Convener(s): Professor Hugh Whittaker, Dr Natalia Doan and Dr Giulio Pugliese
Speaker(s): Dr. Fumihito Gotoh, Teaching and Research Fellow at the University of Warwick
These seminars will occur live and will not be recorded. Unauthorized recording is strictly prohibited.
Please click on the seminar title to register in advance and receive the meeting details.
Japanese Resistance to American Financial Hegemony: Global Versus Domestic Social Norms
Abstract
Why has the convergence of Japan’s bank-centered financial system to an American-style capital market-based model lost steam since the mid-2000s, despite financial deregulation during the 1980s and 1990s? Examining the ideational conflict within Japanese elites between the market liberalization and anti-free market camps, the book scrutinizes the American and Japanese credit rating agencies operating in Tokyo and explores the differences between the two major industrial associations, Keidanren and Doyukai, which have played a key role as ideational platforms for Japanese corporate society. It argues Japanese society’s anti-liberal, anti-free market norms centered on systemic support are a form of counter-hegemony, but also that this resistance has generated growing problems for Japan.
Bio
Fumihito (Fumi) Gotoh is a Teaching and Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. His research interests include East Asian and Japanese politics and political economies, comparative capitalisms, and the politics and sociology of finance. His publications include Japanese Resistance to American Financial Hegemony: Global Versus Domestic Social Norms (Routledge, 2019), and articles in Review of International Political Economy and The Pacific Review. Previously, he was a senior credit analyst in Tokyo for the Industrial Bank of Japan, Merrill Lynch and UBS.
