Technology And Industrial Development In Pre War Japan

This book studies the industrial development of Japan since the mid-nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on how the various industries built technological capabilities. The Japanese were extraordinarily creative in searching out and learning to use modern technologies, and the authors investigate the emergence of entrepreneurs who began new and risky businesses, how the business organizations evolved to cope with changing technological conditions, and how the managers, engineers, and workers acquired organizational and technological skills through technology importation, learning-by-doing, and their own R & D activities. The book investigates the interaction between private entrepreneurial activities and public policy, through a general examination of economic and industrial development, a study of the evolution of management systems, and six industrial case studies: textile, iron and steel, electrical and communications equipment, automobiles, shipbuilding and aircraft, and pharmaceuticals. The authors show how the Japanese government has played an important supportive role in the continuing innovation, without being a substitute for aggressive business enterprise constantly venturing into unfamiliar terrains.

This book aims to discredit the myth that has the `unique cultural traits' of the Japanese as the key to the country's success, arguing that the more realisable foundation of long-term investment in training and research is responsible. The book looks at the development of Japan in the pre-War period. Yukiko Fukusaku sees the achievements of this period as central to the present competitiveness of the country's industrial technology. She uses the Mitsubishi Nagasaki shipyard as a case study, looking at technological innovation and training as the keys to long-term stability and economic success. The book has implications for industrial development worldwide. Japan's starting point over a century ago was similar to the present conditions of many developing countries and the book's emphasis on the acquisition of better skills as a key to development is as relevant to Europe and America as it is to the Third World.

As the first volume of the two-volume Industrial Development in Modern China: Comparisons with Japan that studies the different paths of industrialization and economic modernization between China and Japan, this book analyzes the relationship between technological innovation and economic development in Japan before World War II. The author deploys econometric analysis, multivariate statistical analysis and case studies from different industries to shed light on technological innovation in the Japanese context with particular emphasis on the importance of the patent system. A great deal of new inventions and patents in this period led to fast economic growth in Japan characterized by the simultaneous development of both traditional and modern industries. These insights help reshape the understanding of Japan's economic development and industrial advancement at an early stage and provide pointers to developing countries as to how human capital, social capabilities and thereby technological innovation can figure in economic growth. This volume will appeal to academics of the East Asian economy, development economics and modern economic history as well as general readers interested in the miracle of the Japanese economy as the first to achieve economic development and modernization among non-Western countries.

The prevailing view of industrialization has focussed on technology, capital, entrepreneurship and the institutions that enabled them to be deployed. Labour was often equated with other factors of production, and assigned a relatively passive role. Yet it was labour absorption and the improvement of the quality of labour over the course of several centuries that underscored the timing, pace and quality of global industrialization. While science and technology developed in the West and whereas the use of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil, were vital to this process, the more recent history has been underpinned by the development of comparatively resource- and energy-saving technology, without which the diffusion of industrialization would not have been possible. The labour-intensive, resource-saving path, which emerged in East Asia under the influence of Western technology and institutions, and is diffusing across the world, suggests the most realistic route humans could take for a further diffusion of industrialization, which might respond to the rising expectations of living standards without catastrophic environmental degradation.

For many in the West, the emergence of Japan as an economic superpower has been as surprising as it has been sudden. After its defeat in World War II, Japan hardly appeared a candidate to lead industrialized nations in productivity and technological innovation, and the "Japanese miracle" is often explained as the result of U.S. aid and protection in the postwar years. In The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy, Christopher Howe locates the sources of Japan's current commercial and financial strength in events tnat occurred well before 1945. In this revisionist account, Howe traces the history of Japanese trade over four centuries to show that the Japanese mastery of trade with the outside world began as long ago as the sixteenth century, with Japan's first contact with European trading partners. Although profitable, this early contact was so destabilizing that the Japanese leadership soon restricted foreign trade mainly to Asian partners. From the early seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries, Japan developed in relative isolation. Though secluded from the scientific and economic revolutions in the West, Japan proved adept at finding novel solutions to its own problems, and its economy grew in size, diversity, and technological and institutional sophistication. By the nineteenth century, when contacts with the West were reestablished. Japan had developed a remarkable capacity to absorb foreign technologies and to adapt and create new institutions, while retaining significant elements of its traditional system of values. Most importantly, Japan's long-standing reliance on its own ingenuity to solve problems continued to flourish. This tradition, born of necessity, is the most important foundation for Japan's current position as a world economic power.

This book looks at Japan's early economic modernization to see if today's low-income countries can learn any lessons. The author focuses on education, technology policy, capital formation, the transfer of savings from agriculture to industry, state aid to the private sector, improvement engineering in the informal sector, low wages, industrial dualism, export expansion, and resistance to Western imperialism (a strategy which included acquiring its own empire) under Japan's "guided capitalism."