Week 4 - Angela Nguyen

In Japan’s Grand Strategic Shift from Yoshida to Koizumi: Reflections on Japan’s Strategic Focus in the 21st Century, Tang Siew Man discusses about the political influences Yoshida and Koizumi had on Japan. The article argues that the leadership of Koizumi was more successful and impactful than that of Yoshida’s and this was due to how matters were like during that time period. How Koizumi was more successful was he was able to make the Japanese care about their country and politics more by painting the idea that Japan was going to reform through elections. He kept running elections and was able to bring big changes to Japanese politics such as nationalising party politics, weakening the major clientelistic relations in the country, and shifted the focus of elections from being less local as they were before. Koizumi took on many actions during his leadership that helped to improve and redefine political matters in Japan of which leads to how the country runs today.

Japan following the Meiji Restoration Era went through a lot of hardships and difficulties, but the country was able to remake itself by focusing on improving its economy. This strategy was so important because through its methods, such as clientelism and privatisation, Japan was able to lift away from being one of the countries with the worst economy in the world to being amongst the top now. Elaborating more on the country and its strategies, social entrepreneurship really assisted Japan with development because its unique ways of doing things such as the creation of a Postal Saving System allowed the country to foster growth. One interesting thing that Japan was able to do was to push for a national idea of being unique (Nihonjinron). Through its countries’ value and Japan’s methods of bettering its economy, it is able to thrive so much. 

Question: Japan had a very unique economy and its economy was able to improve at a rapid rate in a very short period of time. If developing countries were to adopt its methods, would they be able to thrive as Japan once did and become one of the top economies in the world like Japan?

Work Cited:

Scheiner, Ethan. 2006. Democracy Without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in One-Party Dominant Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Tang Siew Man. “Japan’s Grand Strategic Shift from Yoshida to Koizumi: Reflections on Japan’s Strategic Focus in the 21st Century.”

Picture: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14675448