The Todai-Yale Initiative Lecture Series Fall2008(10/20/08‐11/7/08)
October 20, 2008
Education for 21st Century Japan: Political Economy of Reform Initiatives
Motohisa Kaneko -Dean and Professor, Graduate School of Education
< Summary >
Educational reform has always been a significant social issue in Japan as Japanese feel that a substantial part of their rapid economic development can be attributed to education. As Japan enters a new stage of development where the past pattern of development starts losing its effectiveness, educational reform has again assumed a critical importance.
Discussion will center around previous models of the relationship between education and economics in Japan, reforms to the education system, responses to reform efforts in the contemporary setting, and recommendations for how Japan can deal with this crisis in the future.
October 30, 2008
On the Role of Policy Interventions in Structural Change and Economic Development: The Case of Japan's Postwar
Esteban-Pretel Julen -Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Economics
< Summary >
In this paper, we study the structural change occurred in Japan's post World War II rapid economic growth era. We use a two-sector neoclassical growth model with government policies to analyze the evolution of the Japanese economy in the postwar period, and to assess the role of such policies. Our model is able to replicate the behavior in the data of the main macroeconomic variables for the postwar Japanese economy. Three findings emerge when we use our framework to analyze government policy interventions. First, price and investment subsidies to the agricultural sector and industrial policy, in the form of the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program, do not play a crucial role in the postwar rapid growth. Second, while a government subsidy to help families in the urban areas could have facilitated migration from agriculture to non-agricultural sector in the rapid growth era, such a policy does not improve the overall performance of the Japanese economy. Finally, with the counter-factual labor migration barrier, Japan's postwar GNP growth would have been lower and the negative long-run level effect would be substantial.
November 7, 2008
On Slow Motion -‐An Approach to the Art of Painting, Cartoon and Poetry
Masahiko Abe -Associate Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology
< Summary >
Slow Motion is a technique in film-making by which the action appears slower than it actually is. Its primary purpose is demarcation; it helps highlight a particular scene by revealing its details and showing it as 'different'. But, interestingly, slow motion also seems to be colored by some sentiment, akin to what we may call pathos or sorrow. Why is slow motion sad? To address this issue, we look into the mechanism of the slow in poems and paintings, and consider how our reception of images is related to the sense of speed.
1) Ezra Pound, 'In a Station of the Metro'
- The apparition of these faces in the crowd
- Petals on a wet, black bough
2) Hagiwara Sakutaro, 'The Death of a Frog' (to be circulated)
3) A painting by Patrick Heron (to be circulated)
