ABSTRACT
After a decade of economic stagnation, it is now in vogue among economists to say that the economic system of Japan suffers from an “institutional fatigue”. This expression, however, connotes that the unique institutional arrangement of Japanese economy had once an age when it functioned well. The precise diagnosis and prescript against this “fatigue” differs in each case, particularly by the range of the time that the observer adopts. Debates on the origin of the post-war economic regime in the wartime economy are also related to this problem (Noguchi 1995, Okazaki and Okuno 1993). In this case beside the protection and control of the partitioned industries (gyokai) by the government, the closed long-term relations in the employment, supplier-customer relation (keiretsu), and main bank system are the main targets of the criticism. Further, the literature that applies the concept of “developmentalism” to the industrialization of Japan (Murakami 1992 (1996), Yagi 1997b) seem to have nearly one century’s time span for their considerations. In this case, an active role of the government in the economic development that is not always justified by the orthodox Western liberal economics emerges in the front of consideration. From this viewpoint, also the Meiji-government that promoted industrialization by establishing not only basic institutions but also model plants falls in the group of developmentalist state along with the Shôwa-government.
