The Fable Of The Keiretsu

For Western economists and journalists, the most distinctive facet of the post-war Japanese business world has been the keiretsu, or the insular business alliances among powerful corporations. Within keiretsu groups, argue these observers, firms preferentially trade, lend money, take and receive technical and financial assistance, and cement their ties through cross-shareholding agreements. In The Fable of the Keiretsu, Yoshiro Miwa and J. Mark Ramseyer demonstrate that all this talk is really just urban legend. In their insightful analysis, the authors show that the very idea of the keiretsu was created and propagated by Marxist scholars in post-war Japan. Western scholars merely repatriated the legend to show the culturally contingent nature of modern economic analysis. Laying waste to the notion of keiretsu, the authors debunk several related “facts” as well: that Japanese firms maintain special arrangements with a “main bank,” that firms are systematically poorly managed, and that the Japanese government guided post-war growth. In demolishing these long-held assumptions, they offer one of the few reliable chronicles of the realities of Japanese business.

Consists of an abstract and the introduction from a larger work.

This article describes how in the “Fable of the Keiretsu”, Miwa and Ramseyer (M&R) skilfully demonstrate that Ivy League academics, Nobel Prize Laureates, a Pulitzer Prize winner and almost every Japanologist has inaccurately described Japan's postwar economy. M&R achieve this by applying fresh empirical research in a precise and logical manner which demonstrates that many of the hallmarks of Japan's postwar economy - keiretsu, main banks and government led growth - are exaggerated. Unfortunately, however, demonstrating that the conventional wisdom about the Japanese economy is exaggerated was not enough to satisfy M&R's ambitious research agenda. M&R's attempt to extend their conclusions beyond 'disproving exaggerations' and towards proving 'academic fables' is what transforms their otherwise groundbreaking book into an illogical diatribe that fails to achieve its goal. This article explains the logical gaps in M&R's book, which result from its overly ambitious (and still unproven) conclusion that all of the hallmarks of Japan's postwar economy are 'academic fables'. It identifies the flaws in M&R's Marxist conspiracy theory, the unanswered questions created by the bold assertion that the government plays absolutely no role in Japan's economy and a number of pieces of critical evidence that are missing from the book. Then, the article cautions readers of one of M& R's 'un-kept promises' and uses a short case study to demonstrate the weakness of M&R's central theory that perfect free-markets exist in Japan. The article concludes by agreeing with M&R that people interested in the Japanese economy should 'buy, borrow or steal' the book - but only if they also 'buy, borrow or steal' a pillar (not a grain) of salt to accompany the read.

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