High-Technology Strategies and Regional Restructuring

Abstract

Although much attention has been focused on the industrial policies of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), there have been few attempts to understand these policies in the context of regional concerns. Moreover, it would be difficult to think of MITFs high-technology strategies as having played a meaningful role as a tool for the regional restructuring policy instituted in the 1980s under the Industrial Relocation Plan. In 1980, MITI announced a new comprehensive plan called Vision for the Policy of International Trade and Industry in the 1980s. It was ten years after the first announcement of a similar vision for industrial policy, which had stressed political roles in the internationalization of the Japanese industry. The earlier vision proposed Aree goals for a national consensus: first, to contribute to the world as a large-scale economic country; second, to solve the problem of scarce resources; and third, to achieve a consistently vital and comfortable society. It is said that the MITI bureaucrats succeeded completely in overcoming the international concerns that developed with the structural crises of world capitalism during 1970s. They declared that Japan would play a positive role as the nation responsible for 10 percent of the world economy. Contributing to the maintenance of the free trade system and stabilizing the international monetary system became central goals for the Japanese economy. Drastic political measures for the purpose of restructuring the international division of labor under the comparative superiority stan-