Japan in the 1980s pioneered the type of export-led, low-consumption development model later adopted by China and other Asian nations. A heavily managed financial market steered cheap financing toward manufacturers, and an extensive web of explicit and implicit subsidies and industrial policies directed taxpayer funds toward the promotion of exports. This was the institutional background for Japan’s high savings rate, which in the postwar period initially financed Japanese corporate investment in rebuilding domestic productive capacity, then financed Japan’s sizable budget deficit in the 1970s.
~ Michael Starr via American Affairs

:::