Page 170 - Global Political Economy_Understanding The International Economic Order

SYS TEMS O F POLI TICAL ECONO MY
do with what they considered an American effort to relegate Japan
to the low end of the economic and technological spectrum. Instead,
the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and
other agencies of the Japanese economic high command set their
sights on making vanquished Japan into the economic and technolog-
ical equal, and perhaps even the superior, of the West. At the opening
of the twenty-first century, this objective has remained the driving
force of Japanese society. 11
In the Japanese scheme of things, the economy is subordinate to
the social and political objectives of society. As the distinguished Jap-
anese economist Ryutaro Komiya has written, ever since the Meiji
Restoration (1868), Japan’s overriding goals have been “making the
economy self-sufficient” and “catching upwith the West.” 12 In the
pre–World War II years this ambition meant building a strong army
and becoming an industrial power. Since its disastrous defeat in
World War II, however, Japan has abandoned militarism and has
focused on becoming a powerful industrial and technological nation,
while also promoting internal social harmony among the Japanese
people. There has been a concerted effort by the Japanese state to
guide the evolution and functioning of their economy in order to pur-
sue these sociopolitical objectives. 13
These political goals have resulted in a national economic policy
for Japan best characterized as neomercantilism; it involves state as-
sistance, regulation, and protection of specific industrial sectors in
order to increase their international competitiveness and attain the
“commanding heights” of the global economy. This economic objec-
tive of achieving industrial and technological equality with other
countries arose from Japan’s experience as a late developer and also
from its strong sense of economic and political vulnerability. Another
very important source of this powerful economic drive is the Japanese

11
Among the many important studies of the Japanese economy, several should be
mentioned: Yasusuke Murakami, An Anticlassical Political-Economic Analysis: A Vi-
sion for the Next Century, ed. and trans. Kozo Yamamura (Stanford: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 1996), is a brilliant interpretation of the distinctive nature of the Japanese
economy; Takatoshi Ito, The Japanese Economy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), is a
very useful survey and analysis of the Japanese economy; Bai Gao, Economic Ideology
and Japanese Industrial Policy: Developmentalism from 1931 to 1965 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), is an outstanding history and evaluation of Japa-
nese industrial policy.
12
Ryutaro Komiya, Industrial Policy in Japan (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press,
1988).
13
Richard J. Samuels, “Rich Nation, Strong Army”: National Security and the Tech-
nological Transformation of Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994).
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