Economic history of Japan
Hello ! In this week, I will introduce you about Economic history of Japan(period after war). You look at graph of the inflation-adjusted economic growth rate of Japan below. In this graph, you know roughly when Japanese business conditions is good or bad. And this time, I explain you some occurrence in this graph to understand you how they influence had an effect on Japanese economy.
The period revival after World War Ⅱ(“戦後復興期” in Japanese).
August 15th in 1945, Japan was defeated in World WarⅡand the war was finished. Japanese lose two millions people and 25% of national land. So, to help to revive Japanese economy, GHQ do reform called “three major economic democracy reform”.
1 Agrarian reform: To stabilize life of farmer, landowners bought agricultural land from a nation and selled it cheaply to farmer.
2 Dissolution of the zaibatsu: Make the antitrust law and prohibited holding company and four major zaibatsu divided into some hundreds companies.
3 Upbringing of labor union: To improve wages standard of labors and labor circumstances.
Common point of these three policy is that GHQ thought that the causes of World WarⅡwas the situationof poor life of Japanese. So they could not buy product, big companies in Japan invaded other countries because they bring up their sales. By stabilized life of Japanese, this problem was improved because big companies sell their products to Japanese, GHQ thought. So these three policy was done in this period.
The period of rapid economic growth(“高度経済成長” in Japanese.)
In this period(1955~1970), Japanese economy growth is the most marvelous in the world for 15 years. This period called rapid economic growth and mainly this period divide into four business conditions.
Business conditions of Zinmu(1955~57,“神武景気” in Japanese):There was boom of durable consumer goods, refrigerator, washing machine and black and white TV are called “三種の神器(sansyunozingi)”.this Japanese word means three kind of goods of god. Supermarket Daiei was opened.
Business conditions of Iwado(1958~61,“岩戸景気” in Japanese):The prime minister Yuto Ikeda announced the plan that people in Japanese’s would get double amounts of their ordinal income.
By new technique was imported from abroad and the scale of company expanded, the two business conditions above is caused.
Business conditions of the Olympic(1964,“オリンピック景気” in Japanese):In this year, Toumei expressway was opened for traffic. This prosperity was caused because public enterprises for the Olympic in Tokyo was increased.
Business conditions of Izanagi(1965~70,“いざなぎ景気” in Japanese):Color TV, cooler(air conditioner) and car these of three called 3C was born in this period, and Japan GDP was second highest in developed countries. Heavy chemical industry includes shipbuilding, steel, petrochemistry had international competitiveness and amount of exportation is increase, this prosperity was caused.
A crisis of petroleum(1973, “石油危機” in Japanese).
In 1973, fourth Middle East War happened between Israel and the counties around Arab countries. Then, OPEC many Arab countries belonging raise the price of petroleum to win the war and decided to inhibit export petroleum to America because America supported Israel. As a consequence, the price of petroleum marvelously rose, many countries including Japan economically confused because of lack of it. As you know from above graph, its value is down in 1973.
Japan revival thorough various situations and occurrences. This week, but I explained a few of period in Economic history of Japan, this period is very important for now Japanese economic situation. I introduced above roughly, so if you interested in this field I introduce, you study economic history of Japan in detail yourself. Next week, I will write about present situation of Japanese economy.
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