ABSTRACT
The economic and, in particular, the industrial upswing of Japan following World War II is so impressive that it may seem inappropriate to equate this “economic miracle” with a simple reconstruction period. Japanese industrial production rose uninterruptedly for nearly two decades at such a tempo that its volume shows a twentyfold expansion from the low of 1946 to the year 1963. Far exceeding the prewar level and reaching its wartime peak as early as 1955, it continued climbing with virtually undiminished speed for the next eight years, and tripled during that period! If we exclude the abnormally extreme war production years 1943 and 1944 and take the 1939–42 level as our base period, we get an even more remarkable result — a fourfold increase. Although the growth rate of the last three years (1961–64) shows a relative decline compared to the preceding period (1955–61), namely, a drop from 19% down to 9%, no conclusion can be drawn from this fact alone, since, on the one hand, this is still a considerable rise and, on the other, the tempo had slowed once before in the years 1953–55, to 9%, though only during a temporary lull.
