R.T. Murphy

R.T. Murphy teaches political economy at Tsukuba University. He is the author of The Weight of the Yen and, with Mikuni Akio, of the forthcoming Japan’s Policy Trap.

Looking to Game Boy: modern Japan

R.T. Murphy, 3 January 2002

Thirty years ago as a Harvard freshman, I was taught how to think about Japanese history. Japan had just re-emerged after a quarter-century hiatus as a country to be taken seriously. It had pushed aside West Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy and there was talk of its economy surpassing that of the USSR (actually, it already had). Japanese radios, motorcycles, ships and...

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