from postwar notions of a stagnant backwater to contemporary sites of experimentation. The individual cases presented in the book vividly illustrate changing lifestyles and perceptions of work. What emerges from Urban Migrants in Rural Japan is the emotionally fraught quest of many individuals for a personally fulfilling lifestyle and the conflicting neoliberal constraints many settlers face. In fact, flexibility often coincides with precarity and self-exploitation. Susanne Klien shows how mobility serves as a strategic mechanism for neophytes in rural Japan who hedge their bets; gain time; and seek assurance, inspiration, and courage to do (or further postpone doing) what they ultimately feel makes sense to them. “This book is a valuable contribution to knowledge about diversifying rural Japan and evokes reflection about the future of post-growth Japan. Klien’s study benefits from assiduous and long-term field research and insightful analysis. She excels at locating the specifics of the study in theoretical observations and concepts, thereby setting the work into a larger consideration of Japan’s paradigm shifts in lifestyle and values.” — Nancy Rosenberger, author of Gambling with Virtue: Japanese Women and the Search for Self in a Changing Nation

Author: Christopher Goto-Jones
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191578940
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Japan is arguably today's most successful industrial economy, combining almost unprecedented affluence with social stability and apparent harmony. Japanese goods and cultural products are consumed all over the world, ranging from animated movies and computer games all the way through to cars, semiconductors, and management techniques. In many ways, Japan is an icon of the modern world, and yet it remains something of an enigma to many, who see it as a confusing montage of the alien and the familiar, the ancient and modern. The aim of this Very Short Introduction is to explode the myths and explore the reality of modern Japan - by taking a concise look at its history, economy, politics, and culture. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786252961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.

Author: Amy King
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316668517
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
A rich empirical account of China's foreign economic policy towards Japan after World War Two, drawing on hundreds of recently declassified Chinese sources. Amy King offers an innovative conceptual framework for the role of ideas in shaping foreign policy, and examines how China's Communist leaders conceived of Japan after the war. The book shows how Japan became China's most important economic partner in 1971, despite the recent history of war and the ongoing Cold War divide between the two countries. It explains that China's Communist leaders saw Japan as a symbol of a modern, industrialised nation, and Japanese goods, technology and expertise as crucial in strengthening China's economy and military. For China and Japan, the years between 1949 and 1971 were not simply a moment disrupted by the Cold War, but rather an important moment of non-Western modernisation stemming from the legacy of Japanese empire, industry and war in China.