Theorizing economic Japanification in the post-2008 conjuncture
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Since Marco Polo’s adventures through Asia, Japan has occupied a special place in the west’s consciousness—representing an exotic “topsy-turvy” alternative to western ways of life. In the post-WWII period, mythology about Japan’s political economy inspired a rethinking of the western approach to economic governance. During its unprecedented economic expansion, Japan’s experience of vigorous success redefined the boundaries of western economic orthodoxy, testing the limits of the supposedly universal tenets of liberal development. Now, as its economic miracle transitions into prolonged stagnation, Japan provides a cautionary tale and model for what (not) to do when faced with the prospect of decline. This thesis examines the rise of “Japanification”—the imagined threat of economic decompression characterized by stalled growth, deflation, low interest rates, fiscal deficits, and debt deleveraging—after the 2007-08 global financial crisis in the west to advance three propositions. Firstly, in tracing its recurring role as a comparator in the west, Japan is conceptualized as a “Goldilocks imaginary” and “universal particular” for the late capitalist conjuncture—one which is concurrently, if paradoxically, exotic yet familiar. Representations of Japan serve as effective vectors for reformist imaginations of the economy in times of uncertainty and crisis, providing enough ideational antagonism to agitate (liberal western) norms without disturbing the universal morality of capitalism as a mode of production. Secondly, Japan provides insight into the future institutional composition of the western political economic contexts it is invoked in; it reveals frictions in present systems of accumulation and their possible future logics. Japanification is conceptualized as a signifier for a war of positions waged by sympathizers of Keynesian thought against prevailing monetarist, neoliberal, and Smith-Ricardian sensibilities, suggesting a future system of economic regulation characterized by monetary discretion, fiscal intervention, and industrial policy. Thirdly, albeit more conjecturally, Japanification telegraphs a shift away from neoliberalism, the liberal international order, and its constitution by advanced western industrial economies—and prospectively away from the norm of economic growth. These propositions are argued by reviewing representations of Japan in the social sciences, industry and state agency reports, and liberal financial media from the 1950s to the present day.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.024 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".