Textiles and Industrial Transition in Japan / Dennis L. McNamara.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McNamara, Dennis L., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Textile industry--Japan.

Textile industry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 206 pages)

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Most of Japan's leading textile firms date back to the turn of the century. Unlike many of their Western competitors, however, Japan's larger companies have survived the "decline" of a sector consumed by fierce international competition. Providing the fullest English-language account of Japanese textiles, Dennis L. McNamara explores the entire sweep of the industry, from factory to high-fashion brokerage to policymaking circle. Tracing the strategies by which the textile industry has survived, he provides a distinctive view of Japanese capitalism in a climate of change. McNamara reconstructs a world riven by the competing interests of state and capital, firm and industry, labor and management, mill and merchant. We encounter giant "mogul" companies and upstart independent "mavericks"-such firms as Toray, Toyobo, Itochu, Tsuzuki, Kondobo, Onward, and Renown-all hustling to restructure for survival. Drawing on extensive interview data as well as recent Japanese and English-language work in political economy and social anthropology, McNamara describes a dynamic of competition between moguls and mavericks in a turbulent business torn by divisions but bound together by compromise. He finds that, despite enormous international pressures, the industry has maintained much of its market share, largely because state bureaucrats and leaders of major firms have managed to create a cooperative politics of adjustment. A corporatist structuring of interests, he concludes, has helped to moderate decline and maintain stability, permitting survival among the moguls without preventing the successful participation of mavericks.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES

ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE

1. Adjustment in Decline

2. The Textile Industry

3. The Individual Firm

4. The State

5. The Association

6. Labor's Unique Place

7. The General Trading Companies

8. The Fashion Houses

9. Collective Action

INDEX

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Nov 2019)

ISBN:

1-5017-4465-8

OCLC:

1125112084