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This paper has three objectives: i) to empirically examine labor market transitions in deindustrializing Asian economies; ii) to study the character of labor market risks and how these risks are shifting by gender, by education level, and by age in the transitional period; and iii) to rethink the commonly accepted assumptions that deindustrialization and globalization are the main causes of new labor market risks and, thus propose the possibility of institutional legacy as an important factor for such risk shifts. This study focuses on the labor market risks in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Three steps are taken in this inquiry. First, this study commences by empirically examining the three labor market changes mentioned above. Second, it challenges the idea of the emergence of 'new risks,' arguing instead for the concept of 'risk shift': the feature of risk shifting to different demographic groups. Lastly, with the empirical evidence already used, this paper discusses whether deindustrialization or globalization is a sufficient cause for risk shifts in deindustrializing Asian economies, proposing that institutional legacy may be an important factor in risk shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposition that Japan is undergoing 'kudoka' (a hollowing out process) is examined before exploring explanations for the process. The paper finds much of relevance in the 'government failure' approach, whereby the export success of certain sectors combined with import protection for other sectors has produced a trade imbalance, continual yen appreciation, a rising cost base, outward foreign direct investment and hollowing out. However this analysis is incomplete in ignoring the central role of Japanese transnationals in the process. Taking into account the latter via a 'strategic failure' approach renders a more complete view of the nature of the hollowing out phenomenon, and how and why government failed. A policy framework to counter such strategic failure is set out, involving a mix of careful deregulation and policies to diffuse strategic decision-making and to reinvigorate declining clusters of small firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crisis of Japan’s political economy raises the question of how it has dealt with the restructuring of its peripheral industrial regions, and the degree to which it has embraced neoliberal policies. I argue that the spread of neoliberalism in Japan has been uneven, shaped by local settings and adopted only selectively. To make this case, the article focuses on restructuring in Muroran City (2010 population, 94,600), a city of steel and heavy industry that lies on the southern coast of Hokkaido. I examine the changing fortunes of Muroran over the 1985-2010 period based upon a number of site visits made in the last 25 years or so. Set against contemporary industrial restructuring in Japan, the article evaluates the actions of the city’s major employer (Nippon Steel Corporation), central government ministries, and programs of the City of Muroran. The results show that despite the rise of the neoliberal rhetoric in Japan, restructuring in Muroran reflected a commitment to manufacturing and the local workforce by corporate as well as central and local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The vast historical, cultural, linguistic, and geographical divides between East and West makes meaningful communication especially difficult But these differences need not lead to total incommensurability - where no empathy or exchange of experience is possible. This paper shows that, within Professor Shiozawa's keynote address, we find considerable overlap in the critical traditions of Japan and the West Research in both cases is motivated first, by a focus on problems emanating from the instabilities and crises of capitalism, second, an appropriation of evidence that is distinct in its pursuit of greater "realism in process, and third, a desire to reconstruct experience in a way that discerns the "self-activating" mechanisms of material processes, and reflect them in our intelligibility. While differences will remain in the specific problematic junctures of capitalism that Japanese and Western researchers seek to investigate, the broad contours of our methodological procedures do provide us with ample grounds for a meaningful conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on economics and national strategy of the United States. It is posed that this country needs a national strategy that responds to the central post-cold war political, economic, and military realities. Moreover, in theory , a U. S. national strategy would start with a structure of private activities based on the operation of free markets and then provide a framework for enhancing the use of the nation's resources to gain national objectives derived from enduring national interests. It is also identified that the world's new political structure focuses on a triangle of competing regions that have gained economic growth. These regions are Europe, North America, and Japan.