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Book Review: Global environmental risk

economy to the second place in the world. This comprehensive book, Japanese industrialisation: historical and cultural perspectives written by Ian Inkster, analyses how this rapid development occurred and the impact it has had on East Asia and the world at large. Taking a wide range and focus, Inkster looks at the history of Japan’s industrial development in a social and cultural context. There is a strong focus on technology transfer and institutions throughout the book. Compared to many other books on Japanese industrialization, this book takes a longer period into account (from 1603 until 2000) and has a stronger focus on foreign interaction, in particular with the US and China. In the preface Inkster writes, ‘I hope to have attracted an audience beyond that of specialist students and academics’ and ‘The book hopes to be an interesting analytical statement in the guise of a textbook’ (p. ix). One of the main strengths of this book is that it is extremely comprehensive and detailed in its account on foreign influence, technology transfer, endogenous institutional capabilities and social engineering, also concerning the years before the Second World War. In this respect the parts on the Tokugawa economy (1603–1868) and Meiji industrialization (1868–1912) are highly interesting and make it clear that they play an important, yet often neglected role in understanding Japanese industrialization. The book is well structured and contains three parts (The beginnings, The expansion of Japan (1912–73) and Modern Japan) which are introduced with a short summarizing text. At the end of each chapter Inkster gives some hints for further reading. The book, however, has several weaknesses. First, the book presents too much detailed information to be of interest for an audience beyond that of specialist students and academics. There are numerous extremely detailed accounts of technology transfer projects and commentaries in Japanese newspapers. Secondly, the book is weak in providing sources to the information presented; there are few sources mentioned in the text and no sources tell us where the information comes from that is presented in the tables. Furthermore, the author imprecisely quotes colleagues. After word-forword quotations no page numbers are mentioned and at some points in the text; no source is mentioned at all. Throughout reading the book I asked myself what kind of logic is behind the listing of references at the end of the chapters, as they are neither alphabetically nor chronologically ordered. For a book which is presented in the Preface to be ‘an interesting analytical statement in the guise of a textbook’ (p. ix), it is not easy to read, with extremely long sentences at some points. Moreover, Japanese expressions are only explained once. A glossary with Japanese expressions would have been a must in a textbook introducing Japanese industrialization. For readers interested in development studies, the chapters on relationships with neighbouring Asian countries are potentially of great interest. However, little is written about the extent these neighbouring countries copied Japanese industry policy. The flying geese hypothesis, for instance, is not discussed. This hypothesis refers to the development trajectory in which latecomers (the Newly Industrializing Countries) replicate the developmental experience of the countries ahead of them (Japan) in the formation. The replication does not only point at investment patterns, but also at industry policy, which has been most clearly the case concerning South Korea copying large parts of Japan’s developmental state model. Overall, this book is certainly a highly interesting read for social scientists and economists interested and specializing in the industrialization of Japan. It is, however, of much less value as an introduction to Japanese industrialization and as an account of implications of this industrialization for wider development issues.