ABSTRACT
Because of the Nixon ‘shocks’ and the oil crisis of 1973 to 1974, historians as well as economists see the early 1970s as the end of a period in Japan’s history since the war. Adjustments in politics and society as well as the economy had to be made with the end to high growth. But while adjustment to slow growth involved new departures in policies and practices, many of the developments in politics, society and the economy during the 1970s and 1980s were extensions or dissemination of patterns established during the 1950s and 1960s. And although Prime Minister Sato¯ Eisaku announced the end of the ‘postwar’ period in 1969, this was just the first of such pronouncements, since the ‘postwar’ lingered on in numerous areas, and not only in politics or foreign policy.
