Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State
Reviewed by Donald Zagoria
This collection of essays by Chalmers Johnson, a well-known American Japanologist, covers a wide variety of subjects, from the role of the state in Japan's economic life to the nature of Japanese politics and bureaucracies to Japan's international relations. Johnson has attracted a good deal of attention--not all favorable--as a result of his leadership of the so-called revisionist school of scholarship on Japan. But the fact remains, as he demonstrates in these essays, that he is one of the most insightful and provocative political scientists currently writing on Japan. Johnson has an unusual capacity to consider Japan in the context of broad theoretical concepts. And many of his essays have very useful summaries of Japanese writing and thinking. In sum, this volume is a stimulating discussion of postwar Japan and U.S.-Japan relations in the post--Cold War era.
