This is imagery from our recent trip to Japan for our forthcoming documentary feature “Princes of the Yen”. Based on a book by Professor Richard Werner, “Princes of the Yen” explores the function of Central Banks in the shaping of economic landscapes.
It is largely set in 20th century Japan and includes an explanation of the origins of Japanese National Socialist and Military expansionist Ideology, and the economic system developed by the fascists, which the Author terms the “Total War Economy”. It was this economic order, the Author claims, which was at the heart of the “Japanese Economic Miracle”. Why did it implode at the end of the 20th Century? How was it different from our own economic system? What are the mechanisms, which lie at the core of any economic order? Can the Japanese experience provide us with an understanding of the crises in Southern Europe? Can it shed light on other historical and contemporary economic crises?
Princes of the Yen is an Information Documentary that reveals the role of Central Banks in the construction of the dominant contemporary religious belief of perpetual economic growth and the resulting claim of the necessity of structural economic and societal change to private ownership and universal commodification.
Director, Producer and Writer: Michael Oswald - Associate Producer: Mike Horwath
Music by Buro