[I-House Press] Japan’s Lost Decade

Japan’s Lost Decade
By Yoshikawa Hiroshi (Professor, University of Tokyo)

Translated by Charles H. Stewart
Revised and expanded edition / 2008
268 pages / cloth
ISBN 978-4-903452-12-8
Originally published in Japanese in 1999 by Iwanami Shoten as Tenkanki no Nihon keizai.
Winner of the 2000 Yomiuri-Yoshino Sakuzo Prize
3,086 yen / Special price*: 2,160 yen (inclusive of tax)
*Special price is applicable for IHJ members.

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“Professor Yoshikawa’s book, an analysis of Japan’s lost decade and policies for overcoming it, is fast becoming a classic. The main concept in his analysis is what he has labeled ‘the uncertainty trap.’ Overcoming the stagnation, on the other hand requires yet another new concept: ‘demand-creating innovation.’

“According to an article in the February 9, 2008 issue of the New York Times entitled ‘From Japan’s Slump in 1990s, Lessons for U.S.,’ the present disarray in the American economy triggered by the subprime loan debacle closely resembles the ‘Japanese disease’ that troubled Japan in the 1990s, or a mild case of it. What the U.S. economy needs now is the power of demand-creating innovation to rescue it from the uncertainty trap in which it finds itself. In that sense, economic experts everywhere are likely to find this book a good prescription for how to beat the ‘Japanese disease.'”

—Ryuzo Sato, C.V. Starr Professor of Economics, Emeritus, New York University