Jean-Marie Bouissou, who lived in Japan in the 1980s, is a political scientist at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and the Centre Franco-Japonais de Management. "The Burden of Success," an updated translation of the French original that was published under the title "Japan since 1945," establishes him as an expert on Japanese affairs, both political and economic. It is a detailed political history of post-World War II Japan tracing its economic development from the destruction of the 1940s and the period of recovery through the prolonged economic stagnation since the early 1990s.
Groundwork is laid in the first chapter, which offers a brief overview of those aspects of Japanese history that help readers understand the country's position in the world and its social conditions at the time of surrender in 1945.
Six chapters follow dealing, respectively, with the occupation, the stabilization of the new political system in the 1950s, the economic "miracle" of the high-growth period, the ensuing saturation, Liberal Democratic Party hegemony and corruption, and what the author calls the end of the "Japanese Model." In addition to political and economic developments, Bouissou takes up social transformations such as the changing position of women in society; increasing immigration; major environmental disasters; and cultural trends, especially literature and cinema, which in his view epitomized the periods under discussion. Books on Japan drawing such a wide canvas have become rare, most studies now narrow fields of focus to offer greater depth. Though there is very little in terms of a theory or a red thread guiding us to appreciate why things developed in one way rather than another, as an introduction to contemporary Japan, this is still a very readable book.