Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Does Japan Still Matter?
Part One: Past
Chapter One: Japan Before the Edo Period
Chapter Two: The Incubation of the Modern Japanese State
Chapter Three: Restoration to Occupation
Chapter Four: The Miracle
Chapter Five: The Institutions of High-speed Growth
Chapter Six: Consequences (Intended and Otherwise)
Part Two: Present
Chapter Seven: Economy and Finance
Chapter Eight: Business
Chapter Nine: Social and Cultural Change
Chapter Ten: Politics
Chapter Eleven: Japan and the World
Suggestions for Further Reading
Notes
R. Taggart Murphy is Professor of International Political Economy
at the MBA Program in International Business at the Tokyo campus of
the University of Tsukuba. He is the author of award-winning books
on modern Japan and a number of articles in publications from The
New Republic to the National Interest and The New Left Review. A
former investment banker, he has also taught at the university's
main campus, was a
Non-Resident Senior Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution,
and is a coordinator of the web's leading clearing-house for
serious writing on Japan, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
"Tag Murphy knows so much about Japan that he can be elegantly
spare and thematic in his analysis. He clearly loves the people
there so much that he can be highly critical of many of their
institutions. He is so serious about the country that he can be
playful and earthy in his approach. This is a very well-informed,
equally well-written book that I highly recommend to anyone dealing
with or thinking about Japan." --James Fallows, The Atlantic
"When I started visiting Japan in the early 1990s, I looked for a
book that would explain to me the country's history. I wasn't
interested in what restaurant to visit, or in a dry recitation of
dynastic succession, but in the historical interplay of the
country's politics, economics, and culture, Taggart Murphy, who
previously wrote a definitive study of Japan's bubble economy, has
written that book, and it comes as well with a provocative thesis
about the
breakdown of the American relationship with Japan. Anyone
interested in Japan or in the U.S.-Japan relationship should read
this book." --John Judis, Senior Editor, The New Republic
"Japan is not a free country, and this book tells you why. It is
present-day Washington's biggest and most significant vassal,
dwarfing any European country. It has adopted America's enemies to
its own detriment, inviting future disaster for the region and
possibly the world. By the time that Murphy's book gets to that
crucial part of recent history, not yet told in any other book, he
readies the reader for these shackles by offering a tapestry of
the
integrated political-economic strands, along with cultural
institutions, under the feet of Japan's bureaucrats, politicians,
bankers and industrialists." --Karel van Wolferen, author of The
Enigma of Japanese
Power
"Murphy sheds much light on Japan's current dependence upon the
U.S. for maintenance of its political system and its future
prospects, closing with an in-depth analysis of the current
administration." --Publishers Weekly
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