Education
Born and brought up in Minnesota, he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1973 and received a master’s degree in East Asian studies from Harvard in 1975, followed by a doctorate in history from Yale in 1981.
historian university professor
Born and brought up in Minnesota, he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1973 and received a master’s degree in East Asian studies from Harvard in 1975, followed by a doctorate in history from Yale in 1981.
His field of interest centers on modern Japan, and particularly the relationship between state and society. His first book, The State and Labor in Modern Japan (1987) traced the history of the Japanese labor movement. In 1997 he published Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life, an account of the Japanese state’s success at mobilizing its people to act in the perceived interest of the nation in, for instance, saving a high proportion of their income.
The book shed new light on Japan"s reluctance to embrace American-style deregulation and consumerism.
In Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends and the World Saves (2011), he argues that the current savings imbalances between the United States and other developed nations are not the result merely of different individual choices. Beyond Our Means tells for the first time how other nations aggressively encouraged their citizens to save by means of special savings institutions and savings campaigns.
The United States. government, meanwhile, promoted mass consumption and reliance on cr through policies such as tax breaks on borrowing, which culminated in the global cr crunch.
Books The State and Labor in Modern Japan (1987) University of California Press, Berkeley. Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (1997) Princeton University Press. Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends and the World Saves (2011) Princeton University Press.
Articles Garon, Sheldon (November 25, 2011). "Why We Spend, Why They Save". The New York Times. p.
A25. Retrieved 5 Jan 2012.
