Book Review: The Great Transformation of Japanese Capitalism

A successful global entertainment franchise, “Transformers,” was developed in the 1980s from a production line of a Japanese toy maker, Takara, although those who enjoy the franchise products today may pay little attention to its East Asian origin. Academic discussion on the Japanese economy generally posits an opposite story to the robust growth of the Transformers franchise: since the early 1990s, the Japanese economy has undergone a long period of stagnation. Its systems and mechanisms are too inflexible to respond to the challenges posed by globalization, technological progress, and a series of crises (including the triple disasters in March 2011, i.e. earthquakes, tsunami, and nuclear accidents). Hence, Japan has been little transformed and remains in an economic plight. This kind of discussion is often followed by a loud call for implementation of further structural reforms, pointing, in many cases, to deregulation and liberalization. The Great Transformation of Japanese Capitalism, edited by Sébastien Lechevalier (translated by a prominent expert on Japanese politics, J. A. A. Stockwin), presents a clear counterargument against such a dominant and widespread view of Japanese capitalism. According to Lechevalier, the Japanese economy has been profoundly transformed since the 1980s and, contrary to mainstream understanding, this has been achieved because of the implementation of neoliberal policies, in other words human acts and intentions. More importantly, Lechevalier and his collaborators argue that neoliberal policies, which were presented to the Japanese public as a cure for Japan’s long-term economic downturn when implemented, are the real cause of the very predicament, since they worked in a way that destabilized the system of coordination and social compromise on which Japanese capitalism flourished in the previous period. Furthermore, the transformation of Japanese capitalism through neoliberal-infused reforms has not resulted in conversion of the Japanese economy to the Anglo-Saxon or European model, and Japan still appears as “a pole of capitalist diversity” (157). Concretely, the book begins with the preface by Robert Boyer which reviews the trend of research on the Japanese model of capitalism vis-à-vis the Anglo-Saxon and European models, and makes a case for Lechevalier’s effort, i.e. giving full scholarly attention to the Japanese trajectory in order to achieve a better understanding of the evolution of capitalism. This is followed by the introduction, written by Lechevalier, which calls for a new approach to examining Japan’s economic performance over the last 30 years. The extant discussion, Lechevalier contends, tends to be “simplistic,” “normative,” and too “cultural” in the sense that it attributes Japan’s prolonged poor economic performance to its failure, first, to adapt to a new globalized and technologicallyadvanced environment and, second, to deal with endogenous constraints, namely the shrinking and aging national population. To rectify these problems, Lechevalier invites us to analyze the 627150 RRPXXX10.1177/0486613415627150Review of Radical Political EconomicsBook Review research-article2016