The History and Future of Japanese Economy

Essay by clarecongUniversity, Bachelor'sA-, June 2004

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Introduction

Japan, a small island, resource-poor country, has shown the world a dramatic success and failure story in its history. Japanese have been working so hard after experiencing a huge lose from World War II that they have become one of the world's most important exporting country. But right now, Japan is suffering the pain of economic problems more than ever. First of all there is brief analysis of Japan's economy for the period of last fifty years and the features of Japanese labor market. Furthermore, there is a discussion of the major issues that Japan is facing currently. Finally, there is economical forecasting provided about the Japanese Economy.

1950s -1980s

For the Japanese economy, World War II was unquestionably a tragedy of the huge magnitude. The war left Japan with a big economical mess: ten million unemployed workers, annual coal production reduced to a million tons, a 1945 rice crop which was only two thirds of the norm, and rapid inflation.

Japan experienced huge losses due to the war. A positive aspect of the war was that it resulted with large amount of skilled workers who were ready for heavy industry such as steel, machinery, and chemicals. Hence, this raised the level of technology and production capacity in Japan (Beasley, 1995). During that period of time, Japanese people worked intensively to recover and uplift their economy which was demoralized from the war.

In addition, due to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, United States purchased huge amount of equipments for the United Nations forces, which gave a major stimulation to the Japanese production. An article shows that currency earnings on this account were nearly $600 million in 1951 and over $800 million in 1952. This made possible important new investments in planning and equipments (Beasley, 1995). By...