Description
Book SynopsisWith a new look at the 1880s financial reforms in Japan, Steven J. Ericson''s Financial Stabilization in Meiji Japan overturns widely held views of the program carried out by Finance Minister Matsukata Masayoshi. As Ericson shows, rather than constituting an orthodox financial-stabilization programa sort of precursor of the neoliberal reforms promoted by the IMF in the 1980s and 1990sMatsukata''s policies differed in significant ways from both classical economic liberalism and neoliberal orthodoxy.
The Matsukata financial reform has become famous largely for the wrong reasons, and Ericson sets the record straight. He shows that Matsukata intended to pursue fiscal retrenchment and budget-balancing when he became finance minister in late 1881. Various exigencies, including foreign military crises and a worsening domestic depression, compelled him instead to increase spending by running deficits and floating public bonds. Though he drastically reduced the money supp
Trade Review
This book is one of the most important contributions to understanding the history of financial modernization in Japan in recent scholarship.
* H-Net *
As a work of Japanese history, Ericson gives us the most complete study to date of Matsukata's policies. It will certainly become the standard reference... This is a first-rate work that should be required reading for historians and economists working on Japan...
* Shashi: The Journal of Japanese Business and Company History *
[T]his book is a must-read for students and scholars of modern Japanese financial history and a precious case study for contemporary economists in the fields of development and monetary policy. Its biggest contribution is to set a new stage for future study by evaluating existing works.
* Journal of Japanese Studies *
Ericson's thorough analysis of its content and context reveals Matsukata as, above all, a politician and statesman navigating his way through the interlocking worlds of late nineteenth-century Japanese and international financial politics, achieving his goals with considerable success and thereby placing Japan on a firmer footing to face the challenges of industrialization. [A] better guide [than] Ericson's clear, immaculately presented, and indeed relatively short text is hard to imagine.
* Monumenta Nipponica *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Departures from Orthodoxy
1. From "Ōkuma Finance" to "Matsukata Finance,"1873–1881
2. Orthodox Finance and "The Dictates of Practical Expediency": Influences on Matsukata
3. Austerity and Expansion: The Matsukata Reform, 1881–1885
4. Spending in a Time of "Retrenchment": Industrial Policy and the Military
5. Founding a Central Bank
6. "Poor Peasant, Poor Country"? The Matsukata Deflation
Conclusion: The Matsukata Reform As "Expansionary Austerity"
