Not a MyNAP member yet? Register for a free account to start saving and receiving special member only perks. After the collapse of the so-called bubble economy in , the Japanese economy went into a long and severe recession, which lasted more than a decade. The seemingly obvious cause of this prolonged stagnation was the excess capacity built up during the boom years of s and the resulting sharp decline of investments in plants and equipments in the s, 2 which led to a steep decline in asset prices and to loan defaults. According to Hayashi and Prescott , the real cause of the lost decade was the decline of productivity. For a contrasting viewpoint, see Hoshi and Kashyap
Basic Policies | Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan
In , Japan was confronted by a series of shortfalls in its ability to make agile decisions based on foreign intelligence gathering and assessment. A disputatious United States also butted heads with an unapologetically aggressive China in the economic realm, as territorial tensions continued to tighten in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, Japan sought to further its international influence through multilateral economic forum leadership and trade agreements, attempting to preserve the rules-based international order as it stood in the late 20th century. One path presented by the Japan-U.
To many business people and public officials in the West, the postwar success of the Japanese economy is both an impressive and a puzzling achievement. The success is obvious and measurable; the reasons for it, far less so. To it they ascribe a continuous application of single-minded energy; from it they expect a continual flow of industrial miracles. In this article, Peter Drucker, long recognized as an authority on Japanese business, takes pointed issue with this familiar myth. No such thing exists, he argues, at least not in the form commonly attributed to it.
The primary responsibility for the Japanese foreign policy , as determined by the constitution , is exercised by the cabinet and subject to the overall supervision of the National Diet. The prime minister is required to make periodic reports on foreign relations to the Diet, whose upper and lower houses each have a foreign affairs committee. Each committee reports on its deliberations to plenary sessions of the chamber to which it belongs.