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.

Positioning Statement: An explosive account of the resentments American policies are sowing around the world and of the payback that will be our harvest in the twenty-first century The hardcover received great review and media coverage. The author is incredibly well-connected and in constant demand as a speaker. The perfect match of author and subject.

The godfather of Japanese revisionism, author of MITI and the Japanese Miracle and president of the Japan Policy Research Institute explains how—and why—Japan has become a world power in the past 25 years. Johnson lucidly explains here how the Japanese economy will thrive as it moves from a producer-dominated economy to a consumer-oriented headquarters for all of East Asia.

Over the postwar period, the scope of industrial policy has expanded markedly. Governments in virtually all advanced industrial countries have extended the visible hand of the state in assisting specific industries or individual companies. Although greater government involvement in some countries has lessened the dislocations brought about by slower growth rates, industrial policy has also caused or exacerbated a number of other problems, including distortions in the allocation of capital and labor and trade conflicts that undermine the postwar system of free trade. Only Japan is widely cited as an unambiguous success story. The effectiveness of its industrial policy is revealed in the successful emergence of one government-targeted industry after another as world-class competitors: for example, steel, automobiles, and semiconductors. Foreign countries fear that a number of still-developing industries—like biotechnology, telecommunications, and information processing—will follow the same pattern. But is industrial policy the main reason for Japan's economic achievements? The author asserts that the reasons for Japan's spectacular track record go well beyond the realm of industrial policy into broad areas of the political economy as a whole. In this book, the author attempts to identify the reasons for the comparative effectiveness of Japanese industrial policy for high technology by answering the following questions: What is the attitude of Japanese leaders toward state intervention in the marketplace? What is the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) doing to promote the development of high technology? How has the organization of the private sector contributed to MITI's capacity to intervene effectively? What elements in Japan's political system help insulate industrial policymaking from the demands of interest-group politics?

Developmental state, n.: the government, motivated by desire for economic advancement, intervenes in industrial affairs. The notion of the developmental state has come under attack in recent years. Critics charge that Japan's success in putting this notion into practice has not been replicated elsewhere, that the concept threatens the purity of freemarket economics, and that its shortcomings have led to financial turmoil in Asia. In this informative and thought-provoking book, a team of distinguished scholars revisits this notion to assess its continuing utility and establish a common vocabulary for debates on these issues. Drawing on new political and economic theories and emphasizing recent events, the authors examine the East Asian experience to show how the developmental state involves a combination of political, bureaucratic, and moneyed influences that shape economic life in the region. Taking as its point of departure Chalmers Johnson's account of the Japanese developmental state, the book explores the interplay of forces that have determined the structure of opportunity in the region. The authors critically address the argument for centralized political involvement in industrial development (with a new contribution by Johnson), describe the historical impact of colonialism and the Cold War, consider new ideas in economics, and compare the experiences of East Asian countries with those of France, Brazil, Mexico, and India.

Joseph Schumpeter’s conceptions of entrepreneurship, innovation, and creative destruction have been hugely influential. He pioneered the study of economic development and of technological paradigm shifts and was a forerunner of the emerging field of evolutionary economics. He is not thought of as a theorist of credit-supercharged high-speed growth, but this is what he became in postwar Japan. As Mark Metzler shows in Capital as Will and Imagination, economists and planners in postwar Japan seized upon Schumpeter’s ideas and put them directly to work. The inflationary creation of credit, as theorized by Schumpeter, was a vital but mostly unrecognized aspect of the successful stabilization of Japanese capitalism after World War II and was integral to Japan’s postwar success. It also helps to explain Japan’s bubble, and the global bubbles that have followed it. The heterodox analysis presented in Capital as Will and Imagination goes beyond the economic history of postwar Japan; it opens up a new view of the core circuits of modern capital in general.

South Korea has been quietly growing into a major economic force, even challenging Japan in some industries. This growth may be seen as an example of "late industrialization" and this book discusses this point.