The Business of the Japanese State

The energy markets of modern Japan—a country peculiarly dependent on imported energy—present a paradox for conventional explanations of that country's economic success. State energy corporations are commonplace throughout the industrial democracies, yet nowhere does Japan's strong, "smart" state participate directly in the marketplace to assure the energy supplies on which its commercial competitiveness depends.

In The Business of the Japanese State, Richard J. Samuels addresses this paradox by tracing the details of government–industry transactions in the component parts of the market for energy. Drawing upon archival sources and more than one hundred interviews with industrialists and government planners, he reconstructs the political histories that have defined the contemporary Japanese markets for coal, petroleum, electricity, and alternative energies. The key to interventions and accommodations is, he argues, the notion of "reciprocal consent"—in a constantly changing political bargain, the state gets jurisdiction but private industry manages to retain control. The result is a profoundly consensual politics whose character reflects the essence of the contemporary Japanese political economy.

Richard J. Samuels is Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Free University of Berlin. His books have won prizes from the American Political Science Association, the Association for Asian Studies, and the Society for Italian Historical Studies. His most recent book is 3.11: Disaster and Change in Japan. Follow him on X @dicksamuelsMIT.

A tour de force that will, I am sure, have great impact on thinking about the nature of the Japanese state and about political economy issues more generally.