Japan at the end of the seventies; The treatment of the political in recent japanology

Abstract

Extract

The following discussion focuses on Ezra Vogel's Japan As Number One: Lessons for America (Harvard University Press, 1979), but only in order to see how it does or does not shed light on politics in Japan today. Although constructed in the form of a critique, its main object is less the criticism of a particular author's views than the direct consideration of two inter-related questions: a) how the Japanese state is conceptualized and presented at a given historical moment (the late seventies); and b) the role of the large corporation in the Japanese political process.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Herbert P. Bix

This essay will be printed concurrently in Kikan Kuraishisu [Crisis] in Japan