Why does Japan, with its efficiency-oriented technocracy, periodically adopt welfare-oriented, economically inefficient domestic policies?In answering this question Kent Calder shows that Japanese policymakers respond to threats to the ruling party's preeminence by extending income compensation, entitlements, and subsidies, with market-oriented retrenchment coming as crisis subsides. "Quite simply the most ambitious and strongly argued interpretation of a key dimension of Japanese political life to appear in English this decade."--David Williams, Japan Times "Historically dense and conceptually rich...[Forces] readers' attention to the domestic underpinnings of Japanese foreign policy."--Donald S.Zagoria, Foreign Affairs "Punctures the myth of Japan Inc. as a cool, rational monolith..."--Kathleen Newland, Millennium "A bold reinterpretation of Japanese politics that will force us to rethink many of our current assumptions and will influence our research agenda."--Steven R.Reed, Journal of Japanese Studies