ABSTRACT
After operating an isolation policy for more than 200 years under Tokugawa Shogunete, Japan opened the country in the late nineteenth century. Following this, it showed steady economic growth until the 1980s, except the years just after World War II. This ‘miraculous’ growth of the Japanese economy has attracted the interest of many economists, economic historians and practitioners, not only because of the high speed of growth, but also because it was characterized by distinctive institutional and organizational features. These characteristics include a close government-firm relationship (industrial policy), long-term employment and pervasive corporate networks. It is the latter that is the focus of this chapter.
