Wolfgang Streeck in Tokyo: Japan’s secular stagnation as a delayed crisis of democratic capitalism

Abstract

Since the 1990s Japan has experienced a prolonged period of crisis. Much work has thus far focused on understanding Japan’s crisis on its own terms. Yet we must also consider Japan’s situation within the wider context of global capitalism, examining how the crisis in Japan may be related to, or even integrated within, similar crisis tendencies both within other Northern countries and at the level of the capitalist world system. This article thus asks how our understanding of Japan’s crisis can be enriched by situating it within a wider analysis of crisis and transformation across the Global North. It contends that a common thread of sporadic and yet chronic economic crisis emanating from unresolved contradictions that emerged in the wake of the crisis of Keynesianism in the 1970s can be seen to link Japan’s long-term crisis with similar dynamics in the US and Europe. In developing this argument, the article engages closely with Wolfgang Streeck's 2017 book Buying Time, using a careful reading of Streeck’s argument about the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism that has afflicted countries across the Global North since the 1970s to deepen our understanding of contemporary Japan’s secular stagnation. Following Streeck, it argues that many of the same factors that have driven this “delayed crisis” in the US and elsewhere are also found in Japan. At the same time, Japan’s crisis has been sharpened by global political economic challenges, including the decline of American hegemony and the rise of China, as well as the contradiction between conditions necessary for capital accumulation and stable social reproduction. The article seeks not only to show how Streeck’s argument can help us understand Japan’s crisis in relation to similar crises across the Global North, but also to explore how the Japanese case may point to limitations in Streeck’s argument.