Land and Infrastructure Management

This chapter will mainly focus upon Japan’s experiences in land and infrastructure management during the postwar period until the late 1960s, when Japan entered a phase of so-called accelerated economic growth. The experiences of this period can offer several key lessons for contemporary developing countries. From 1945 to 1952, Japan was occupied by the Allied forces for peace-building after the destruction of both physical productive assets and the peoples’ cultural value systems. From 1952 to 1966 Japan received massive amounts of aid from the World Bank and other foreign communities. Most of this foreign aid was used for the improvement of land and infrastructure, which has a lot of valuable implications for contemporary developing countries. With regard to land management, this chapter will only discuss agricultural land reform, and not land use management in urban areas. With regard to infrastructure, this chapter mainly discusses public investment performance and institutional arrangements for infrastructure management in the process of Japan’s recovery period from 1945 to around 1970.