ABSTRACT
A combination of factors encouraged many analysts to predict a significant secular downturn in the Japanese economy after c. 1971–3. Such a turning point was seen as resulting from the reduction in the amount of labour available to industry at low cost, the effects on internal and export prices of the oil price increases of the OPEC crises, and the similar effects on competitiveness of the revaluations of the yen created by the so-called ‘Nixon Shock’ of August 1971. In terms of the longer historical trajectory of the industrial economy itself, such gathering forces were interpreted as superimposed on an increasingly mature, high income and sophisticated industrial system, one which had now effectively absorbed the best-practice techniques and organisations of Europe and the US. The advantages of ‘late development’ had now been exhausted once and for all.
