Japan Under Construction: Corruption, Politics, and Public Works
Preferred Citation: Woodall, Brian. Japan under Construction: Corruption, Politics, and Public Works. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, c1996 1996. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft5489n9zf/ Japan Under Construction Corruption, Politics, and Public Works Brian Woodall UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford © 1996 The Regents of the University of California To Joyce, Leslie, and Melissa Preferred Citation: Woodall, Brian. Japan under Construction: Corruption, Politics, and Public Works. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, c1996 1996. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft5489n9zf/ To Joyce, Leslie, and Melissa ― ix ― Acknowledgments In researching this book, I have drawn extensively on Japanese-language materials: newspaper reports, periodicals, industry association publications, and government documents. In addition, I conducted over one hundred open-ended interviews, primarily in 1987–1988 and in 1993–1994. Almost all of these interviews were conducted in Japanese, each lasting about an hour. I spoke with construction contractors, industry association officials, elected politicians and their aides, political party officials, government bureaucrats, newspaper reporters, and academics. Because of the highly sensitive, and sometimes sub rosa, nature of the subject matter, I cannot identify these individuals by name. For their willingness to answer sometimes naive questions and to assist in other ways, however, I owe a deep debt of gratitude. At the time I undertook this study, sensible people warned me about the quagmire that lay ahead. They alerted me to the difficulties of handling the shadowy actors engaged in the complex and secretive process of rigging bids on public works projects. Others warned me about dealings with the government bureaucrats and legislators who also animate the policymaking stage in this heretofore strictly "domestic" domain.
[Show full text]