Study On The Relationship Between Culture And Economic Development In Japan

After World Ward II East Asia has made remarkable achievements, among which Japan aroused the greatest attention in the world for its quick recovery from the War and turning into the world’s second largest economy. There are many reasons for Japan’s rapid rise, economic take-off and remaining an economic power over the long term, which, however, are undoubtedly credited to Japanese government’s endeavor to develop culture and cultural industry, place weight on education and technological advancement, enhance the quality of nationals and stress high savings rate to a large extent. Japanese traditional culture boasts of strong learning spirit and integration ability, the very contributing factors responsible for Japan’s rapid growth. In addition, a sense of urgency created by insular insecurity has led Japan to a nation with the highest savings rate, which rapidly expanded its capital accumulation and pushed its postwar economic development. It can be said that there is an inseparable relationship between the emphasis on education, technological advancement, quality of nationals and high savings rate and the influence of Japanese traditional culture.Some scholars argue that the success of Japan’s economy is closely related to its unique corporate culture which is inseparable from its traditional culture. Japanese traditional culture is based on three national psychologies:eager to be a powerful country, being practical and loyal. Consciousness of emphasizing education, concept of frugal living and being practical are derived from the above three national psychologies. Besides, Japan’s corporate culture is supported by collective spirit and creative spirit. The core of the collective spirit is Japan’s national spirit, including both the spirit of unity, the spirit of cooperation and all-in-the-same-boat spirit, and the spirit of contribution, on which has developed Japan’s national spirit-oriented corporate spirit. The Japanese are good at creativity, which also benefits from the national spirit. Thus, Japanese traditional culture has played an active role in promoting Japan’s economic development in its rapid economic growth period.Since the1990s, the Japanese economy underwent a long period of economic stagnation. Thanks to the adaptation to the situation on the part of the Japanese government which adjusted the development strategy promptly, the cultural industry keeps growing. The promotion of "a cultural-based country" has established the position of cultural development strategy in Japan’s national strategy, highlighting the role of cultural industry in the economic and social development with the effective development of cultural industry. Now Japan has taken a leading position in many areas of cultural industry, especially the emerging cultural industry such as comic and animation, games, which has brought enormous economic benefits into Japan, leading it to be the largest country for amines production and export. In other words, in compliance with the economic situation, Japan adjusted national strategy, achieving significant achievements in cultural industry development. Now under the circumstances of economic development driven by cultural industry, Japan is undergoing a new catching up and surpassing, realizing shift from an economic power to a nation with powerful culture.As an ancient civilized country, China boasts of a long history and rich culture. With a leading position in material civilization in the world over a long period, Chinese ancestors created splendid civilization and accumulated rich cultural wealth. Today, however, Chinese cultural industry lags behind western countries in terms of both size and quantity, and quality and efficiency. Why does China with rich culture not have developed cultural industry? How should Chinese culture be recognized? How to build and develop Chinese cultural industry? These are problems waiting to be resolved and also the subjects the author is interested in and concerned about.Currently, culture, a kind of soft power, is increasingly become an important factor in the competition for comprehensive national strength, with a growing role in supporting the economic and social development. Against such a background, it will be beneficial to undertake a serious study of Japanese cultural elements, analyze the relationship between postwar culture and economic development in Japan, summarize Japan’s experience in developing its cultural industry and predict its development direction in the future. Such a study will not only be helpful to study the relationship between culture and economy, but also be significant reference for China, a so called civilized country, to make culture a positive player in her economic development and to formulate proper strategies for cultural development under such a circumstance that the12th five-year plan reiterated the call for vigorously developing cultural industry, which is also the starting point and basic purpose of this study.The dissertation is organized as follows. Firstly, culture-related concepts are reviewed and the characteristics of Japanese culture are summarized. Based on economics theories, combined with philosophy, political science, sociology, the economic role of culture has been analyzed, generalizing the relationship between culture and economic development, which laid the theoretical foundation for the analysis of culture’s active role in economic development in Japan. Secondly, the relationship between the cultural growth and economic aggregate growth has been analyzed, which provides a theoretical basis for Japanese cultural industry’s driving its economic growth. Thirdly, an empirical study is carried out to analyze such subjects as "Japanese culture and national consciousness","Japanese culture and corporate operations","the development of Japanese cultural industry","policy measures taken by the Japanese government to push culture and cultural industry development", with a summary of the relationship between postwar culture and economic development in Japan. Finally, based on the above research and in accordance with the sequence of "theory-practice-theory", the role of Japanese culture played in economic development and Japan’s experience are summarized. Policy suggestions are put forward for the development of Chinese cultural industry.The research approaches, including a normative and comparative analysis as well as induction and deduction, are adopted in this dissertation to analyze culture’s role in driving economic development in Japan. Specifically speaking, approaches such as normative analysis, induction and logical analysis are employed to construct theoretical framework; deductive approach is employed to analyze the economic role of culture and the relationship between culture and economy based on the summary of the existing researches, laying a theoretical foundation for the following analysis; approaches such as historical analysis, data analysis, deduction, induction, logical analysis are employed to analyze such subjects as "Japanese culture and national consciousness","Japanese culture and corporate operations","the development of Japanese cultural industry","policy measures taken by the Japanese government to push culture and cultural industry development","the role of Japanese culture in driving economic development and the experience of the development of Japanese cultural industry", examining the rationality and validity of the theoretical analysis of this dissertation. The dissertation is divided into four sections. The first section (Chapter1-3) is theoretical review.Chapter Ⅰ is an introductory part. The background and significance of this dissertation is firstly explained. Then, the relevant literature is collected and classified, which forms a basis for the theoretical construction and the following analysis of this dissertation. Meanwhile, the subjects of the available literature for further research are pointed out and the research goals put forward. Next, the logic, approaches, content and layout are illustrated. Last, the innovation and limitations are also included.Chapter Ⅱ reviews the relevant theories. It first presents Marxist fundamental theories of culture. Next, theories regarding cultural development are explained from the perspectives of the mainstream economics and other realms. Last, it summarizes the theories of corporate culture and corporate operations.Chapter Ⅲ focuses on the relationship between culture and economic development. This chapter firstly explains the concept and connotation of culture. Secondly, the economic role played by culture is comprehensively expounded in terms of social-cultural constraints on economic activity, spiritual boost of economic development, functional and strategic promotion in economic activity, order function made in economic activity, the influence on consumption. Finally, it analyzes the relationship between culture and economic development with the actual combination of theory and practice, presenting that economic development is in essence a cultural process from such perspectives as the dialectical relationship between culture and economy, the blend, the intergrowth, the isomorphism, the interaction and the integration of culture and economy, the cultural growth and economic aggregate growth.The second section of this dissertation is an empirical analysis.Chapter Ⅳ describes Japanese culture and Japanese national consciousness. It first introduces the characteristics of Japanese culture, the cultural differences between China and Japan as well as between Japan and the West, elaborates the influence exerted by Japanese religion on the development of Japanese nationality, and analyzes the active role of national consciousness in social modernization of Japan. Next it demonstrates that there is a close corelation between the rapid modernization of Japan and its national consciousness and nationality such as self-discipline and orderliness, collectivism.Chapter Ⅴ concerns Japanese corporate culture and corporate operations. It summarizes the content and characteristics of Japanese culture and analyzes the active role that corporate culture plays in promoting economic development in Japan. The following conclusions are drawn:at the macro level, it is the unique traditional culture of Japan that contributes to its unique and successful modernization; at the micro level, it is the cohesion activated by corporate culture that contributes to the successful modernized operations of the Japanese enterprises with unique competitiveness.Chapter Ⅵ focuses on the development of Japanese cultural industry. It expounds that "cultural resources", the basis of Japanese cultural industry, will be unexhausted on condition that they are nurtured in a long term. On such a basis the development of cultural industry in different fields are summarized with the analysis of problems existing in and predictions of the future key markets of Japanese cultural industry.Chapter Ⅶ discusses policy measures for promoting the development of culture and cultural industry taken by the Japanese government. Starting with the formulation and improvement of legal system concerning cultural development, this chapter comprehensively summarizes the policy measures taken by the Japanese government to boost culture and cultural industry development as well as international cultural exchange.The third section of this dissertation concerns summary, theoretical reflections and policy suggestions.Chapter Ⅷ the role of Japanese culture played in propelling Japan’s economic development. From four aspects, it discusses the role that Japanese culture plays in driving Japan’s economic development.Chapter Ⅸ the experience of cultural industry development in Japan. The experience of Japanese cultural industry is summarized from nine aspects such as higher priority assigned to by and strong support from the government.Chapter Ⅹ focuses the theoretical reflections and policy suggestions. After summarizing the the above discussions, it demonstrates the theoretical reflections on the relationship between culture and economic development, exhibiting the author’s new insight into such subjects as cultural factors in economic development, the indispensable support from culture in economic development, constraints on economic development due to a lag in the cultural development, cultural industry development acting as the new direction and new pillar of the modern industry development, the significance of laying down cultural strategies. Next, based on the previous theoretical reflections and integrated with China’s reality, policy suggestions are put forward concerning the development of Chinese culture and cultural industry with the reference experience from Japan.The fourth section of this dissertation is the concluding part. The principal conclusions are as follows:●Culture plays an important role in human social development. With the development of modern society, especially with the development and advancement of knowledge economy, culture plays an increasingly important part in promoting the development of economy and society.●Culture exerts a positive influence on the boost of postwar economic development in Japan.●Confucianism is a most powerful propeller of Japan’s economic miracle.●Japan has accumulated some valuable experience in culture and cultural industry development for China’s reference.The innovations of this dissertation are as follows:The innovations of this dissertation are as follows:●Academic innovations1. From the comprehensive introduction to and a summary of Japanese culture, the dissertation extracts an array of typical characteristics of Japanese culture, which have a profound influence on every sphere of Japan, especially on economy. From the very perspective does the dissertation analyze in depth the influence of Japanese culture on its economy, with the conclusion that culture enhances nationality while nationality helps economic development.2. Based on the study, the dissertation argues that Japanese culture not only influences its economic development indirectly, but also becomes an important part of economic development with cultural industry as the carrier.3. The dissertation gives deep research on the influence on Japanese economy exerted by Japanese culture, summarizing the successful experience and putting forward policy suggestions concerning the development of Chinese culture and cultural industry. ●Innovation in research perspectivesOn the basis of the principles of economics and with effective application of knowledge derived from politics, sociology, linguistics and other sciences, using philosophy as a research tool, the dissertation explores the profound influence of Japanese culture on its economy, demonstrating that culture plays an important role in economic development. The study widens the research perspective on the interrelations between culture and economy, introducing a new idea to China in terms developing cultural industry.There are also limitations in this dissertation. First, the limited knowledge of the author about the subject restricts theoretical depth and academic innovation to an extent. Second, due to the difficulty in data collection, some data are not latest, which has a negative effect on the deep analysis of the current situation, problems and experience of culture and cultural industry development in Japan in recent years. In addition, this dissertation mainly focuses on the influence of Japanese culture on its economics, although reversely, the economics also has a significant effect on the culture, which will be further studied in my future research.