  We present an analysis of the credit market of Japan. The analysis is
performed by investigating the bipartite network of banks and firms which is
obtained by setting a link between a bank and a firm when a credit relationship
is present in a given time window. In our investigation we focus on a community
detection algorithm which is identifying communities composed by both banks and
firms. We show that the clusters obtained by directly working on the bipartite
network carry information about the networked nature of the Japanese credit
market. Our analysis is performed for each calendar year during the time period
from 1980 to 2011. Specifically, we obtain communities of banks and networks
for each of the 32 investigated years, and we introduce a method to track the
time evolution of these communities on a statistical basis. We then
characterize communities by detecting the simultaneous over-expression of
attributes of firms and banks. Specifically, we consider as attributes the
economic sector and the geographical location of firms and the type of banks.
In our 32 year long analysis we detect a persistence of the over-expression of
attributes of clusters of banks and firms together with a slow dynamics of
changes from some specific attributes to new ones. Our empirical observations
show that the credit market in Japan is a networked market where the type of
banks, geographical location of firms and banks and economic sector of the firm
play a role in shaping the credit relationships between banks and firms.
