Japanese industrial expansion since WWII

The Japanese industrial expansion since World War II has been considerable and has been noted by other industrialized nations around the world. Japan began from a position far behind the West, with her infrastructure devastated, and since has achieved a position of economic preeminence, challenging the United States and other industrialized nations for world leadership in innovation and industrial production, especially in high-tech industries of great import on the international scene today and into the future. The U.S. has recently started giving Japan greater attention in order to discern the management styles used in Japan and to emulate them to the greatest degree possible, and the increase in Japanese investment in the U.S., with the opening of a certain number of Japanese manufacturing companies in the U.S., primarily to produce Japanese cars. At the end of World War II, the Japanese economy had been devastated. The economic infrastructure of the country was destroyed; the government was discredited and under the control of foreign military leaders; and two cities had been reduced completely to rubble by the atomic bomb, Japan being the only nation ever to face the consequences of a nuclear attack. Today, Japan is one of the leading industrialized nations in the world, and in high-technology it is probably the leading country in the international marketplace. The foundation for the Japanese economic miracle was laid in the period after World War II when there wa

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intent of the occupying forces (Yamamura 1-2). Policy was implemented on four major fronts--restriction of zaibatsu-connected firms, dissolution of holding companies, elimination of excessive economic power, and the introduction of an anti-monopoly act. The reform was to be thorough, and the Japanese economy was to be given a competitive economic structure as quickly as possible. The program was drastic--it was not the Japanese way to enforce competition, for instance. However, a large segment of the country welcomed these reform measures, including the Social Democrats and the Communist Party, both of which hailed the program as the best alternative to the complete nationalization measures they had earlier advocated. Labor unions were newly legalized and had increasing membership roles, and they supported the program. Opposing the approach were the zaibatsu interests and the Conservative Party. However, there as little they could do under the circumstances, so they chose to cooperate with the occupation authority while hoping for milder actions in the future (Yamamura 3). The Allied occupation of Japan had a deep impact on Japan in a number of ways, and some believe that the occupation itself was clearly decisive in sett

Category: Foreign - J