Structural origins of Japan’s direct foreign investment

In the six months to October 1989, the Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) that poured out of Japan for the first time topped $30 billion and pushed the accumulated total to a whopping $217 billion (Okurasho-1989). The speed and escalating scale of this development is most sriking when it is recognized that in the entire period to March 1981, the accumulated total was only $36 billion. It is thus a phenomenon of the 1980s and it has sent Japan into the next decade as a major imperialist power, indeed the leading power in the Asian and Pacific region.