Gearing up and looking back

I blogged quite regularly about Japan’s economic history when living here in 2012-13. A fellow student of mine stumbled upon one of the posts during his research. As my first paper is soon due (it will look at the “default reconstruction” of Tokyo’s urban industries), I took this as a reminder to also look here for some clues for my current research.

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A Hitachi washing machine as exhibited in the Edo Museum (more here)

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Shifting horizons

Much has happened since I last posted some of my thoughts on the ongoing Eurozone crisis three years ago. Although I do not follow the debate with the same level of vigour now than I once did, a few uncollated notes after the jump nonetheless. I notice that my political views have changed rather considerably over the past couple of years.

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A Tale of Technology: Kenzo Tange’s 1964 Yoyogi National Gymnasium and the Japanese Economic Miracle

Japan’s initial success after the Second World War had a lot to do with the copying of Western technology. The economic miracle of the 1960s, however, rested on Japanese firms’ ever-increasing capability to innovate. The world was to get a taste of this when thousands of spectators visited Tokyo for the 1964 Olympic Games. Kenzo Tange’s Gymnasium provided a central venue of great symbolic power.

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All photos by Manuel Oka (www.manueloka.com)

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Piketty’s trickery?

Watching Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the 21st Century” make waves in this country has been fun and insightful, albeit time-consuming. The controversy the book has caused is telling of the political climate in this country. Perhaps this comes out “best” on Amazon and on Forbes.

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21st-century capital

Seldom does a book create such buzz as Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century” and rarely has a book faster been lauded as one of the decade’s defining books on economics. Much of the silence on this blog can be explained by engaging with Piketty’s magnum opus. I wanted to wait before posting anything before I would see the French economist speak at Columbia yesterday. What follows are some notes on the book and on issues beyond.

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Thomas Piketty (left), with panelists Suresh Naidu, Victoria de Grazia and Thomas Edsall

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