The effort to understand and explain Japan's remarkable economic success has spawned countless theories focusing on Japanese industrial relations, politics, culture, and any number of other characteristics of Japanese society. Early theories often emphasized government intervention in the economy. Japanese success was attributed to brilliant industrial and trade policy involving strong government intervention. These theories claimed that Japan's powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) attracted Japan's "best and brightest" and that the bureaucracy further ensured the development and international competitiveness of entire industrial sectors through administrative guidance. Other scholars of Japan focused on company level management practices-quality control circles, just in-time delivery and labor-management cooperation. Still others claim that the key to Japan's economic success can be found in its cultural commitment to education and corporate training.
It is the contention of this research that all of these factors have contributed to Japan's robust economic development, but that each theory is better understood when subsumed under the concept of "paternalism." The theory of paternalism is often offered in a limited sense as a model of worker-management relations that is another contributing factor to Japan's economic growth. Paternalism, however, should be viewed in a broader sense as a unique cultural phenomenon that guides not only worker -management relations but the role of government in economic affairs and the cultural commitment to corporate training as well.
This research examines the hypothesis that a paternalistic trait in Japanese culture has been instrumental in guiding Japan's rapid economic development both before and after World War II. The paternalistic cultural trait is further suspected as affecting major aspects of economic activity beyond worker-management relations, and thus...