In The Making of Modern Japan, Myles Carroll offers a sweeping account of post-war Japanese political economy, exploring the transition from the post-war boom to the crisis of today and the connections between these seemingly discrete periods.

Carroll explores the multifarious international and domestic political, economic, social, and cultural conditions that fortified Japan's post-war hegemonic order and enabled decades of prosperity and stability. Yet since the 1990s, a host of political, economic, social and cultural changes has left this same hegemonic order out of step with the realities of the contemporary world, a contradiction that has led to three decades of crisis in Japanese society. Can Japan make the bold changes required to reverse its decline?