THE ROLE OF BANKS IN JAPAN’S ECONOMIC RECOVERY AFTER WORLD WAR II
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/economyukr.2024.03.003Keywords:
post-war economic reconstruction; Japan's banking system; strategic banks; Confucian values; keiretsu;Abstract
In the context of attracting the potential of the banking sector for the post-war reconstruction of Ukrainian economy, a comprehensive analysis of the role of banks in Japan’s economic recovery was carried out, key factors, agents and institutional and financial instruments that ensured the success of this process were identified. The prerequisites for the successful post-war reconstruction of the Japanese economy were: almost complete separation of domestic financial system from international financial institutions; strict long-term fixing of the yen exchange rate, foreign exchange and financial control by the state; balancing the state budget; complete refusal of the government to issue government bonds; rigid functional and status hierarchy of banks and other credit and financial institutions; prohibiting commercial banks from issuing and from placing securities of non-financial corporations and performing trust operations; introduction of minimum interest rates for household deposits. All this ensured the channeling of limited financial resources of government-affiliated strategic banks, commercial banks and savings financial institutions into investment in priority, export-oriented sectors of industrial production.
The role of Confucian communitarian-solidarist values in ensuring the success of the government's strategic bid to deliberately limit current consumption by the population and direct household savings through banking channels toward the goals of innovative economic growth is revealed. It is shown that the main agents of financial mechanism construction in post-war Japan were large corporations from the main industries, financial institutions through which money flows were channeled, and the Ministry of Finance that acted as the guardian of the financial hierarchy.
In this context, it is proposed to encourage in Ukraine the introduction of the communitarian-solidarist value model of economic reconstruction and development, characteristic of Japan and other Confucian-tradition economically developed countries and societies, such as South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan.
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