Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-7l9ct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-11T00:49:49.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Japan's Economy in 2012: Multiple Challenges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Vaclav Smil
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

“Adding insult to injury” sounds like a lawyerly phrase compared to its painfully evocative Japanese equivalent 泣面に蜂 nakitsura ni hachi – literally “a bee to a crying face”. But even that stinging proverb fails to convey what Japan has been through during the recent past. In March 2011 its economy, slowly recovering from the worst global post-World War II downturn, was hit by a powerful earthquake followed by a massive tsunami. That twin disaster disrupted many supply chains of Japan's important manufacturing sector and caused a catastrophic failure of the Fukushima nuclear power plant; the ensuing fears led to the eventual shut-down of all of the country's nuclear generating stations, limited electricity supply, increased imports of fossil energies and the first annual foreign trade deficit in a generation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 24 , June 2012 , e5
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2012

References

Abdallah, S. et al. 2009. The Happy Planet Index 2.0. London: New Economics Foundation. 2009Google Scholar
Alexander, A. 2002. In the Shadow of the Miracle: The Japanese Economy Since the End of High-speed Growth. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexander, A. 2008. The Arc of Japan's Economic Development. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Campbell, D.W. and Watanabe, W.. 2009. Will the Future Japanese and US Personal Saving Rates be Relatively Equivalent? New York: The Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University.Google Scholar
Econstats. 2012. GDP, constant prices.Google Scholar
Fanuc. 2012. Fanuc's history.Google Scholar
Fingleton, E. 2012. The myth of Japan's failure. The New York Times January 6, 2012.Google Scholar
Fujimoto, T. 1999. The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fukase, A. 2012. Tale of trouble at Japan pension funds. Wall Street Journal March 14, 2012.Google Scholar
Genda, Y. 2007. Jobless youths and the NEET problem in Japan. Social Science Japan Journal 10:23–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finance, Global. 2012. External Debt in Countries Around the World.Google Scholar
Hamada, K. and Kato, H., eds. 2007. Ageing and the Labor Market in Japan : Problems and Policies. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamada, K., Kashyap, A.K. and Weinstein, D.E., eds. 2011. Japan's Bubble, Deflation, and Long-term Stagnation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Horie, N., Oshima, Y. and Tsukagoshi, Y.. 2008. Japan's Widening Income Gap Among the Elderly: Necessary Measures for the Reconstruction of an Income Safety Net. Tokyo: Mizuho Research Institute.Google Scholar
JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization). 2012. Japanese Trade and Investment Statistics.Google Scholar
Katz, R. 2012. NBR's Handwringing about aging.Google Scholar
Kyocera. 2012. Kyocera Global.Google Scholar
Matanle, P. et al. 2011. Japan's Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century: Contemporary Responses to Depopulation and Socioeconomic Decline. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.Google Scholar
Nakamura, M., ed. 2004. Changing Japanese Business, Economy, and Society : Globalization of Post-bubble Japan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nathan, J. 1999. Sony: The Private Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). 2010. Poverty Rates and Gaps. Paris: OECD.Google Scholar
OECD. 2011. Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising. Paris: OECD.Google Scholar
OECD. 2012a. Income distribution - inequality.Google Scholar
OECD. 2012b. General government net financial liabilities.Google Scholar
OECD. 2012c. Household saving rates.Google Scholar
OECD. 2012d. Better Life Index: Life Satisfaction.Google Scholar
Pettis, M. 2012. Japan's debt disaster and China's (non)rebalancing: Stormy seas ahead? Japan FocusGoogle Scholar
Reuters. 2012a. Tokyo stock exchange charts. Reuters,Google Scholar
Reuters. 2012b. Insight: After Civic bruising, Honda fights for its soul.Google Scholar
Saito, K. 2012. In Japan's footsteps. In: OECD Yearbook 2012, Paris: OECD, pp. 24–25.Google Scholar
Sato, Y. and Imai, J., eds. 2011. Japan's New Inequality: Intersection of Employment Reforms and Welfare Arrangements. Victoria, Australia: Trans Pacific Press.Google Scholar
Schaede, U. 2008. Choose and Focus: Japanese Business Strategies for the 21st Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Slater, D.H. 2009. The Making of Japan's New Working Class: “Freeters” and the Progression from Middle School to the Labor Market. Japan FocusGoogle Scholar
Takatoshi, I. and Mishikin, F.S.. 2004. Two Decades of Japanese Monetary Policy and the Deflation Problem. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
US Treasury. 2012. Major foreign holders of Treasury securities.Google Scholar
White, A. 2007. A global projection of subjective well-being: A challenge to positive psychology? Psychtalk 56:17–20.Google Scholar
Wood, C. 1992. The Bubble Economy: Japan's Extraordinary Speculative Boom of the ‘80s and the Dramatic Bust of the ‘90s. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.Google Scholar
World Bank. 2012. Manufacturing, value added (current US$).Google Scholar