Chalmers Johnson

Japan: Who Governs?

The Rise of the Developmental State

The godfather of Japanese revisionism explains how-and why-Japan has become a world power in the past twenty-five years.

Japan is the world's richest economy in terms of per capita income. Its households save close to 20 percent of their disposable income. Its pension and health delivery systems are efficient and relatively inexpensive, its unemployment rate half that of America's.

How did this happen?

The answers lie, according to Chalmers Johnson, in Japan's remarkable, much misunderstood, and maligned "capitalist development state," something new under the economic sun.

It is an economic system in which public service is highly valued; where state bureaucracy attracts the best, young minds; and where "guidance" by the state is both accepted and ubi-quitous. Lucidly explained here, it is also a system, according to the author, that will not fall. Rather, precisely because it is planned-even the recession-the Japanese system will thrive as it moves from a producer-dominated economy to a consumer-oriented headquarters for all of East Asia.

"Chalmers Johnson is the most original, insightful, and provocative political scientist currently writing on Japan." -Glen S. Fukushima

"Despite the volumes written on Japan, each essay in this book elicits a 'Eureka!'. . . Brilliant observations of how Japan's political economy works."-Alice Amsden