Tsushin Gurobaru-ka no Seijigaku: 'Gaiatsu' to Nihon no Denki Tsushin Seisaku

Abstract

Telecommunications has been a very important industry in Japan for a long time, and scholars of Japanese political economy have analyzed specific issues related to telecommunications, such as Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation's (NTT) contribution to the development of Japan's high-tech industry, US–Japan trade conflict involving telecommunications products and the privatization of NTT. However, no comprehensive studies of Japan's contemporary telecommunications market have existed. This book attempts to fill this void, providing rich description of the political interactions in which the US government applied ‘foreign pressure’ (gaiatsu) on the Japanese government involving issues of telecommunications. The case study section of the book, which begins in the third chapter, is a valuable source of information on Japan's contemporary telecommunications. In the case studies, Suda examines interactions among major actors in the Japanese telecommunications industry, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) and telecommunications carriers. In the third chapter, she offers background information and details how Japan's telecommunications changed radically with the privatization of NTT in 1985. Before privatization, NTT operated as the sole domestic telecommunications carrier, and exercised control over every aspect of the industry, while maintaining the status of a de facto government agency in charge of regulations of telecommunications. With privatization, NTT began to operate as a private-sector corporation, and MPT was granted government oversight of the Japanese telecommunications market. In facing the telecommunications giant, MPT set the promotion of competition in the telecommunications market as its policy goal. For the smooth and stable transition to a liberalized telecommunications market, MPT imposed policy measures on NTT and new common carriers (NCCs), many of which were restrictive and often generated friction between MPT and telecommunications carriers.