Japan is the world's richest country in terms of per capita income. Even during a recession the country is in the black. Japan's school system produces a blue-collar work force possessing skills that come only with a college degree in most Western countries. Its pension and health delivery systems are efficient and relatively inexpensive, and its unemployment rate half that of the United States and Germany. This text suggests that the reasons for Japan's success lie in its "capitalist development state", an economic system in which public service is highly valued, where state bureaucracy attracts the best young minds and where "guidance" by the state is both accepted and ubiquitous. The book examines why such a system thrives as it moves from a producer-dominated economy to a consumer-orientated headquarters for all of East Asia.
Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire. A frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, and The Nation, he appeared in the 2005 prizewinning documentary film Why We Fight. He lives near San Diego.
