A Modern Economic History of Japan - Russell Jones

The modern economic history of Japan is an extraordinary tale. The country rose over the course of just a hundred and twenty odd years from outright backwardness to the elite tier of the most advanced economies. This was a unique achievement, and one realised despite the nation succumbing to a damaging interlude of ugly totalitarianism and subsequently suffering the most demoralising of military defeats. If Japan's progress before World War II was impressive, the decades following its subjugation and occupation by the US saw it record hitherto unheard of rates of economic growth. By the 1980s, such was Japan's record of unrelenting achievement, not only did it spawn a rising tide of political resentment among its competitors, but it also encouraged them to adopt important aspects of the country's economic model. The belief at this time, both at home and abroad, was that Japan's success was set to continue. Such predictions, however, proved wide of the mark. The powerful forces that had driven its post-war boom had already been waning for some time, and its model of economic development was becoming increasingly ill-suited to the requirements of high-income country status. Its rapid rate of expansion became more and more dependent on the unsustainable combination of asset price inflation and the rapid accumulation of private, in particular corporate, debt. This was bound to end in tears, and it did, although the extent of Japan's subsequent fall from grace came as a surp
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