Japanese white-collar workers have been characterised by their intense loyalty and life-long commitment to their companies. This book is based on very extensive ethnographic research inside a Japanese insurance company during the period when the company was going through a major crisis which ended in the company's bankruptcy and collapse. It examines the attitudes of Japanese employees towards their work, their company and related issues at a time when the established order and established attitudes were under threat. The wide range and detail of the reporting of workers' attitudes, often in their own words, sustained over a considerable timescale, makes this study a particularly valuable resource.

This case book on Japanese companies and multinational corporations in Japan presents 12 entirely new cases studies for academics and business professionals alike. The cases in the book deal with market entry, corporate growth and crisis management of Japanese firms or international firms in Japan. It presents new developments, such as technological changes (electronic payment and gaming) in the Japanese business environment and provides an overview on the diversity of business activities in the Japanese economy. Written in a simple and an accessible manner, this book can be used as a textbook for students of International, Asian or Japanese management or by international managers and business professionals to make business decisions.

This open access book provides a readable narrative of the bubbles and the banking crisis Japan experienced during the two decades between the late 1980s and the early 2000s. Japan, which was a leading competitor in the world’s manufacturing sector, tried to transform itself into an economy with domestic demand-led mature growth, but the ensuing bubbles and crisis instead made the country suffer from chronicle deflation and stagnation. The book analyses why the Japanese authorities could not avoid making choices that led to this outcome. The chapters are based on the lectures to regulators from emerging economies delivered at the Global Financial Partnership Center of the Financial Services Agency of Japan.

Providing rare insight into the topic of Japanese management, this book looks at how Japanese companies changed after the economic recession of the 1990s and the decade-long restructuring process. With 12 case studies, this book investigates crisis management, strategy development, merger and globalization in a structured and descriptive manner. It aims to support students and decision-makers to learn more about strategic Japanese management and effective decision-making.

At the beginning of the 1990s, a massive speculative asset bubble burst in Japan, leaving the nation's banks with an enormous burden of nonperforming loans. Banking crises have become increasingly common across the globe, but what was distinctive about the Japanese case was the unusually long delay before the government intervened to aggressively address the bad debt problem. The postponed response by Japanese authorities to the nation's banking crisis has had enormous political and economic consequences for Japan as well as for the rest of the world. This book helps us understand the nature of the Japanese government's response while also providing important insights into why Japan seems unable to get its financial system back on track 13 years later. The book focuses on the role of policy networks in Japanese finance, showing with nuance and detail how Japan's Finance Ministry was embedded within the political and financial worlds, how that structure was similar to and different from that of its counterparts in other countries, and how the distinctive nature of Japan's institutional arrangements affected the capacity of the government to manage change. The book focuses in particular on two intervening variables that bring about a functional shift in the Finance Ministry's policy networks: domestic political change under coalition government and a dramatic rise in information requirements for effective regulation. As a result of change in these variables, networks that once enhanced policymaking capacity in Japanese finance became "paralyzing networks"--with disastrous results.

What has gone wrong in Japan that has led to innovation crisis? Prof. Eiichi Yamaguchi has been committed to answer this question, and his quest has spanned several years and academic disciplines. Initially it appeared as if it had no context, but when he put the pieces together, he realized that it was actually one story. This book is a summary of his research over the last 20 years, especially after he moved out of the field of physics, to which he had devoted 21 years. He felt that it was essential for him to do his bit to save this sinking ship, or it would be disrespectful to the future generation. The book integrates his research on innovation policy, innovation theory, and trans-science. It begins with a detailed story of the innovation of blue LEDs, for which three Japanese scientists received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014. It describes the current innovation and science crises in Japan and presents evidence that the strong international competitiveness of science-based industries in the United States is a result of the invention of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) system. It discusses a new theory of innovation structures, showing the error in Clayton M. Christensen’s argument of “disruptive innovation.” It also proposes a new concept for “paradigm disruptive innovation,” emphasizing that abduction and transilience are essential factors for accomplishing it and that their decline has led to the innovation crisis in Japan. Finally, it analyzes the future vision of the innovation ecosystem, which promotes abduction and transilience, for scientists to develop new science-based industries.

This book explores the reactions to the Manchurian crisis of different sections of the state, and of a number of different groups in Japanese society, particularly rural groups, women's organizations and business associations. It thus seeks to avoid a generalized account of public relations to the military and diplomatic events of the early 1930s, offering instead a nuanced account of the shifts in public and popular opinion in this crucial period.

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.

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 Tokyo policymakers. Smith sheds light on how average Japanese responded to problems of modernization and how they re-created the countryside.

The long postwar economic boom in Japan ended in the early 1990s. Since then, the Japanese economy has stagnated and a series of reforms have failed to initiate economic growth. S. Javed Maswood focuses on the period after the Asian Crisis and looks at the measures that have been taken to revitalize the banking sector and to overcome regulatory and administrative impediments to economic growth. Including analysis of the latest data from Japan, this is an important study of Japan's political economy and the implications of Japan's economic slowdown for regional and global economic prosperity.