Overview

Although most economists maintain a mistrust of a government's goals when it intervenes in an economy, many continue to trust its actual ability. They retain, in other words, a faith in state competence. For this faith, they adduce no evidence. Sharing little skepticism about the government's ability, they continue to expect the best of governmental intervention. To study government competence in World War II Japan offers an intriguing laboratory. In this book, Yoshiro Miwa shows that the Japanese government did not conduct requisite planning for the war by any means. It made its choices on an ad hoc basis and the war itself quickly became a dead end. That the government planned for the war incompetently casts doubts on the accounts of Japanese government leadership more generally.

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9781107026506

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Advance praise: 'A leading skeptic of the Chalmers Johnson view of Japanese bureaucratic competence confronts the reality of a country mired - after remarkable successes - in an ill-planned, muddled, and unwinnable war. For Professor Miwa's admirers (of which I count myself one), this powerful broadside confirms his sure combination of historical research with critical economic analysis. For doubters, this expose of wartime armaments production offers renewed challenges.' Leslie Hannah, London School of Economics and Political Science Advance praise: 'A brilliant and prolific economist, Professor Yoshiro Miwa explores the Japanese government's efforts to plan the economy in the 1930s and 1940s. If ever any government operated within an institutional structure that would have fostered economic planning, the Japanese government had that structure here: popular support, a compliant legislature, control over the necessary incentives. Notwithstanding that structure, the government's efforts to plan the economy failed disastrously. With incisive analytic tools, Professor Miwa explores the reasons for the failure.' J. Mark Ramseyer, Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, Harvard University, Massachusetts

'A leading skeptic of the Chalmers Johnson view of Japanese bureaucratic competence confronts the reality of a country mired - after remarkable successes - in an ill-planned, muddled, and unwinnable war. For Professor Miwa's admirers (of which I count myself one), this powerful broadside confirms his sure combination of historical research with critical economic analysis. For doubters, this expose of wartime armaments production offers renewed challenges.' Leslie Hannah, London School of Economics and Political Science 'A brilliant and prolific economist, Professor Yoshiro Miwa explores the Japanese government's efforts to plan the economy in the 1930s and 1940s. If ever any government operated within an institutional structure that would have fostered economic planning, the Japanese government had that structure here: popular support, a compliant legislature, control over the necessary incentives. Notwithstanding that structure, the government's efforts to plan the economy failed disastrously. With incisive analytic tools, Professor Miwa explores the reasons for the failure.' J. Mark Ramseyer, Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, Harvard University, Massachusetts '... [a] highly detailed evaluation of wartime economic policy and action ... Recommended.' W. D. Kinzley, Choice

Author Information

Yoshiro Miwa is a Professor of Economics at Osaka Gakuin University, and Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, where he obtained his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. He writes on a wide variety of areas. Much of his work has been in industrial organization and his current research concerns the effect of government involvement on economic activity in the 1930s and 1940s. Professor Miwa's books include Firms and Industrial Organization in Japan (1996), State Competence and Economic Growth in Japan (2004), and The Fable of the Keiretsu (2006), the latter co-authored by J. Mark Ramseyser.

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