ABSTRACT
Many non-Japanese economists argue that it is the industrial policy that realized rapid growth in postwar Japan. I understand, however, that private dynamism brought about the “Japanese miracle.”
The main purpose of this book is to answer the question of why Japanese manufacturing industries grew at such a high rate in the post-World War II era, and what it was that caused the economy to grow so rapidly. As I indicated in Chapter 1, I wanted to address this issue not from a macroeconomic point of view, but by applying the tools of development economics within the context of the growth of individual industries. The period of greatest interest to me is the time from Japan’s recovery after the war to the country’s transition point in the early 1970s, the point that marked the shift from a rapid economic growth phase to a slow growth one. Through study of the growth patterns of individual industries, I have analyzed the process by which Japan moved from its status as a developing economy to that of an industrial nation.
