The Political Economy of Japan Bradley M. RICHARDSON

West Germany. By 1990 both Japan and Germany had passed the United States.Per-capita nominal GDP in Japan had increased 31 times from 1952 to 1990(9). Inslightly over one century Japan was transformed from being a predominantly poor,agricultural country to be one of the world's most successful economies.Postwar growth in production in specific industries provides a further graphictestimony of Japan's success. Increases in steel production are an excellent indicatorof postwar industrial growth. Japan was already unique in the non-Western worldbefore World War II by virtue of its then high levels of steel production relative toother countries outside of Europe and North America. In 1896 Japanese steel outputwas only an estimated 100 tons, but by 1936 steel production had reached 3.6 milliontons. By 1960, in the middle of the high growth period, the figure for Japan had grownto a much greater 22 million tons and in 1973, Japan reached its peak postwar steeloutput of 119 million tons (10). Since then Japan has ranked second in the world incrude steel output behind the USSR.Gross production and crude steel figures are good indicators of Japan'soverall postwar economic performance. GDP and GNP estimates indicate thegeneral shape of economic growth, and crude steel is one of the most basic ofindustrial commodities because of its use in many other manufactured products. Still,these general performance figures do not tell the whole story. Quite a bit of Japan'spostwar success has been due to growth and enormous export sales of specificindustries. In the 1950s and early 1960s these industries included shipbuilding andsteel. Later, the automobile, electronics and machine tool industries replaced theseproducts as export leaders.The automobile industry is a striking example of Japanese growth andrelated export success. In the early postwar era, Japan's automobile production wasvery small, actually minuscule in comparison with the United States and Europe. In1960, for example, Japan produced only 165 thousand automobiles and 308thousand trucks. By 1970, however, automobile production alone had increased toover 3 million units, and by 1990, the figure was nearly 10 million units, asixty-two-fold increase in production over a twenty eight year period. By 1980Japanese passenger car production exceeded that of the United States, the worldleader up until then (11). In recent years roughly half of the automobiles produced inJapan were exported, with a large share of these exports going to North America.Production data for several other modern manufactures indicate similarlysuccessful trajectories, as do also figures for Japan's foreign trade. As is well known,Japan is currently the world's largest exporter of automobiles and consumerelectronics, as well as a major exporter of many other industrial commodities.Japan's economic miracle was all the more impressive in view of that