America's shift to a debt country in 1985 resulted in yen's drastic appreciaton, terminating Japanese economic growth dependent upon the export to the U.S. and forcing Japan to change to a domestic demand-pull growth. Accordingly, the U.S.-Japan economic relationship has been reversed: the "Amerippon" regime now sustains the U.S. economy. In the latter half of the 1980s, especially from 1987 to 1990, information-technolgy-related investments (I.T. investments) have played a major role to lead the domestic demand-pull boom, which once led the rapid economic growth in 1960s. The I.T. investments have actualized a new industrial cycle in which the I.T. investments in non-manufacturing sectors enhance the demands and investments in I.T.-related equipments in manufacturing sectors. This cycle is very different from the one experienced in 1960s where the investments were closedly made within heavy and chemical industries. The I.T. investment funds have been elicited from the direct finance backed up by stock inflation, instead of the indirect finance which sustained the introduction of advanced heavy and chemical industries in the latter half of 1950s and 1960s. These changes mentioned above were prepared by the administrative reform and privatizaion policies such as the privatization of the Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (Den-den Kosha), and were part of world-wide industrial restructuring based on neo-liberalism. With the success of I.T. based on the Japanese style of management, Japan has in this period succeeded in founding a new productive stage led by R & D. On the other hand, however, this success has presented by some serious problems in the field of business management, such as the circulating capitarization of fixed capital caused by shortening of the equipment depreciation term and increase in the labor-quipment ratio caused by the introduction of labor-saving equipments. These problems are contributing to building up so-called "Karoshi or, over work death, system" in Japan.
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