Author Description

After a historical survey moving from the period of reconstruction and reform to the rapid-growth 1960s and early 1970s, the book turns to an analysis of the organization of Japan's economy, with special emphasis on the "dual structure" of large modern-sector firms and small traditional-sector entrepreneurial firms. By the 1980s, the economy had moved from rapid growth into a period of stable growth, financial reform, and a new sense of its global responsibilities as an economic power. At the end of the decade, a period of wealth-building ended in unrealistically inflated expansion; this "bubble" burst in the early 1990s, and the book ends with a discussion of the new economic realities for Japan.