Reprogramming Japan

How have state policies influenced the development of Japan's telecommunications, computer hardware, computer software, and semiconductor industries and their stagnation since the 1990s?

Marie Anchordoguy is Professor of Japan Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. She is the author of Computers, Inc.: Japan's Challenge to IBM.

Reprogramming Japan is an engrossing study of why Japan has performed poorly in almost all the information technology industries. In explaining Japan's adherence to communitarian capitalism, Anchordoguy disagrees with analysts who blame a political system that favors entrenched interests. Instead, she argues that the root problem is strong social norms that dictate against market disruption. Her best evidence is a rich body of material from her own interviews with an impressive array of Japanese business and government officials. The real jewels of the book are the quotes from these interviews that reveal Japan’s continued moral ambivalence about competitive markets.

Reprogramming Japan is rich in both detail and insight in analyzing the institutional context within which Japanese high-technology firms operate.... Anchordoguy paints a vivid image of Japan's capitalism and analyzes why Japanese firms have responded so sluggishly to fast-paced technological change.... The general reader will find great satisfaction in Anchordoguy's highly thought-provoking overview of what has gone wring in Japan's variant of capitalism. The specialist will find a wealth of detail, including extensive quotes from key actors in the four sectors semiconductors, computer hardware, software, and telecommunications.

Gregory W. Noble, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo:

Marie Anchordoguy's clear and informative book should attract a wide variety of readers from political science, sociology, Japanese studies, and business. The central concept of communitarian capitalism, with its emphasis on risk avoidance and circumscribed competition, strikes me as a useful corrective to excessively functionalist versions of the 'capitalist developmental state' argument.