The Strategies of the Japanese Government and Trade Associations

Abstract

Globalization has various aspects, including the social, economic, and historical. Human and social history is in general the history of the globalization of human and social activities in the world. Because of the fall of the system in Eastern Europe, the abolition of the East-West barrier throughout the world, and the liberalization of economic activities, the globalization of humankind has reached a new height. But if we want to be precise, the collapse of the centralized Soviet regime has merely created a new set of basic conditions for globalization. One of the most recent aspects of so-called globalization is the globalization of the financial world. This financial globalization has been too quickly and too one-sidedly promoted by technological advances, particularly in the area of the microelectronic revolution. One consequence of market fundamentalism and of the euphoria of the Western world was the Japanese “bubble”. The peak year of the “bubble” was 1991. Two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Japanese overinvested. An overcapacity was produced in Japan, because the collapse itself created no large, adequate markets. This unilateral type of globalization is not successful. The victory of so-called global capitalism has lost its aura over the past several years. The collapse of the so-called “emerging markets” (arising or entering markets) and their repellant effect on advanced economies does not of course mean the end of globalization. But it is certainly the end of an era. Now it is necessary to steer the present type of globalization in a rational direction through international cooperation.