Rob Steven – författare

The spectacular rise of the yen in the mid-1980s has unleashed a new wave of imperialism from Japan. Its origins are traced to a series of crises and rivalries between the two great capitalist powers, Japan and the USA. To escape the high yen, Japanese capital is closing down factories at home and shifting them overseas. Some are going to the advanced countries, but the book's main focus is on the search for cheap labour in Southeast Asia to make parts for Japan's two leading industries: motor vehicles and electronics.

Under the new world order, Japan's international business activity is being organised through tight networks that link banks, industrial corporations and trading companies and that are displacing onto Asia their main domestic problems.

Under the new world order, Japan's international business activity is being organized through tight networks that link banks, industrial corporations and trading companies and that are displacing their main domestic problems onto Asia. This book argues that since the US and Europe are refusing to fulfil that function, Japan is forming a new three-zone strategy in which production, marketing and finance are tightly co-ordinated within each zone but in which there is also an overall shift away from North America and Europe towards Asia.

Originally published in 1983, this book analyses the crisis that began in Japan with the 'oil shock' of 1973. Assembling a large body of statistical data, derived from government sources and a survey of over fifty companies, the book is rich in empirical information, much of which had not been published in English before. The living and working conditions, age and sex composition, relative size and potential strength, ideologies and organisation of all the main social classes are examined. Through his often highly critical use of analytical studies by Japanese Marxists, the author reveals a strong tradition of sophisticated theoretical Marxism to rival even that of the French and yet largely unknown to Western scholars. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Japanese culture, economics, social science and political science.