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Tokyo's booms and busts: Placing Japan in the global financial network

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2023

Liam Keenan  and
Dariusz Wójcik
Liam Keenan*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham UK
Dariusz Wójcik
Affiliation:
University of Oxford UK
*
Corresponding author: Liam Keenan, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Nottingham, Sir Clive Granger Building, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

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Tokyo is conspicuous for its now decades-long absence in the headlines of global financial news. In this article, we revisit the evolution of Tokyo as an international financial centre through the lens of Global Financial Networks (GFN). Drawing on insights from high-level interviews, we present a chronology of Japan's financial history between 1980 and 2020. This reveals a pattern wherein financial sector reforms and financial centre initiatives are repeatedly interrupted by crises. The GFN framework helps to demonstrate how structure and agency intertwine at the global, national, and local scales to shape this reform-boosterismcrisis cycle. Nationally and locally, we find that despite repeated attempts by coalitions of actors to elevate the status of Tokyo, engrained cultural and political economic conditions have hindered its development into a truly global financial centre. Globally, these conditions have been structured and amplified by Japan's historical position as a rule-taker in the governance of international finance. These factors have conspired to situate Japan on the periphery of the GFN, a position aggravated by the rising financial power of China.

Keywords

Financial centresglobal financial networksJapanTokyo
Type
Article
Information
Finance and Society , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , 2022 , pp. 149 - 168
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© 2022 The Author(s)

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