CAIO DONALISIO

「カイオ・ドナリージオ」

Review

This is an excellent book about Japan's post-war economy. It covers the period of the US Occupation from 1945 to 1990.

The chapters are as follows:

1. Defeat and the Occupation Reforms
2. The Road to Recovery
3. The Period of High Growth
4. The Role of Government in the High-Growth Period
5. On the Eve of a Turning Point
6. The Double "Price Revolution"
7. The Advance of Corporate Capitalism
8. Where is Japan Headed?

The first two chapters describe the events immediately following Japan's defeat. The author, a prominent Japanese economist, worked for the Japanese government during this period and at times writes in the first person about his role in the process, which makes the reading all the more interesting.

The following chapters, while also descriptive of the subsequent decades, include personal opinions and analyses by the author. These seek to explain some of the features one would expect from a book on this theme — for example, the causes of inflation, fluctuations in exchange rates, and the engines of growth — but they also address more abstract concepts, such as the true meaning of GDP, the value of the environment, and the evolution of corporations, among many others, making the analysis of the Japanese economy particularly detailed and comprehensive. The book ends with several suggestions for Japanese society and offers a remarkably optimistic vision of the future (nostalgia for the '90s...).

An analogue camera "Made in Japan" from 1968, one of the symbols of Japan's post-war industrial success*

This is an economics book, and the author uses economic data as well as theoretical abstractions to substantiate his arguments about post-war Japanese economic events. However, the text is not excessively dense in mathematics or technical economic concepts. Models, when used, are clearly explained, though some sections contain equations and the author occasionally inserts economic jargon assumed to be known by the reader (such as the Cobb-Douglas function). Even so, this does not occur very often and the work is accessible to anyone interested in the subject.

Japan's post-war economic growth is one of the most remarkable events in world history, and Shigeto Tsuru does an excellent job analyzing its causes and consequences. This is certainly a book that taught me a great deal, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about these events.