This book deals with the major problems that Japan and East Asian countries have faced during the turbulent years of their reconstruction and development from 1945 to the present time. The Development Report of the World Bank 1993 on the same subject was given the subtitle East Asian Miracle. I have never thought, however, that the impressive achievement of East Asian development was a miracle in any sense. Indeed, as this book tries to show, Japanese and Asian development has been the fruit of the sweat, tears, and blood of all East Asian nations. The efforts and sacrifices involved in the process of their development after World War II are no less than those during the war itself. One should not overlook the fact that almost all the peoples of East Asia have achieved not just economic development but indeed new nation-building after hundreds of years of coloni- al submission. It is my assertion in this book that even economists' analyses of Asian development should pay attention to not only the logos but also the pathos of develop- ment in this last half of twentieth century.
Ever since I became the director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University in 1969, I have written extensively in English as well as in Japanese on the various problems arising in the Japanese and other Asian economies.