ABSTRACT
As in many late-modernizing nations, the state has loomed large and ambitious in the economic life of Japan. To industry and finance it has been a defender, collaborator, and at times a confining regulator. Public corporations were the Japanese state's initial vehicle for achieving industrial prowess during the early Meiji period, and they were revived once again during the late 1940s and the early 1950s. During the mid-1980s the realm of public ownership in Japan became even more constricted. Within the space of two years (1985-1987) the three largest remaining public corporations in Japan, employing more than 90 percent of all public enterprise workers, were privatized. Japan Air Lines and the Japan Broadcasting Corporation were the only remaining government-affiliated enterprises in early 1988 with more than 12,000 employees. Although in comparative perspective an unusually small and rapidly declining proportion of Japan's manufacturing and public utilities is under public ownership, the state retains an important and direct role in finance.
