A Skeptic’s Guide to Miwa and Ramseyer’s “The Fable of the Keiretsu”

Abstract

I.   Introduction
II.   A Confused Conspiracy Theory: Leftist Westerners and Japanese Marxists Are to Blame?
III.   The Conundrum of an Impotent Government that Attracts the Best and the Brightest
IV.   M&R Fail to Prove their Overly Ambitious Conclusion
A.  The Lack of Comparative Evidence Forces “Blind Leaps of Faith”
B.   Evidence of a Flawed Description is not Tantamount to Proof of Non-Existence
C.  A Missing Chapter: What Happened to “The Fable of Lifetime Employment”?
V.   Unused Tools: A Note of Caution on “The Myth of theLost Decade”
VI.   A Case Study of “The Lost Decade”: Proof that M&R’sTheory Misleads
VII.   Buy it, Borrow it or Steal it – But also Buy, Borrow or Steal a “Pillar of Salt"