The Industry Of Japan

In recent years, Japan, like many other forest-dependent nations, has been facing difficult times: forest self-sufficiency is low; unplanted areas after harvesting are increasing; and forest industries and companies are losing international competitiveness in the global market. Such challenges, however, are not unique to Japan but are relevant - and all too familiar - to forest industry stakeholders around the world. This book, representing the work of distinguished Japanese scholars, is the first comprehensive English-language overview of forestry, forest management, and the forest products industry in Japan. Chapters address the biological and physical evolution of the forest, forest-dependent industries, the social impact of changes in forest utilization, current trends in the forest estate, and the relationship between urban population and rural forest land. Forestry and the Forest Industry in Japan will be welcomed by scholars, students, and policy makers in the areas of forest policy, international trade, international forestry, and forest products marketing.

Monograph on industrial policy and the organization of business and industry in Japan - analyses the distinctive features of the Japanese industrial structure (e.g. Industrial monopolys, permanent employment, prevalence of small enterprises, market structure, etc.), and compares it with the industrial system in the USA, etc. References and statistical tables.

The international projection of Japan's corporate and technological power is transforming world manufacturing and the international political economy. Debate rages about Japan's economic success and the role of the state in nurturing it. The Japanese background to these debates is widely misunderstood and are analysed in research-based chapters by British and Japanese specialists on government-industry relations. Japanese policies for industrial promotion, regulation and decline are set in a context of comparative political economy. Sectors include pharmaceuticals, shipbuilding and telecommunications in the US and Japan.

The focus of this book is on the Japanese economic bureaucracy, particularly on the famous Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), as the leading state actor in the economy. Although MITI was not the only important agent affecting the economy, nor was the state as a whole always predominant, I do not want to be overly modest about the importance of this subject. The particular speed, form, and consequences of Japanese economic growth are not intelligible without reference to the contributions of MITI. Collaboration between the state and big business has long been acknowledged as the defining characteristic of the Japanese economic system, but for too long the state's role in this collaboration has been either condemned as overweening or dismissed as merely supportive, without anyone's ever analyzing the matter. The history of MITI is central to the economic and political history of modern Japan. Equally important, however, the methods and achievements of the Japanese economic bureaucracy are central to the continuing debate between advocates of the communist-type command economies and advocates of the Western-type mixed market economies. The fully bureaucratized command economies misallocate resources and stifle initiative; in order to function at all, they must lock up their populations behind iron curtains or other more or less impermeable barriers. The mixed market economies struggle to find ways to intrude politically determined priorities into their market systems without catching a bad case of the "English disease" or being frustrated by the American-type legal sprawl. The Japanese, of course, do not have all the answers. But given the fact that virtually all solutions to any of the critical problems of the late twentieth century--energy supply, environmental protection, technological innovation, and so forth--involve an expansion of official bureaucracy, the particular Japanese priorities and procedures are instructive. At the very least they should forewarn a foreign observer that the Japanese achievements were not won without a price being paid.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Most of Japan's leading textile firms date back to the turn of the century. Unlike many of their Western competitors, however, Japan's larger companies have survived the "decline" of a sector consumed by fierce international competition. Providing the fullest English-language account of Japanese textiles, Dennis L. McNamara explores the entire sweep of the industry, from factory to high-fashion brokerage to policymaking circle. Tracing the strategies by which the textile industry has survived, he provides a distinctive view of Japanese capitalism in a climate of change. McNamara reconstructs a world riven by the competing interests of state and capital, firm and industry, labor and management, mill and merchant. We encounter giant "mogul" companies and upstart independent "mavericks"—such firms as Toray, Toyobo, Itochu, Tsuzuki, Kondobo, Onward, and Renown—all hustling to restructure for survival. Drawing on extensive interview data as well as recent Japanese and English-language work in political economy and social anthropology, McNamara describes a dynamic of competition between moguls and mavericks in a turbulent business torn by divisions but bound together by compromise. He finds that, despite enormous international pressures, the industry has maintained much of its market share, largely because state bureaucrats and leaders of major firms have managed to create a cooperative politics of adjustment. A corporatist structuring of interests, he concludes, has helped to moderate decline and maintain stability, permitting survival among the moguls without preventing the successful participation of mavericks.

This volume analyzes Japan’s industrial organization both from a historical perspective and by looking in details at specific industries such as iron, steel and the automotive industry. Big business, business groups and industrial policy are also discussed. The volume also provides a survey of the literature in Japanese which will help the reader in search of original sources.