| List of Tables | |
| Acknowledgments | |
| Note on Conventions | |
| List of Abbreviations | |
| Introduction | 3 |
| Ch. 1 | Bureaucratic Rationality and Strategic Behavior: The Framework | 17 |
| Ch. 2 | Bureaucratic Rationality and Strategic Behavior: Japanese Tax Reform | 44 |
| Ch. 3 | Lessons for Bureaucrats: From the Proposal for a Tax Increase in the Late 1970s to Fiscal Reconstruction without a Tax Increase in the Early 1980s | 110 |
| Ch. 4 | Reframing the Tax Issue: The Ministry of Finance's Fiscal and Tax Policies in the Early 1980s | 140 |
| Ch. 5 | The Tax Reform Proposal in the mid-1980s: Uneasy Cooperation between Prime Minister Nakasone and the Ministry of Finance | 156 |
| Ch. 6 | The Third Attempt: introduction of the Consumption Tax and the Securities Trading Scandal | 191 |
| Ch. 7 | Conclusion: Bureaucracy, Party, and the Power of Rationality | 221 |
| Notes | 243 |
| Bibliography | 287 |
| Index | 309 |
