This book is an exploration of how state policies have influenced Japan's telecommunications, computer hardware and software and semi-conductor industries since their stagnation in the 1990s. The author looks at how the country's socially embedded capitalist system has affected the performance of these industries and the economy. She points out how the policies and institutions created after World War II - including the lifetime employment system, seniority-based wages, and enterprise unions - were used to sustain maintain the communitarian norm even though conditions had changed in the 1980s and 1990s. Social commitments proved hard to overcome and instead of responding quickly to specific economic interests, the Japanese government and firms have only made slow, incremental changes.