The Japanese Experience of Economic Reforms

• Author: Bronfenbrenner, Martin

These 14 essays by 15 Japanese economists constitute a cooperative venture in counter-revisionism. ("Revisionism" in recent Japanese economic history means the ascription of Japan's economic miracle" to bureaucratic fine-tuning more than to market forces, plus the view that Japanese capitalism differs qualitatively from American and European variants.) The essays cover a wide variety of subjects and the entire period from 1945 to 1990, so that the "reforms" of the title include both Occupation regulations and post-Occupation deregulations (where they occurred). The tone is measured and moderate throughout, not to say academic, but the central thrust would be quite clear even without reference to Dr. Kosai's earlier textbook and monograph(1) which consciously treat Japan as a "normal" market economy. Incidentally, several of the present contributors point out that "revisionism" is a name more foreign than Japanese,(2) and also that few Japanese economists are revisionists in any sense.

After a summary introductory chapter by the editors, we have four overlapping chapters on the "stabilization policy", so-called, of the Occupation, and another four on a wide range of longer-term reforms (in agricultural and industrial relations) with extensions beyond the Occupation years. The final group of five chapters considers the role of government in the post-Occupation period proper, including both the period of high growth and the subsequent slowdown brought on by "Nixon" and "oil" shocks in the 1970s. The last two chapters of this group, on trade policy and agricultural protectionism, carry the story to 1990 but not to the subsequent "bubble-bursting". They are more critical of Japanese bureaucrats than are the authors of earlier chapters about the foreign occupiers of 1945-52.

Most of our authors are affiliated both with Tokyo-area universities (and/or with research sections of public agencies) and with the Japan Center for Economic Research (JCER), itself affiliated with Japan's most influential economic newspaper, Nippon Keizai Shimbun. The writers differ among themselves, more as to methodology than as to policy slant. Between them, the book provides the foreign reader with extraordinarily helpful condensations of both statistical data and legislative history. (For example, Mr. Komine's "planning" Chapter 12 digests in a comparative way no less than 11 planning efforts by the Economic Planning Agency (EPA) and its predecessor organizations...