Japan is a state located in East Asia. Located on 4 large islands (Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku and Kosyu) and numerous small islands adjacent to them. The territory of the country is about 372.2 thousand square kilometers. The population is about 122 million, of which more than 99% are Japanese by nationality. The capital of the country is Tokyo (about 12 million people).
Japan is a monarchy led by an emperor, but under the Constitution of 1889, legislative power was exercised by the emperor in conjunction with parliament.
Japan's economy has developed under the influence of many factors. In the late 60s of the 19th century, the unfinished bourgeois revolution opened a new capitalist stage in the history of Japan. The large-scale bourgeois reform carried out on the eve cleared the ground for the development of capitalism in the country. The process of transforming the country into an imperialist power was successfully underway.
The Japanese economy since 1940 has been placed at the service of foreign policy. The country entered into a military alliance with Germany and Italy, and from 1941 entered World War II. Only after the defeat in 1945 of militaristic Japan, some democratic transformations began to take place in the country.
The reform model that characterized Japan’s post-war economy had the following features. The development of production has become a priority over everyone else, the country has refused to follow the "laws of the free market." As a result of the "shock economic therapy", by 1949, Japanese industrial production was almost completely restored.
The government pursued such an investment and structural policy, which contributed to the formation of industries characteristic of industrialized countries. After the Second World War, Japan's economy developed as part of an uncompromising course in protecting national capital in the areas of production, banking and other fields, and its agriculture was protected with subsidies and protectionist policies.
All this led to the fact that the Japanese economy began to be characterized by a special development model, which they began to call the planned market. Administrative regulation was combined with the economic system of private enterprise.
The new 1947 Constitution proclaimed democratic freedoms and rights. Agrarian reform transferred for redemption most of the landed estates to the peasants. The largest monopolies were crushed.
60s-70s is the time when Japan has become a particularly prominent figure in the global economy. It has become the second power of the capitalist world in terms of gross national product and industrial production.
Now GNP exceeds 11% of the world, in terms of GNP per capita, the country is ahead of the United States. It accounts for about 12% of the world's industrial production. The adaptation of the economy to the “dear yen” is almost complete. A transition has already taken place to a new model for the development of the country's economy, focusing on the task of domestic consumption, rather than export.
