The beauty of the book lies in its long-term view on Japanese economy since the 1st oil shock to the lost decade of Japan (¡®90s), in terms of fancy words like globalization, IT, and neoliberalism. Those words are not frequently utilized to explain Japanese economy. The explanatory concept of the book is globalization. In this regard, this book could be read not only as another count to Japanese researches already mounting to the sky, but also as a case study on globalization in the light of Japanese economy. The author¡¯s view on the globalization is of the same kind to the ¡®race to the bottom¡¯ school. Though, personally, I haven¡¯t seen much good point in such views, the basic image the author sketches out is succinct and persuasive, for she (the author) poses the picture against the global trend since ¡®70s. she begins with simple sketch of Fordism before the 1st oil shock and then proceeds to great depression of ¡®70s. She characterizes the world economy since ¡®70s as the 3rd great depression (the 1st, 1870s-1890s; the 2nd, 1929). The features of globalization derived from the founding dynamics of great depression: cut-throat competition in worldwide market economy. IT has been the weapon to compete the market. The zeitgeist of this new era is the neoliberalism.
Against this global backdrop, she illustrates the changes in labor market, social institutions like family, expanding service industry, industrial hollowing-out and the forth. She insists that these global trends pose the question to Japanese economy.
Her explanation of the bubble burst is graphic and superb than any other materials that I¡¯ve read. She focused on micro (not only macro) mechanism which swollen the bubble, she links persuasively the process to the previous decades. But she suggests that the fundamental problems of Japanese economy to date is not merely deflation or liquidity trap but the one that globalization poses