Perspective on Recent Japanese Economic Growth

That Japanese economic growth since the war has been spectacular is well known. Real net national income per head at the beginning of the 1960's was roughly twice that of the middle thirties, and four times the postwar low of 1946. In all sorts of ways—industrial structure, levels of regular employment, composition and level of consumption—Japan has made a decisive break from the economy of the 1930's. While the achievement is obvious, it is more difficult to know how to assess the performance, even when attention is directed solely toward the overall growth of the economy as measured by total output. What standards or measures can be applied to permit the answering of such questions as whether recent Japanese growth has been “fast” or “satisfactory”? There is a variety of ways in which this problem could be approached. One would be to compare Japanese growth with that of other countries; another would be to consider the potentialities of growth since the war and whether they have been used to maximum advantage. Here the question will be considered from an historical point of view: How does recent growth measure up against past performance of the economy?