Japan Emerging

Japan Emerging provides a comprehensive survey of Japan from prehistory to the nineteenth century. Incorporating the latest scholarship and methodology, leading authorities writing specifically for this volume outline and explore the main developments in Japanese life through ancient, classical, medieval, and early modern periods. Instead of relying solely on lists of dates and prominent names, the authors focus on why and how Japanese political, social, economic, and intellectual life evolved. Each part begins with a timeline and a set of guiding questions and issues to help orient readers and enhance continuity. Engaging, thorough, and accessible, this is an essential text for all students and scholars of Japanese history.

From the 1960s onwards, Japan's rapid economic growth coincided with remarkably low youth unemployment. However, since the 1990s the ease with which young people have historically moved from education to employment has ended, and unemployment is now a real and growing problem. This book examines how the state, experts, the media as well as youth workers, have responded to the troubling rise of youth joblessness in 21st century Japan.

Since the mid-1990s, Japan’s regional economic strategy has transformed. Once characterized by bilateralism, informality, and neomercantilism, Japanese policy has shifted to a new liberal strategy emphasizing regional institution building and rule setting. As two major global powers, China and the United States, wrestle over economic advantages, Japan currently occupies a pivotal position capable of tipping the geoeconomic balance in the region. Japan’s New Regional Reality offers a comprehensive analysis of Japan’s geoeconomic strategy that reveals the country’s role in shaping regional economic order in the Asia-Pacific. Saori N. Katada explains Japanese foreign economic policy in light of both international and domestic dynamics. She points out the hurdles to implementing a state-led liberal strategy, detailing how domestic political and institutional changes have been much slower and stickier than the changing regional economics. Katada highlights state-market relations and shows how big businesses have responded to the country’s interventionist policies. The book covers a wide range of economic issues including trade, investment, finance, currency, and foreign aid. Japan’s New Regional Reality is a meticulously researched study of the dynamics that have contributed to economic and political realities in the Asia-Pacific today, with significant implications for future regional trends.

Japan's economy stumbled in the 1990s. After four decades of rapid growth that transformed Japan into a wealthy country at the world's technological frontier, the last decade brought prolonged economic stagnation. The rapid run-up in asset prices in the late 1980s, followed by their collapse in the early 1990s, left a debt overhang that paralyzed the banking sector. Policy reforms were initially half-hearted, and businesses were slow to restructure as the global economy changed. The lagging economy has seemed impervious to aggressive fiscal stimulus measures and is still plagued by ongoing price deflation. Japan's struggle has called into question the ability of the country's economic institutions - originally designed to support factor accumulation and rapid development - to adapt to the new economic environment of the 21st century. Yet Japan's economy is already changing. Driven by an aging population, rapid technological change, and increasing global competition, the country's public and private institutions are being slowly reshaped. This volume explores the forces that will drive structural and institutional change in three areas over the next decade: the macroeconomy, the organization of industry, and the global economic and political environment. Economists, demographers, and Japan specialists examine key aspects of the economy that will be transformed in coming years, including population and savings, the public pension system, labor markets, financial reforms, deregulation of service industries, productivity performance, foreign investment, trade, and the impact of an emerging China. The volume fills an important gap in the existing economic literature. While much has been written about Japan's pre-1990s institutions and economic performance, this volume is unique in its forward-looking orientation - trying to understand not only the institutional and structural changes that have already reshaped Japan in the 1990s, but to identify the critical trends and institutional changes that will mould Japan's new economy over the next decade.

A full scale examination of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War - the events that led to it, the Cold War aftermath, and the implications for the region and beyond.

Why do poor countries give aid to others? This book critically examines how aspirations for providing aid have coexisted with experiences of receiving aid and have transformed the practice of giving aid, with particular reference to the experiences of Japan and China. It highlights the historical sources that explain the pattern and strength of foreign aid that these new donors provide. The book has systematically examined the situation unique to middle income countries that are receiving and giving aid simultaneously. It sheds light on the endogenous elements embedded in the socio-economic conditions of emerging donors, as well as their learning process as aid recipients. This book examines not only the perspectives of recipients, but also those of donors: Japan in the case of China, and the USA and the World Bank in the case of Japan. By bringing in the donor’s perspective, we come to a holistic understanding of foreign aid as a product of interaction between the various agents involved. The book provides not only an in-depth case study of Japan from a historical perspective, but also stretches its scope to cover contemporary debates on "emerging donors," including China, India and Korea who have received substantial amount of aid from Japan in the past. This book connects the often separated discussion of Japanese aid and the way it developed in relation to outside forces. In short, this book represents the first attempt to empirically examine the "life of a donor" with a clear focus on the origins, struggles, and futures of non-western donors and their impact on established aid regime.

This book explores social movements and political activism in contemporary Japan, arguing that the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident marks a decisive moment, which has led to an unprecedented resurgence in social and protest movements and inaugurated a new era of civic engagement. Offering fresh perspectives on both older and more current forms of activism in Japan, together with studies of specific movements that developed after Fukushima, this volume tackles questions of emerging and persistent structural challenges that activists face in contemporary Japan. With attention to the question of where the new sense of contention in Japan has emerged from and how the newly developing movements have been shaped by the neo-conservative policies of the Japanese government, the authors ask how the Japanese experience adds to our understanding of how social movements work, and whether it might challenge prevailing theoretical frameworks.