The book is the result of collaboration between leading Shakespeare scholars fromJapan and the West. Chapters in the book are arranged into four sections. The � rst dealswith key moments in Shakespeare productions in this century, including prominent worksby Ninagawa, Suzuki and Noda. Akihiko Senda’s account clearly outlines the develop-ment of Japanese Shakespeare today and paves the way for speci� c discussions onindividual directors and performances. The second part focuses on the encounter ofShakespeare and traditional Japanese theatre: Noh, Kabuki, Bunraku and Kyogen. Thereis also an English translation of the text of The Brazgart Samurai, a Kyogen adaptation ofThe Merry Wives of Windsor. Robert Hapgood’s article on his experience in Japanesetheatre and Ryuta Minami’s chronology of Japanese Shakespeare from 1886 to 1996make up Sections 111 and IV.

After seeing Trevor Nunn’s The Winter’s Tale in 1970, Tadashi Suzuki, comparing it tothe conventional Shingeki Shakespeare productions in Japan, said: ‘Since such imitationscan never surpass the originals, I think we have no choice but to start tackling Shakespearewith our uniquely Japanese sense of theatre’ (Senda, p. 21). The book Shakespeare and theJapanese Stage presents to English readers a true-to-life picture of this ‘Japanese sense’seen from various perspectives.

Ruru Li University of Leeds

Lonny E. Carlile and Mark C. Tilton (eds), Is Japan Really Changing its Ways? RegulatoryReform and the Japanese Economy. Brookings Institution Press, Washington, 1988. xi +232pp.

No doubt the tabloid-style of this excellent collection of papers is intended to attract awider range of readers and reviewers than might be expected for an academic study ofJapanese economic rules and regulations. The book certainly deserves a wide audience,but the title does not do justice to the quality and usefulness of its contents. It provides notonly a highly up-to-date analysis of the regulatory reform process but also a set of compactand readable background histories of microeconomic policies and institutions which makeit, in some ways, the nearest thing we yet have to textbook coverage of these areas. Itschapters on the � rm and the � nancial system in particular offer clear and coherentaccounts of the post-war story (up to and including the present recession) of develop-ments in these � elds, while at the same time presenting some challenging arguments andanalysis, and the book has slipped chapter by chapter on to reading lists as I have read it.

The theme running through the chapters of the book is that, since economic regulationwas adopted and used in Japan for different purposes from those of its counterparts in theAnglo-American world, so deregulation will also be a different process, economically andpolitically, from that pursued elsewhere. Whereas the rationale for state intervention inthe economy at the micro level in the Anglo-American tradition was to improve theoperation of markets and to compensate for ‘market failure’, in Japan it was used rather tosupport and promote domestic industry as it struggled to catch up with Westerncompetitors. In its turn, deregulation was initiated in Japan not, as in the US, as a resultof academic conversion to the value of freer markets and political pressure for greaterconsumer choice, but because of the need to cut government expenditure, and it is now

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promoted as the last-resort policy for getting the economy out of recession. Thus, thevarious contributors to the book argue that, given the long-standing goals and nature ofJapan’s developmental state, it is, as Mark Tilton puts it, for purposes of ‘competitivenessnot competition’ that deregulation is being pursued in Japan.

Yul Sohn provides the historical background to this conclusion, arguing that thedevelopmental use of rules and regulations was a response to Japan’s inability, under theTrade Treaties of the mid-nineteenth century, to use other forms of protection for infantindustries faced with developed-country competition. The chapter focuses on the use ofthe apparently innocuous principle that the state can legitimately require certain activitiesto be licensed and it shows how, in the hands of a Japanese bureaucrat, the license couldbecome a key weapon in the battle to catch up industrially. Subsequent chapters show, forvarious different cases, how licensing and other forms of regulation, in conjunction withmethods of informal intervention via business organizations, became embedded in thepractice of Ministries as the central element in the armoury used to protect and supportJapanese producers in favoured industries.

That this sort of mindset has equally conditioned the process of deregulation in Japan ismost convincingly demonstrated by Elizabeth Norville in her chapter on the � nancialsystem, which comes to the conclusion that the Ministry of Finance does indeed viewderegulation as serving developmental purposes just as it once did regulation. HideakiMiyajima shows how, on the side of the corporations with which bureaucrats interact, theways in which the ‘J-type � rm’ has come to operate, especially in its regulations with itsmain bank, have been conditioned by past regulation, so that thorough deregulationwould undermine the system of corporate governance and management with seriousresults. Lonny Carlile looks at the politics of administrative reform and shows how, giventhe powerful but fragmented ‘iron triangle’ coalitions that have been built up betweenbureaucrats, businesses and politicians as a result of the developmental use of regulationin each policy area, resort has had to be made to specially created supra-level commissionsto make reform proposals. By the same token, however, the fact that these commissionsare outside the main centres of political and administrative power may help to explain whythe reform process has been so slow. Mark Tilton follows this up with a barrage ofexamples to demonstrate how attitudes within a business world addicted to cartelarrangements and bureaucratic protection are still far from revealing a conversion to thebene� ts of deregulated competition. This is perhaps the most polemic chapter of the bookand the one providing the most ammunition for those who wish to argue that Japan is notsincerely ‘changing its ways’. The one-industry case study included, Kosuke Oyama’s onthe petroleum industry, gives somewhat more credit to the positive results of deregulation(a not insigni� cant drop in petrol prices, for instance) but shows how bureaucrats havemanaged to retain considerable powers to restrict competition, powers which paradoxi-cally, Oyama argues, may need to be strengthened if Japan’s strategic and environmentalgoals are to be achieved.

The chapters of the book thus each demonstrate, in their different ways, how the legacyof the past use of regulation as a developmental tool continues to in� uence – some wouldsay obstruct – the process of deregulation to which the Japanese government is ostensiblycommitted. Taken as a whole, therefore, the book basically carries forward into the era ofderegulation Chalmers Johnson’s original argument that state/economy relations operatedifferently in Japan and for different (national) purposes. It concludes that deregulation

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has to be understood within this longer-term context and that, given this, it is unlikely thatit can change the nature of the Japanese economy, and the state’s role within it, overnight.Against this some would argue that the authors underestimate both the ability of theJapanese state to effect dramatic change when it makes up its mind to do so and thedomestic and international pressures towards ‘convergence’ with the Anglo-Americanmarket system, and indeed there is some suggestion in the book that a combination ofgaiatsu and the slow chipping away of the ideological basis of developmentalism isproducing a very gradual change in attitudes and practices, with political parties at lastbeginning to perceive some electoral bene� t in the advocacy of deregulation. Nonetheless,even those who do not accept the book’s approach will � nd much of interest andusefulness in it. Norville manages to turn the story of � nancial regulatory reform intoreally quite a gripping tale and I would thoroughly recommend this paper as a contentiousbut clear and comprehensible analysis of an often off-putting subject; Miyajima provides amost convenient summary of changes in the operation of the Japanese-type company andthe main-bank system up to the 1990s; the introduction and conclusion are packed withinteresting ideas about the nature of Japan’s political economy in the deregulating worldof the late twentieth century. To sum up then, nice book, shame about the title.

Penelope Francks University of Leeds

Glenn Melchinger and Helene Kasha, The Japanese Written Word: A Unique Reader.Kodansha International, Tokyo, New York and London, 1999. 272pp. £16.99.

Japanese language teaching has become something of a boom industry in recent years.There is now much more available than there used to be, and even more is becomingavailable all the time. However, the overwhelming majority of new books are aimed � rmlyat the beginner. There is a severe lack of books aimed at intermediate- or advanced-levelstudents. In particular, there are very few intermediate-level readers that are bothinteresting and challenging, and it is sad when a good reader such as Nihon wo Yomu(Ujie 1990) goes out of print. A new and intelligent reader such as The Japanese WrittenWord is therefore a welcome addition to the choice available.

The choice of texts is varied, consisting of a mix of � ction (both highbrow and popular),memoirs, non-� ction and poetry. Authors included range from Shiga Naoya to thefounder of the Honda Motor Company. A choice of texts is always personal, but thisvolume is varied enough that there is something for everyone. The selection also has themajor advantage that these are authentic pieces of Japanese, and there are none of thoseinane ‘beginner’ passages that introduce Japan in extremely simplistic terms. The lan-guage is varied, representing different styles and registers. Two of the eight ‘themes’ thatthe eighteen extracts are grouped into are ‘Women in Today’s Japan’ and ‘Ecology andNature’.

The book is a comprehensive reader. Each extract is presented in the original Japanesescript, in romanization and in translation. Each is accompanied by a comprehensiveglossary, background information on the authors, some notes on particular social themesthat arise and photographs.

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