It is not the fault of the authors that this book was published in 1994. Since then, massive changes have hit the Japanese economy: the Asian Crisis (1997), the 2000-2004 bank consolidation, the Postal Savings Bank privatization (2007) and the 2008 Global Economic Crisis. Still, be advised that it is both innovative (in presenting several rival theories to explain the finacncial behavior of Japanese firms) and badly dated. The sheer volume of shocks hitting Japan and its institutions, by itself, has supplied vastly more information on financial institutions; and Japan's financial institutions are far more exposed to foreign financial conditions. Still, it is unbeaten for the depth of treatment it gives to the financial aspects of Japan's 20th century development.
Organizationally, half of the book addresses the development of the commercial financing system in Japan: at the time, a stable network of 7 major business groupings (_keiretsu_), each associated with a bank responsible for most of its business (or "main bank"); and an 8th bank, the Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ), which generally acted as a "spare" main bank. A second tier of banks, known as regional banks, had higher levels of capitalization relative to assets, and acted as reservoirs of deposits for the first tier. The (now private) Post Savings Bank served as a form of deposit insurance scheme by refreshing assets of illiquid banks--and thereby imposing cooperation on the regions with the Ministry of Finance/MITI.
The second half addresses main bank systems outside of Japan, including Germany's, Korea's, and India's; and influences on China and Poland. About a quarter of the book is written by Aoki & Patrick themselves; most of the broad analytical material of book is in this quarter, and this is (in my view) fairly weak: the editors failed to pursue an aggressive critique, even after the economic slump of the previous four years. Obviously this is because it's difficult to do so fairly when the thing being critiqued had (a) done its job as well as it had for 35 years and (b) was as profoundly complex as Japan's financial system.
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