Portes: Revista mexicana de estudios sobre la Cuenca del Pacífico (Jan 2010)
The social effects of the industrialization of Japan
Abstract
Until today a utilitarian approach subsists to analyze the human effects of the process of economic-technological change called industrialization. In this essay we review the extraeconomic costs that this process has meant in the case of Japan, the second economic power of the global world, from a multidisciplinary perspective. We focus in the observable most recent phenomena in the social sphere that resulted from the reindustrialization of Japan under the regime of the Occupation led by the United States. In this paper we indicate if the USA’s hegemony in Japan caused a development of most egalitarian and sustainable society in ecological terms, or, on the contrary a market society serving the best interest of USA dependent and incapable to contribute to the formation of a market society centered on world-wide scale in Eastern Asia and based on a greater equality between the civilizations of the world.