Description
Asia/Pacific Research Center, Div of The Institute for International Studies Syncretism The Politics of Corporate Restructuring and System Reform in Japan 2014 Edition by Jean C. Oi, Kenji E. Kushida, Kay Shimizu
Japan's first decade of the twenty-first century is often called the "second lost decade", following the post-bubble "lost decade" of the 1990s, characterized by policy paralysis and overall lackluster economic growth. For those studying Japan more closely, however, the same decades reveal nothing short of a broad transformation in numerous core tenets of Japan's postwar political economy. How can we best capture this transformation?Each chapter in this volume examines a different aspect of Japan's political economy within a longer historical trajectory, from multiple angles, to depict a flexible but resilient system. They include: a comprehensive overview of the political economy; Japan's financial system; corporate reorganization; the politics of reform; small and medium enterprises and the labor market; compensation systems; and foreign multinational corporations. The editors characterize Japan's process of change as syncretism - practices foreign, domestic, old and new were selectively adopted, mixed and matched, along the way creating a new and unique hybrid system.