The Rise of Japan

Term Paper # 99978

Asian Studies
Economics > International
History > Asian

The Rise of Japan

This paper explores the factors behind the rise of Japan as a major industrial power after World War II.

1,555 words () | 7 sources | MLA | 2007 United States

Paper Summary:

The paper looks at the major policy initiatives which made Japan's explosive growth after WWII possible and examines factors such as location, natural resources, demographics and international relations in order to assess how they allowed Japan to overcome its war-torn past. The paper shows how the rise of Japan was because of the country's talented bureaucrats who worked to put in place an economic program of rationalization, state-business co-operation and selective cartelization that allowed targeted growth sectors to expand.

From the Paper:

"For one thing, one of Japan's greatest resources has always been its human resources - even Japan's robust birth rate and growth during the middle third of the twentieth century has given way to a much more pedestrian birth rate that now sees the number of elderly climbing while the young fall steadily as a percentage of the population (Foreign Press Center Japan, sec.1-3). In any case, while rapid population growth probably played somewhat of a role in Japan's rise to economic superpower status after about 1950, it was (and remains) the quality rather than quantity of its human resources which has determined and will continue to determine its fate."

Sample of Sources Used:

Foreign Press Center Japan. "Facts about Japan". Japan: A Web Guide. N.d. FPCJ. 24 Oct. 2006 <http://www.fpcj.jp/e/mres/publication/jp/facts/population_main.html>
Japan Long-Term Credit Bank, Industrial Research Association (Nihon Choki Shin yo Ginko Sangyo Kenkyu Kai). Juyo Sangyo Sengo 25-nen shi (Twenty-Five Year Postwar History of Important Industries). Tokyo: Sangyo to Keizai, 1972.
Johnson, Chalmers. Miti and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Kusayanagi, Daizo. "Sahashi Shigeru, a amakudaranu kokyu kanryo (Sahashi Shigeru: a senior bureaucrat who will not descend from heaven). Bungei shunju (May 1969): 162-174.
Li, Shuhe. "The Search for Determinants of Catching up: Theory, the East Asian Experience, and the Chinese Case." China Economic Review, 8.2 (1997):137-155.