Customer Reviews

The Fable of the Keiretsu: Urban Legends of the Japanese Economy

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Don't get me wrong, the book contains some good data but, for one, this book mostly adapts articles already published in journals and then adds a Look-At-Me-Me-Me title that makes the claim that everybody else 'Fabulates and swims in pure science fiction'.
Add a few contentious claims in the introduction and you might well get your readership going. One such amusing claim is that all social science departments in Japan were marxist in the postwar period (although politicians were on the Right side, according to the authors). We're in a black-and-white world already.
The authors have a point that the Keiretsu story has been built in some media as a form of Japanese uniqueness, however their claims is disingenuous when affirming that no Keiretsu linkage exists at all. 'Keiretsu' may be a terminology created to describe a cultural preference for 'privileged' networks among Japanese firms, yes, but this terminology does not imply that keiretsu networks are 'exclusive'. No one has made such a claim--as far as I know.
Another amusing contention is that Japan did not have an industrial policy, not at allll (four L's on this one). What it had is only pork barrel and what some marxists have created as industrial policy.