Unfinished Business

Ayukawa Yoshisuke (18801967) was the founder of the Nissan conglomerate and the leader of the Manchuria Industrial Development Corporation, one of the linchpins of Imperial Japans efforts to economically exploit its overseas dependencies. Despite his close association with the Japanese government from the 1920s to the 1950s, Ayukawa was a proponent of free trade and global economic interdependence. He sought to lessen state control of Japans economy by trying to attract foreignespecially Americancapital and technology in the years surrounding World War II. In the postwar era in particular, Ayukawa actively pushed the growth of small- and medium-sized firms, yet his efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. In Unfinished Business, through exploring the reasons for Ayukawas failure, Haruo Iguchi illuminates many of the economic problems of todays Japan.