"Japan's Interventionist State is a major study of one of Japan's key bureaucratic institutions - the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF). It highlights the MAFF's significance as an independent player in Japan's agricultural support and protection regime and explains why the MAFF seeks to preserve its role as the principal agent of government intervention in the farm sector. Supporting this central explanatory argument is a new theory of state intervention based on bureaucratic self-interest."--Jacket.