This is the first volume to appear in what will be a definitive multi-volume series covering the whole of modern Japanese economic history. Written by the leading Japanese scholars, the volumes have been abridged and rewritten for a non-Japanese readership. Dual Structure covers the first half of the twentieth century when Japan's economic modernization brought the country into the circle of world powers between the two world wars; the economic system established in the Second World War transformed the economy; and postwar reconstruction provided the foundations for an extraordinary economic dynamism.