The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan plunged the country into a state of crisis. As the nation struggled to recover from a record breaking magnitude 9 earthquake and a tsunami that was as high as thirty-eight meters in some places, news trickled out that Fukushima had experienced meltdowns in three reactors. These tragic catastrophes claimed some 20,000 lives, initially displacing some 500,000 people and overwhelming Japan's formidable disaster preparedness. This book brings together the analysis and insights of a group of distinguished experts on Japan to examine what happened, how various institutions and actors responded and what lessons can be drawn from Japan’s disaster. The contributors, many of whom experienced the disaster first hand, assess the wide-ranging repercussions of this catastrophe and how it is already reshaping Japanese culture, politics, energy policy, and urban planning.

Explores Japan's economic crisis and recovery, analysing the role of corporations, the state, macroeconomic and industrial policy, and the changing status of Japan as an economic role model. This book covers such topics as: the relevance of Western economic models to the Japanese case; and the Japanese macro-economy and financial system.

Is the recovery from the global financial crisis now secured? A strikingly similar crisis that stalled Japan's growth miracle two decades ago could provide some clues. This paper explores the parallels and draws potential implications for the current global outlook and policies. Japan's experiences suggest four broad lessons. First, green shoots do not guarantee a recovery, implying a need to be cautious about the outlook. Second, financial fragilities can leave an economy vulnerable to adverse shocks and should be resolved for a durable recovery. Third, well-calibrated macroeconomic stimulus can facilitate this adjustment, but carries increasing costs. And fourth, while judging the best time to exit from policy support is difficult, clear medium-term plans may help.

The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan plunged the country into a state of crisis. As the nation struggled to recover from a record breaking magnitude 9 earthquake and a tsunami that was as high as thirty-eight meters in some places, news trickled out that Fukushima had experienced meltdowns in three reactors. These tragic catastrophes claimed some 20,000 lives, initially displacing some 500,000 people and overwhelming Japan's formidable disaster preparedness. This book brings together the analysis and insights of a group of distinguished experts on Japan to examine what happened, how various institutions and actors responded and what lessons can be drawn from Japan’s disaster. The contributors, many of whom experienced the disaster first hand, assess the wide-ranging repercussions of this catastrophe and how it is already reshaping Japanese culture, politics, energy policy, and urban planning.

Natural disasters are often multifaceted and cause severe damage. Disasters initiated locally can become national and even global crises. Today’s world urgently needs a new body of knowledge and techniques for the mitigation of and response to disaster. Central to such a body of knowledge are disaster preparedness, emergency and crisis management systems of government, of which capacity building is becoming an increasingly important element in public administration, management and governance. Today, disasters are to be managed by sound local, national, and global governance, through all the phases of preparedness, prevention, mitigation and then to relief, recovery and re-construction. During all these phases, government plays the most important role. This book provides a case of the disaster governance of Japan, by presenting information and analyses on what happened in the Magnitude 9 Great East Japan Earthquake that caused the huge tsunami and the INES Level 7 Fukushima nuclear power plants accidents on March 11, 2011. In examining this Japanese case study, this book illustrates the socio-economic damage of the stricken areas together with the overall picture of the disasters. It examines Japan’s capacity for disaster governance and it’s crisis management system in response to the most devastating disaster that the country has ever encountered since the end of WWII. It also offers preliminary findings learned from this experience in the Japan’s public administration and governance systems, challenged to be more accountable and transparent during the recovery and reconstruction efforts now in progress.

This study of Japan’s transformation by the economic crises of the 1930s focuses on efforts to overcome the effects of the Great Depression in rural areas, particularly the activities of local activists and policymakers in Tokyo. The reactions of inhabitants of rural areas to the depression shed new light on how average Japanese responded to the problems of modernization and how they re-created the countryside.

This volume, stemming from the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, observes that for Japan to 'rise again' would mean recovery not only from the triple disaster—the March, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown—but from 20-plus years of economic stagnation, political fumbling, and deterioration in Japan's regional and global influence.

This collection examines a broad spectrum of natural and human-made disasters that have occurred in Japan and New Zealand, including WWII and the atomic bombing of Japan and two recent major earthquake events, the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Christchurch Earthquake, which occurred in 2011. Through these studies, the book provides important insights into the events themselves and their tragic effects, but most significantly a multidisciplinary take on the different cultural responses to disaster, changing memories of disasters over time, the impacts of disaster on different societies, and the challenges post-disaster in reviving communities and traditional cultural practices. Bringing in humanities and social science perspectives to disaster studies, this collection offers a significant contribution to disaster studies.

Japan was shaken by the 'double disaster' of earthquake and sarin gas attack in 1995, and in 2011 it was hit once again by the 'triple disaster' of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. This international, multi-disciplinary group of scholars examines the state and societal responses to the disasters and social crisis.

Japan is only one of many industrialized economies to suffer a financial crisis in the past 15 years, but it has suffered the most from its crisis--as measured in lost output and investment opportunities, and in the direct costs of clean-up. Comparing the response of Japanese policy in the 1990s to that of US monetary and financial policy to the American Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980s sheds light on the reasons for this outcome. This volume was created by bringing together several leading academics from the United States and Japan--plus former senior policymakers from both countries--to discuss the challenges to Japanese financial and monetary policy in the 1990s. The papers address in turn both the monetary and financial aspects of the crisis, and the discussants bring together broad themes across the two countries' experiences. As the papers in this Special Report demonstrate, while the Japanese government's policy response to its banking crisis in the 1990s was slow in comparison to that of the US government a decade earlier, the underlying dynamics were similar. A combination of mismanaged partial deregulation and regulatory forebearance gave rise to the crisis and allowed it to deepen, and only the closure of some banks and injection of new capital into others began the resolution. The Bank of Japan's monetary policy from the late 1980s onward, however, was increasingly out of step with US or other developed country norms. In particular, the Bank of Japan's limited response to deflation after being granted independence in 1998 stands out as a dangerous and unusual stance.