ABSTRACT
First published in Asia-Pacific Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1998 (Tokyo Institute for International Policy Studies)
IF ANYTHING POSITIVE has emerged from the problems that have surfaced in the Japanese economy in 1998, it is the added sense of urgency that has been given to the task of understanding how Japan’s politico-economic system actually works. An economic boom and bust has been followed by an intellectual boom and bust. What from the 1960s was widely regarded as a uniquely successful model of political economy has suddenly come to be seen as diseased and in desperate need of radical surgery.
