The ‘Place’ of Land in Japan's Postwar Development, and the Dynamic of the 1980s Real-Estate ‘Bubble’ and 1990s Banking Crisis

Abstract

In this paper I seek to unfold the place of landed property within Japan's postwar uneven development and the way in which this found expression in the 1980s real-estate ‘bubble’ and subsequent 1990s banking crisis. I argue that landed property was both internal to and constitutive of the social relations that marked the specificity of Japan's postwar capitalism. As a national state within the accumulation of global capital, however, Japan's specificity only existed as ‘difference-in-unity’. Furthermore, I suggest that the 1980s real-estate ‘bubble’ and 1990s banking crisis were specific and culminating expressions of changes within the form of those social relations, as mediated by Japan's changing position within the process of global uneven development. Important in this respect was the way in which credit, fictitious capital, and spatial restructuring became precarious expressions of attempts to achieve a temporal and spatial displacement of crisis.

Financialization and the Role of Real Estate in Hong Kong's Regime of Accumulation

“…However, we suggest that many of the institutional arrangements and societal norms and practices in Hong Kong, as well as in Japan, can be seen as constituting at least elements of a mode of regulation for a finance-led regime. The close links between real estate markets and governmental finances in Hong Kong, for example, or the "iron triangle" in Japan (McCormack 2002;Kerr 2002), institutionalize the centrality of concern for real estate prices and help to disseminate expectations for ever-increasing rents. In this way, rather than seeing Asian economies as following, with variations, in the paths pioneered by the West, by expanding our focus to include their distinctive features (in this case, the particular centrality of the land nexus), it is possible to examine them as forerunners of a possible future property-based mode of regulation that may emerge in the West and thus to diagnose the potential problems and opportunities of such a path (for a more general argument in the same direction, see Yeung and Lin in this issue).…”

Commodification and housing market cycles in Chinese cities

“…Housing booms and consequent decline lead to potential financial risk, as shown in the bursting of property bubbles in Japan in the 1990s (Kerr, 2002), the property-triggered Asian financial crisis (Forrest & Lee, 2004;Sheng & Kirinpanu, 2000;Smart & Lee, 2003a), and the more recent subprime crisis (Aalbers, 2008;Gotham, 2009). The specific risk for Chinese cities might be the bankruptcy of local investment platforms backed by the government.…”

“…In the case of Japan, Kerr (2002) studied the role of land development in postwar Japanese development and found that a 'land myth' placed land at the centre of economic growth. In the case of the Asian financial crisis, the boom and bust of the housing market in Bangkok has been examined by Sheng and Kirinpanu (2000), who consider the growth of the housing market as driven by capital accumulation.…”

Theorizing Economic Geographies of Asia

“…In this special issue, Smart and Lee critically engage one major theoretical strand in recent work in economic geography-regulation theory (see Table 1). Analyzing the vital role of real estate and property assets in Hong Kong's regime of accumulation and economic development during the past two decades, Smart and Lee argue that the Hong Kong case should not be interpreted as an anomaly that deviates from the developmental trajectory of Anglo-American capitalism (see also Kerr 2002 for an analysis of Japan). The distinctive features of Hong Kong's regime of accumulation mean that it is indeed possible to "examine them as forerunners of a possible future property-based mode of regulation that might emerge in the West, and thus to diagnose the potential problems and opportunities of such a path" (Smart and Lee 2003, 153;our emphasis).…”