The Postwar Japanese System: Cultural Economy and Economic TransformationOxford University Press, 1995 M04 20 - 424 pages While other industrialized and developing countries look towards Japan as an economic model, the political, cultural, and social arrangements that have so far allowed Japan to succeed are eroding. In particular, Japan faces a system of industrial relations that places great strain on all of Japanese society. In The Postwar Japanese System, William Tabb distinguishes between those aspects of Japanese success that can and cannot be transferred successfully to help in the revitalization of the American economy. The author discusses Japanese economic history from before the Meiji Restoration to the present, and looks at Japanese politics, state-corporate relations, the labor relations system in Japan and the nature of work as experienced by Japanese employees. He examines the organization of the Japanese corporation versus the American corporation, industrial policy, education, urban and regional reorganization, and Japan's role in the world today (and tomorrow). And, Tabb thoughtfully explores the fundamental social, political, and economic transitions the Japanese are currently experiencing. The Postwar Japanese System succeeds in placing the economic "miracle" in its proper social and political framework. A broad, intelligent overview of the Japanese political economy, the book suggests important implications for the United States in the story of Japan's prosperity and current distress. It will be a key resource for all those interested in Japanese society. |
Contents
| 3 | |
| 11 | |
| 35 | |
3 The Modernization Process | 61 |
4 The Japanese System in the Golden Age | 86 |
5 The Case of the Automobile Industry | 112 |
6 The Industrial Relations Regime | 140 |
7 Capital Versus the Regions | 169 |
9 Trade Antagonism and Industrial Policy | 225 |
10 Economic Transformation and the World System | 255 |
11 Japan and the New Competition | 285 |
12 Through a Rashomon Mirror Darkly | 311 |
Notes | 339 |
Bibliography | 381 |
Index | 399 |
8 Overaccumulation Speculation and Corruption | 198 |
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Akio Morita American areas Asahi Shimbun Asia Asian auto banks billion bubble economy bureaucrats capital cars Chalmers Johnson competition context continued cooperation costs created cultural economy developmentalist discussion domestic dominant economists Economy of Japan employees enterprise exports force foreign investment global growth historical important increased industrial policy industrial relations innovation institutions interest Japa Japan Japanese companies Japanese corporations Japanese economy Japanese industrial Japanese Studies Japanese system Journal of Japanese Karoshi keiretsu labor manufacturing Meiji Meiji Restoration ment Ministry MITI Mitsubishi neoclassical nese nomic officials organization pattern percent perspective plant Political Economy postwar period pressure problems production profits Rashomon regional role sector social sogo shosha strategy structure success suppliers Technopolis tion Tokyo Toyota trade union United University of Tokyo University Press wages Western workers York
Popular passages
Page 327 - Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.
Page 21 - Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.
Page 9 - For the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. And although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage with it.
Page 22 - Here, then, is a category of facts with very distinctive characteristics: it consists of ways of acting, thinking, and feeling, external to the individual, and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they control him.
Page iii - Everyone who writes about the Orient must locate himself vis-a-vis the Orient; translated into his text, this location includes the kind of narrative voice he adopts, the type of structure he builds, the kinds of images, themes, motifs that circulate in his text - all of which add up to deliberate ways of addressing the reader, containing the Orient, and finally, representing it or speaking in its behalf.
Page 1 - It is scarcely possible to calculate the benefits which we might derive from the diffusion of European civilisation among the vast population of the East. It would be, on the most selfish view of the case, far better for us that the people of India were well governed and independent of us, than ill governed and subject to us...
Page 59 - I am therefore convinced that our policy should be to stake everything on the present opportunity, to conclude friendly alliances, to send ships to foreign countries everywhere and conduct trade, to copy the foreigners where they are at their best and so repair our own shortcomings, to foster our national strength and complete our armaments, and so gradually subject the foreigners to our influence until in the end all the countries of the world know the blessings of perfect tranquillity and our hegemony...
Page 1 - ... can generally be detected at the root of any great outburst of practical energy.
Page 295 - The point has been made in the previous paragraph that a firm will tend to expand until the costs of organizing an extra transaction within the firm become equal to the costs of carrying out the same transaction by means of an exchange on the open market or the costs of organizing in another firm.