这是刚刚从大学资料库和自己记忆里面写出来的日本战后的经济史. 所以可能条理性方面会有些问题．但是我基本给几个不同段落加了个简单的标题，并且把一些生僻的字都换了．由于自己手上和电脑里面的关于这方面的资料都是英语为主，为了节约时间帖子所使用的语言为英语．要是各位对于某个特别段落看不懂的，复制下来发到帖子上面，我会尽量翻译．
至于那些动不动就硬把中国发展那30年和日本那30年比较. 还有动不动就说中国身 INCOME-DOUBLING PLAN 的白痴. 最好自己先了解清楚. 别出来丢人现眼.
最关键的几个要点，希望大家留意, 一个是美国对日本的战后援助,还有朝鲜战争的机遇. 日本人口结构,和日本原本经济结构,这些方面了解清楚. 日本在60年代的人口增长已经缓慢下来. 那时候 日本大概只有30%的农业人口. 还有人口总数方面. 更别去说人口素质. 根本是没有任何可比性的.比如战后回到日本的军人，素质上远要比中国的农民工要高（这里面指的是知识和操作水平，不要给我在什么战争罪行上作文章．）另外一个是日本腾飞时候，资源价格的水平．
要是我有时间,我会写一下到底被称为亚洲经济奇迹的原因是什么．
Economic and social changes
The occupation's political democratization was reinforced by economic and social changes. SCAP was aware that political democracy in Japan required not only a weakening of the value structure of the hierarchic “family state,” which restricted the individual, but also a liberation of the Japanese people from the economic forces that reinforced such a state. With nearly half of Japan's farmers subsisting as tenants, Americans saw little hope for democracy in Japan without significant changes in the ownership of land. Occupation authorities therefore set out to establish a program of land reform that was designed to convert tenants into owner-farmers. Through legislation a plan was devised whereby landlords, many of whom lived in the cities, were forced to divest themselves of a high proportion of their holdings to the government. This land was then sold to tenants on favourable terms. Given the fact that prices were set at wartime and postwar pre-inflation rates, landlords were essentially expropriated. Still, the reforms were implemented with great efficiency and in the end proved highly successful. Supported by favourable tax and price arrangements, the majority of Japan's new owner-farmers gained control of their land, which on average consisted of about 2.5 acres (1 hectare) per farm. Benefited by agricultural subsidies and government-maintained high agricultural prices, the Japanese countryside experienced increased prosperity. Rural voters became not only the mainstay of the conservative Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) after its formation in 1955 (fulfilling the original American intent), but as one of Japan's most powerful lobbies they often successfully resisted agricultural trade liberalization. In a reversal of the Taisho dilemma that sprang from low domestic consumption, land reform and agricultural price supports contributed significantly to Japan's emergence as a consumer economy in the 1950s and '60s.
Initial Allied plans had contemplated exacting heavy reparations from Japan, but the unsettled state of other Asian countries that were to have been recipients brought reconsideration. Except for Japanese assets overseas and a small number of war plants, reparations were largely limited to those worked out between Japan and its Asian victims after the Treaty of Peace with Japan was signed in 1951.
The dissolution of Japan's great financial houses (zaibatsu) also was an early occupation priority, but it gave way under Cold War pressures. Although the zaibatsu originally were seen as the chief potential war makers, the need for an economically viable Japan changed this perspective to viewing them as essential for economic recovery. Thus, of 1,200 concerns marked for investigation and possible dissolution, fewer than 30 were broken up by SCAP, though the major units of the zaibatsu empires—holding companies—were dissolved and their securities made available for public purchase. New legislation sought to enforce fair trading and to guard against a return to monopolies. The war itself, new postwar tax policies, and the purges that removed many top executives further undercut the largest firms. By 1950 extensive changes, although far short of those initially proposed, had taken place in the industrial world. The large banks, however, were not broken up and proved to be the centres for a measure of reconsolidation in the years after the occupation ended.
Strengthening the influence of labour in Japan also was seen as important for the advancement of democracy. A new Ministry of Labour was established in 1947. Laws on trade unions and labour relations modeled on New Deal legislation in the United States were passed, and a strong union movement was initially encouraged. Leaders of this movement included a number of socialists and communists who had been released from prison by the occupation. But a proposed general strike in 1947 and the Cold War-induced shift toward rapid economic reconstruction, anti-inflationary policies, and a control of radicalism quickly resulted in a purge of left-wing labour leaders and an effort to bring labour under government control. In 1948 SCAP ordered the government to take steps to deprive government workers—including those in communications unions—of the right to strike. At the same time a new labour organization, the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Sohyo), was sponsored as a counterweight and gradual replacement for the Congress of Industrial Labour Unions of Japan (Sambetsu Kaigi), which had become dominated by the left. In the late 1950s Sohyo, too, had become increasingly antigovernment and anti-American, its Marxist and socialist orientation finding a political voice in the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), of which it became the leading supporter.
Postwar social legislation also provided relief from earlier restrictions. The civil code, which had supported the power of the male family head in the past, was rewritten to allow for equality between the sexes and joint inheritance rights. Women were given the right to vote and to sit in the Diet.
The era of rapid growth
From 1952 to 1973 Japan experienced accelerated economic growth and social change. By 1952 Japan had at last regained its prewar industrial output. Thereafter, the economy expanded at unprecedented rates. At the same time, economic development and industrialization supported the emergence of a mass consumer society. Large numbers of Japanese who had previously resided in villages became urbanized; Tokyo, whose population stood at about three million in 1945, reached some nine million by 1970. Initial close ties to the United States fostered by the Mutual Security Treaty gave way to occasional tensions over American policies toward Vietnam, China, and exchange rates. The first trade frictions, over Japanese textile exports, took place at that time. Meanwhile, foreign culture, as was the case in the 1920s, greatly influenced young urban dwellers, who in the postwar period broke with their own traditions and turned increasingly to Hollywood and American popular culture for alternatives. Japan's new international image was projected and enhanced by events such as the highly successful 1964 Olympic Summer Games and the Osaka World Exposition of 1970.
Economic transformation
The Korean War marked the turn from economic depression to recovery for Japan. As the staging area for the United Nations forces on the Korean peninsula, Japan profited indirectly from the war, as valuable procurement orders for goods and services were assigned to Japanese suppliers. The Japanese economy at the return of independence in 1952 was in the process of growth and change. Sustained prosperity and high annual growth rates, which averaged 10 percent in 1955–60 and later climbed to more than 13 percent, changed all sectors of Japanese life. The countryside, where farmers had benefited from land reform, began to feel the effects of small-scale mechanization and a continuous migration to industrial centres. Agricultural yields rose as improved strains of crops and modern technology were introduced, as household appliances appeared in remote villages, and as the changing patterns of urban food consumption provided an expanded market for cash crops, fruits and vegetables, and meat products. Efforts to control population growth, which had begun with the legalization of abortion in 1948 and included a national campaign to encourage family planning, showed considerable success, as the population stabilized and thereafter grew slowly. Gains in economic output, therefore, were not offset by a rapidly expanding population, and steady industrial growth brought full employment and even labour shortages.
Two elements underscored rapid growth in the 1960s. The first was the development of a consumer economy, which was given a significant boost by Ikeda Hayato's Income Doubling Plan of 1960. This plan reaffirmed the government's responsibility for social welfare, vocational training, and education, while also redefining growth to include consumers as well as producers. The second was the new industrial policy that emerged out of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI) in 1959. Under these influences the structure of the Japanese economy changed to concentrate on high-quality and high-technology products designed for domestic and foreign consumption. The production of such products also emphasized Japan's need for stable, economically advanced trading partners to replace the Asian markets to which inexpensive textiles had been sent earlier. Improvements in transportation—e.g., cargo-handling methods and bulk transport by large ore carriers and tankers—helped to remove the disadvantage of the greater distances over which Japan's products had to be shipped. Most important, the large and growing domestic market was rendering invalid earlier generalizations about Japan's need for cheap labour and captive Asian colonies to sustain its economy. The era of high growth continued until the “oil shock” of 1973: the embargo by OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Nations). In the interim, Japan's output shifted with world currents, and its industrial expansion made it a world leader in shipbuilding, electronics, precision optical equipment, steel, automobiles, and high technology. In the 1960s Japanese exports expanded at an annual rate of more than 15 percent, and in 1965 Japan revealed the first signs that it had a trade surplus.
A number of factors greatly aided Japan's economic resurgence during the 1950s and '60s. One was the complete destruction of the nation's industrial base by the war. This meant that Japan's new factories, using the latest developments in technology, were often more efficient than those of their foreign competitors. The Japanese became enthusiastic followers of the American statistician W. Edward Deming's ideas on quality control and soon began producing goods that were more reliable and contained fewer flaws than those of the United States and western Europe. At the same time, Japan was able to import, under license, advanced foreign technology at relatively low cost. With the addition of a youthful and well-educated workforce, a high domestic savings rate that provided ample capital, and an activist government and bureaucracy that provided guidance, support, and subsidies, the ingredients were in place for rapid and sustained economic growth.
Two major changes were visible in the social life of the Japanese from 1952 to 1973. The first was the significant decline in the birth rate that stabilized the Japanese population. The second was the population shift from the countryside to urban centres. In addition to birth control, such factors as a more highly educated populace, postponement of marriage in favour of education and employment, and a desire for greater independence in early adulthood contributed to changing fertility patterns—as did the increasing conviction among many couples that it was in their economic self-interest to have fewer children. But even with a stable population Japan remained one of the world's most densely populated countries.
As population growth slowed and the economy expanded, Japan faced a labour shortage that drew workers from agriculture, as well as from small and medium enterprises, to the new large-scale industries of the cities. The resulting shift in Japan's population was dramatic. In the Meiji period the rural population of Japan stood at 85 percent of the national total; by 1945 it was approximately 50 percent, and by 1970 it had fallen to less than 20 percent. In the process, both village and urban life underwent significant changes. Factories were built in the countryside as industrialists tried to tap into the still-underemployed rural labour force. Agriculture itself became increasingly mechanized and commercialized. As sons, and even husbands, went off to the factories, women, children, and the elderly were often left to run the family farm. At the same time, the face of rural Japan changed, with hard-surfaced roads, concrete schools, factories, and sales outlets for automobiles and farm equipment replacing the once timeless thatched-roof houses. By 1970 the average farm household income had risen higher than its urban counterpart, providing considerable rural purchasing power. Television tied rural households to urban Japan and to the world beyond. Young men brought up on visions of urban life as projected by American television programs were eager to move to the cities after graduation from high school. Young women showed increasing reluctance to become farm wives, and in some instances villagers sought spouses for their sons in Southeast Asia. Rural solidarity suffered from such out-migration, and in many cases prewar village life ceased to be, as villages amalgamated into cities and struggled to develop new identities.
Cities also underwent rapid change. By 1972 one in every nine Japanese lived in Tokyo and one in four lived in the Tokyo-Osaka industrial corridor. As the national centre for government, finance, business, industry, education, and the arts, Tokyo became a magnet for many Japanese and the quintessential expression of Japanese urban life.
But while Tokyo and other large cities remained highly attractive, urban dwellers also faced serious problems, notably housing. Living space for most urban dwellers was infinitesimal when compared with Western societies. Although Japanese bristled when Westerners described them as living in “rabbit hutches,” apartments with 125 square feet (12 square metres) of living space—often with shared facilities—were common. Such apartments were often found in drab residential developments that pushed out at greater distances from the inner wards of major cities and required increased commuting times. The dream of owning one's home, which most urban dwellers sought to keep alive, was already becoming increasingly elusive by the 1970s. In 1972 the price of land in or near Japan's largest cities was some 25 times higher than it had been in 1955, far surpassing the rise in the average urban worker's disposable income for the same period. While government and private industry were able to provide some low-cost housing, higher-priced housing in the form of high-rise condominiums, or “mansions,” proliferated, and for most Japanese urbanites housing remained the chief flaw in Japan's postwar economic “miracle.”
If urban life retained a number of density-induced drawbacks—which in addition to housing included few parks and open spaces, limited sewage systems, and an overcrowded transportation network of trains, subways, and buses that often required “pushers” and “pullers” to get passengers on and off—it also had its compensations in a rising standard of living and the entertainments that money afforded in splendid department stores, shopping areas, movie houses, coffee shops, bars, nightclubs and restaurants. The impact of American culture was everywhere. Young urbanites, in particular, took with gusto to jazz and rock music, pinball machines, American soft drinks and fast foods, baseball, and the freer social relations that typified American dating patterns. American fashions of dress and grooming, often set by movie and rock stars, quickly found bands of faithful imitators. Indeed, almost every American fad from the hula hoop to hang gliding had its Japanese supporters.
Urban life also brought about changes in traditional Japanese family and gender relationships. The position of women improved, as many more now went to high schools and colleges. Most found urban employment until marriage. As arranged marriages declined and “love” matches increased, marriage customs also changed. Urban living promoted the ideal of the nuclear family, particularly as housing conditions made it difficult for the extended family to live together. Urban dwellers found themselves less dependent on the goodwill of their neighbours. There was also less need for the conformity that typified rural life—although for many recent arrivals the city-based company and factory effectively restructured village values to support an efficient workplace.
The majority of villagers actually made the transition from rural to urban life with less social stress than was the case in Europe and America. Juvenile delinquency showed some increase, but overall crime rates remained low. So-called “new” religions such as Soka Gakkai (Value-Creation Society), which strongly appealed to those feeling isolated or alienated, flourished in the 1950s and '60s. Disparities between the newly rich and the older generation living on fixed incomes and between a freer, franker, and often more egotistic and brash mass culture that appealed to the young and traditional taste set by what once had been the aristocracy often accentuated how generations viewed the postwar situation. For many of the older generation, the new culture epitomized moral decay, which they attributed to the postwar system of education; to the young, the older generation seemed out of touch with the new realities that Japan faced. Such a generational split was further dramatized in the universities, where older professors were firmly in control but where young people struggled to find ways of expressing their own positions, which, typically, were often far more radical than those of their teachers.
International relations
The Japan that returned to the international community in 1952 was considerably reduced in territory and influence. The Republic of China (Taiwan), the People's Republic of China on the mainland, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) all possessed military establishments far larger than what became Japan's Self-Defense Forces. Given the rise of the Cold War, international relations were not destined to be conducted on the pacifist lines envisioned by Article 9 of the constitution. The United States maintained its occupancy of Okinawa and the Ryukyus, while the Soviet Union occupied the entire Kuril chain and claimed southern Sakhalin. The Korean War increased the urgency for a peace treaty. Details for such a treaty were worked out by the United States and its noncommunist allies during the command of General Matthew B. Ridgway, who succeeded MacArthur as supreme commander in April 1951.
The San Francisco peace conference that convened in September 1951 thus ratified arrangements that had been worked out earlier. In the peace treaty that ensued, Japan recognized the independence of Korea and renounced all rights to Taiwan, the Pescadores, the Kurils, and southern Sakhalin and gave up the rights to the Pacific islands earlier mandated to it by the League of Nations. The Soviet Union attended the conference but refused to sign the treaty. This enabled Japan to retain hope for regaining four islands of the Kurils closest to Hokkaido—territory that Japan had gained through negotiations, not war. The peace treaty recognized Japan's “right to individual and collective self-defense,” which it exercised through the United States–Japan Security Treaty (1951) by which U.S. forces remained in Japan until the Japanese secured their own defense. Japan agreed not to grant similar rights to a third power without U.S. approval. Americans promised to assist Japan's Self-Defense Forces while U.S. military units (except air detachments and naval forces) were withdrawn to Okinawa.
The treaty made no arrangements for reparations to the victims of Japan's Pacific war but provided that Japan should negotiate with the countries concerned. Consequently, effective resumption of relations with the countries of Asia came only after treaties covering reparations had been worked out with them. These were signed with Burma (now Myanmar) in 1954, the Philippines in 1956, and Indonesia in 1958. In 1956 Japan restored diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union but without a formal peace treaty. With the Soviet Union no longer blocking the way, Japan was admitted to the United Nations in late 1956 and subsequently became active in United Nations meetings and specialized agencies. It also became a contributing member of the Colombo Plan group of countries for economic development in South and Southeast Asia, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Japan spearheaded the creation of the Asian Development Bank in 1965–66.
At the time of the peace treaty, Prime Minister Yoshida wanted to delay committing Japan to either of the two Chinas, but the U.S. negotiator John Foster Dulles convinced him that the treaty would be opposed in the U.S. Senate unless assurances were given that Japan would recognize the Republic of China. Thus, Tokyo soon negotiated a peace treaty with that regime, but one that would not prejudice subsequent negotiations with Beijing. A lively trade developed with Taiwan, where Japan made considerable contributions to the economy.
Trade relationships with mainland China developed slowly in the absence of diplomatic ties. In 1953 an unofficial trade pact was signed between private Japanese groups and Chinese authorities. In addition, a semiofficial “memorandum” trade became increasingly important in the 1960s. The Chinese government made skillful use of trade for political purposes, in the hope of embarrassing or weakening Japan's conservative governments, and intervals of ideological tension on the mainland—e.g., the Great Leap Forward (1958–60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–76)—usually were reflected in a decline or cessation of trade with Japan. Nevertheless, Japan gradually became China's most important trading partner.
U.S. overtures toward mainland China in 1971 led to a rapid reorientation of Japan's China policy. Japanese government leaders indicated a willingness to compromise ties with Taiwan in favour of a closer relationship with Beijing. Beijing also revealed a new interest in formal relations with Japan, subject to Japan's revocation of its treaty with Taiwan. In 1972, a year after mainland China was admitted to the UN, Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei reached an agreement with Beijing on steps to normalize relations. Japan simultaneously severed its ties with Taiwan, replacing its embassy with a nonofficial office.
Japan's post-occupation relationship with the United States was founded on the 1951 security treaty. Part of the understanding that lay behind this treaty was that Japan would have access to the U.S. market in exchange for the maintenance of American bases on Japanese soil. While the LDP saw advantages to maintaining such a quid pro quo relationship, which allowed Japan to dramatically expand its foreign trade while avoiding undue security costs, Japan's opposition parties were less sanguine about a relationship that tied Japan directly into the increasingly hostile Cold War. Tensions therefore mounted as the renewal date of the treaty (scheduled for 1960) approached; both governments hoped to extend it for 10 years as the revised Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. The situation was complicated by domestic dislike of Kishi Nobusuke, who had become prime minister in 1957 after having earlier served in the Tojo cabinet. Kishi had been named, though not tried, as a war criminal by the occupation. His staunch anticommunist stand, his open support of constitutional revision, and his undemocratic tactics made him suspect among many Japanese who felt they had been only marginally involved in the making of the original treaty and were anxious about the nation's future. Added to this was the proposed visit to Japan by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower that was scheduled amid new tensions caused by the downing of a U.S. reconnaissance plane by the Soviet Union in May 1960. When the Kishi cabinet used its majority in the Diet to force through treaty revisions, opposition increased steadily. Gigantic public demonstrations, largely composed of students, shook Tokyo for days. In the end the treaty survived, but Eisenhower's visit was canceled and Kishi resigned in July 1960.
The administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy caught the imagination of many Japanese, and Kennedy's designation of the popular scholar Edwin O. Reischauer as ambassador further improved Japanese-American relations. But by the late 1960s the unpopularity of the Vietnam War threatened to disturb the relationship once more. Prime ministers Ikeda and Sato worked hard to remove the final reminders of war. In 1967, under Sato, the Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands were restored to Japan; and in 1969, on the eve of renewed negotiations over treaty revisions, the United States agreed to return the Ryukyus in 1972, although bases were to be maintained on Okinawa under the terms of the security treaty. The treaty was renewed without incident in 1970, now changed to allow termination by either side with a year's advanced notification. Thus, by 1972 the U.S.-Japan relationship had stabilized. While signs of change on the part of both countries could be found in their China policies, there was as yet little to indicate the mounting conflict over trade that subsequently emerged.
The late 20th and early 21st centuries > Economic change
By the early 1970s a series of forces had combined to bring to an end the era of high growth that Japan had experienced in the 1950s and '60s. These included significant advances in technology, the disappearance of ample rural labour for industry, and the decline in international competitiveness of heavy manufacturing industries such as shipbuilding, aluminum, fertilizers, and, later, steel. Outcries over urban congestion, pollution, and environmental degradation and dissatisfaction with ever-escalating land prices caused many middle-class Japanese to question the economic and political logic that linked growth with national success. The foreign trading environment also was changing. In 1971 the United States devalued the U.S. dollar by 17 percent against the Japanese yen. The OPEC oil embargo of 1973–74 created a further disruption of the Japanese economy, which depended heavily on Middle Eastern oil. Outbreaks of panic buying by consumers brought reminders of the essential fragility of Japan's economic position; the rapid rise in the price of oil ended an era of relatively cheap and abundant energy resources. Thus, by the mid-1970s many Japanese felt increasingly insecure about their place in the global economy. Japanese dependency on fuel and food—as demonstrated by the consternation caused in 1972 when the United States temporarily embargoed soybean exports to Japan—had become increasingly clear.
During the 1970s and '80s, consequently, Japan tried to integrate its economy more effectively into the global system and sought to diversify its markets and sources of raw materials. Japan became a firm advocate of international free trade and tried to create at least a measure of energy self-sufficiency through the increased use of nuclear power. The economic uncertainties of the 1970s produced a reemergence of a defensive, nationalistic sentiment that pictured Japan in a struggle with outside forces aimed at depriving the Japanese of their hard-won postwar gains. Until the early 1990s, international economic tensions were effectively used by the ruling LDP and the bureaucracy to contain and defuse important domestic economic and political issues.
The domestic rhetoric about the hostile international environment in which Japan operated cloaked the fact that by the 1980s the Japanese economy had become one of the world's largest and most sophisticated. Per capita income had surpassed that of the United States, and total gross national product stood at roughly one-tenth of world output. By the mid-1980s Japan had become the world's leading net creditor nation and the largest donor of development aid. Prosperity, however, was increasingly linked to trade. Slow domestic growth was offset by booming exports. In the 1970s exports were seen as vital to balance the deficits anticipated from rapidly rising oil prices. But, as the Japanese economy successfully weathered the recessions induced by escalating oil prices in 1972–74 and 1979–81, the volume of exports accelerated. Headed by automobiles, colour television sets, high-quality steel, precision optical equipment, and electronic products, Japan's merchandise trade balance with western Europe and the United States steadily mounted in its favour.
By contrast, domestic consumption, which had played such an important role in the first phase of Japan's postwar recovery, began to stagnate. By the early 1990s the Japanese were consuming considerably less than their American, British, or German counterparts. At the same time, consumer prices in Japan were considerably higher than the world average. Studies showed that consumption patterns were influenced by lagging wage increases, congested housing, traditional savings habits, and long working and commuting schedules that provided little time for leisure.
Mounting Japanese trade surpluses increased friction between Japan and its trading partners in Europe and the United States. Japan's critics charged that the country advocated free trade abroad but maintained a closed market at home, engaged in “adversarial trade” designed to benefit only Japan, and pushed trade to export domestic unemployment during economic hard times, and there were complaints that Japan sold goods abroad at lower than domestic prices—a charge denied by Japanese business and government leaders. The government and bureaucracy responded by making efforts to “open” Japan. In the early 1970s Japan had the world's second highest tariffs on manufactured goods, but two decades later such tariffs were the lowest among the economically advanced countries. Restrictions on many agricultural products—including, in the early 1990s, rice—were lifted. Japan's financial markets were deregulated and liberalized, and a study commissioned under Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro in 1986 proposed the restructuring of the Japanese economy to make it rely almost entirely on domestic demand for growth. Plans for such changes were further taken up in the so-called Structural Impediments Initiative (SII) in the late 1980s. By the end of the decade it was generally acknowledged that formal barriers to trade had been largely dismantled, though areas such as construction bidding were still closed, and many cultural barriers remained.
At the same time, what came to be called Japan's “bubble economy” of the 1980s, which typified an era that combined easy credit with unbridled speculation and eventually drove Japanese equity and real estate markets to astronomical price levels, burst. In 1992–93 this ushered in a deep recession, the severity of which postponed many of the earlier reform plans, further undercut Japanese consumer confidence, and inevitably exacerbated trade tensions. Japan's merchandise trade surplus with the world, however, continued to spiral up. Those export surpluses finally produced a rapid appreciation of the yen against the dollar in the mid-1990s. Contrary to American expectations, however, this had only marginal effects on the trade balance. At the same time, the stronger Japanese currency allowed Japanese firms and individuals to invest heavily abroad by buying foreign assets (notably real estate) at bargain prices.
The Japanese economy continued to stagnate, teetering between economic recession and anemic growth as the country entered the 21st century. Unemployment, still relatively low by Western standards, rose considerably and in 2000 surpassed 5 percent for the first time in the postwar era. A series of prime ministers in the 1990s and early 21st century called for major economic reforms, particularly deregulation. Notable were the sweeping reforms (dubbed the “Big Bang”) proposed by Hashimoto Ryutaro (who served as prime minister 1996–98) in administration, finance, social security, the economy, the monetary system, and education. The measures were endorsed by Hashimoto's successors, but they met resistance in many sectors. Several leaders, including Koizumi Junichiro, who became prime minister in 2001, felt stymied by the inability of the policy changes to produce economic growth. The economy also faced other challenges, particularly from a rapidly aging population and rising income disparities. Although the bond with the United States remained the linchpin of Japan's external relations, Japan reoriented its economy to integrate it more effectively into that of the Asian economic bloc.
The late 20th and early 21st centuries > Social change
Japan has continued its transformation into a high-technology, urban, industrial society. The migration from countryside to city largely has been completed; some four-fifths of Japan's people now live in urban areas, and few families live on farms. Urbanization has resulted in further demographic change, including an accelerating decline in the birth rate that by the mid-1980s was less than the level needed to replace the population. Urban congestion, confined housing space, the cost of raising children, a trend toward delaying marriage, a growing reluctance by women to get married, and effective birth-control measures have all contributed to this phenomenon. By 2000 the proportion of Japanese age 65 or older had surpassed those 15 or younger. Thus, Japanese society faces serious demographic challenges, the most urgent being a rapidly aging population and concomitant declining active workforce.
Living standards have risen dramatically since the early 1970s, supporting a strong consumer market. But the excessive crowding and congestion in major cities has been exacerbated by the high cost of real estate, making home ownership difficult for many Japanese families. Hours spent commuting also increased as people moved ever farther from city centres. By the 1990s many Japanese citizens felt confined to an urban environment designed to serve the needs of corporate Japan and not its people and were less willing to support the entrenched government-business alliance that assured majorities for the LDP.
Japanese values also have been changing as generations born and raised in the city mature and replace those brought up in the villages. While Japanese society remains formally hierarchical and social distinctions based on education and family background persist, the degree of conformity and the acceptance of consensus appear to be lessening. As the agriculture-induced submission of the individual to the group fades and as corporations, which previously served as pseudo-villages in the urban environment, lose their paternalistic overtones, greater individuation is apparent. In marketing, for example, it has been found that the former consumer habit of buying the same, familiar brand-name items is not being continued by Japanese who reached adult age from the mid-1980s. Many of those individuals have become disenchanted with the shops and goods their parents favoured and have opted for diversity and competitive pricing. Such phrases as “my car,” “my home,” and “my leisure” further underscore the growing emphasis on the individual and individual choice and on the more assertive attitude of the ordinary Japanese.
Gender relations also have undergone a gradual transition—though not at the speed hoped for by many women. Important role models, such as the socialist leader Doi Takako, Tanaka Makiko (who was chosen in 2001 as Japan's first woman foreign minister), and Princess Masako (the Harvard-educated diplomat who married Crown Prince Naruhito in 1993), have helped make the place of professional women more acceptable. Women now account for about two-fifths of the workforce, but many occupy temporary or part-time positions, and full-time women employees often find it difficult to advance to management positions. Despite growing dissatisfaction with traditional gender roles, Japanese perceptions of the family and the position of the wife and mother in it have been slow to change. Women, particularly those married to white-collar workers, are still expected to carry much of the responsibility of household management and child rearing, while the males devote themselves to their office culture. Japanese divorce rates, though rising, remain low by Western standards, and the stability of the Japanese family continues to undergird the social system.
Globalization has been another important theme since the early 1970s, as large numbers of Japanese have traveled abroad and an increasing number of foreign students and foreign workers have come to Japan. In the last two decades of the 20th century, the number of foreign residents in Japan roughly doubled to more than 1.3 million. A majority of the foreign residents were Chinese or Korean, but foreign labourers from the Middle East and Southeast Asia, drawn by higher wages, also relocated to Japan to perform many of the less desirable jobs. The absorption of such residents has not always been easy for a society that sees itself as ethnically distinct and homogeneous. Discrimination against minorities, however—including Koreans, the former outcast group now called burakumin, and the Ainu—which has persisted for centuries, appears less acceptable today in a society that is not only more educated but also increasingly subject to international scrutiny and criticism. The internationalization of Japan also has resulted in a reassertion of Japanese nationalism, particularly among the older members of society who see Japan losing its identity amid the influx of foreign culture. And yet, as even a brief visit to Tokyo confirms, American cultural symbols—from fast-food restaurants to blue jeans and motorcycles—are now as much at home in the Harajuku district as on Venice
[此贴子已经被作者于2008-3-20 0:56:28编辑过]
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