Enterprises In Japan Research Articles

The Development of Electric Supply Companies and Their Regional Base in Japan before 1938

The aim of this paper is to clarify the locational characteristics of electric supply enterprises and the local conditions which influenced each enterprise, through case studies in central Japan before 1938.As a result, we can identify three types of location of the electric supply enterprises:(1) The first type of the location of the electric supply enerprises was one in urban areas. In such areas, a typical case was the‘Nagoya Electric Supply Company’established in 1889 in Aich Prefecture. This company built many electric power stations in the upper reaches of Kiso River and began to supply electric power to the urban and manufacturing areas of Aichi Prefecture, and later further to the Osaka area which was developed as the largest manufacture region in this period. Thus, this company developed to the one of the largest electric supply enterprises in Japan, absorbing many other electric supply enterprises in this area, changing its name to‘Toho Electric Supply Company’in 1922. A new company, ‘Daido Electric Supply Company’was separated from the‘Nagoya Electric Supply Company’.In this process, the‘Toho Electric Supply Company’and‘Daido Electric Supply Company’ were developed together and could exchange their electric power to fill the increased demand from electric power stations spread increasingly at the upper reaches of large rivers supported by the improvement of techniques in the generation and transmission of electric power.(2) The second type was one located in the traditional manufacturing areas, such as raw silk manufactures in Nagano Prefecture in central Japan. Raw silk manufacturing had developed in central Japan before World War II, based on increasing exports. The Suwa area in Nagano Prefecture was famous for this manufacturing. In the early days, many managers of this manufacturing weren't interested in electric power as their power source. But, later, they introduced electric power to increase their production, and they planned eagerly to establish many electric supply enterprises and manage these enterprises.Thus, electric power that was produced by these companies was mainly demanded by such raw silk making manufacturing in the Suwa area in the middle of Nagano Prefecture.(3) The third type was one located in the mountain areas, which was established by the public sector, managed by the authority of towns and villages. In peripheral areas, especially in the mountain areas in central Japan, the supply of electric power had to be managed by public sectors in each small village, because the larger electric supply enterprises could not economically supply electric power to these areas, due to their low demand for electric power. Kamisato Village in Nagano Prefecture was one such case. At first, all of the villagers wanted electric power to be supplied by one of the electric power enterprises. But the enterprise agreed to supply electric power only to a part of this village. Thus a conflict between the electric power enterprise and villagers occured.After this, the villagers made a decision to establish a new public enterprise to supply electric power to each household in the village. This could be accomplished because the village had extensive forest land and forest resources, and created a large fund by cutting and selling timbers.

Continuing Engineering Education in Japan

SUMMARY Japan has always given a high priority to continuing education of engineers ( CEE) and the training of skilled technicians. As engineering education in the universities is oriented more to basic comprehension of engineering sciences, education and training activities inside enterprises and self-education have been the major part of CEE Now almost all the major enterprises in Japan have well established education programs and facilities for CEE, and these systems have been developed with close linkage to the following characteristics of the industrial and socio-economic system of Japan: ( i) life-time employment system; ( ii) transfer of job and job rotation; ( Hi) seniority system; ( iv) improvement of education systems.

North Atlanticism in Decline

NORTH ATLANTICISM IN DECLINE Immanuel Wallerstein L he end of nato is near. That is not the same thing as the end of the world. It will rather be one step in a gigantic restructuring of world alliances that may take thirty years to crystallize fully and whose implications for the twenty-first century are surely hard to discern in any detail. The economic roots of the restructuring are very straightforward. Since I have analyzed this elsewhere,1 let me simply summarize my views here. U.S. global hegemony, a brief phenomenon, as have been previous such hegemonies, was based on a temporary dramatic edge in the efficiencies of U.S. productive, commercial, and financial enterprises. This period is now over. Enterprises in Japan on the one hand and in Western Europe (with France and Germany at its heart) on the other are genuinely competitive with U.S.-based enterprises, and the trend is in their favor rather than against them. The continued relative decline of U.S. economic enterprises, and of the politico-military power of the U.S. state (though one should remember that the decline is slow and is, for the moment, only a relative decline), can only render more acute the competitive atmosphere. In the 1980s, when the world-economy will still be in the throes of its stagnation phase, this competition will center around the fiscal crises of the states and the attempts of the major industrial powers to export unemployment to each other. In the 1990s, when the world-economy will probably be on the upturn, the competition will center around the rate ofexpansion ofthe new growth-industries (microprocessors, biotechnology, etc.). Japan seems to be playing the same role today vis-à-vis the United States that the United States played vis-à-vis Great Britain in the late nineteenth 1. "Friends as Foes," Foreign Policy 40 (Fall 1980), pp. 119-31; and "Crisis as Transition" in Samir Amin et al., Dynamics of Global Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982). Immanuel Wallerstein is the Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and Director of the Fernand Braudel Center. His most recent book is World System AnalysL·: Theory and Methodology, co-authored with Terence K. Hopkins. He is a frequent contributor to the Monthly Review, New Left Review, and other publications. 21 22 SAIS REVIEW century. Unburdened in the short run by the level of politico-military expenditures of the old leading power, unburdened also by the high rent that economic cadres of the old leading power extract from the accumulation process, unburdened by as much existing antiquated plant (in the broadest sense of this term), Japan presents the figure of lean, aggressive, confident economic growth. To be sure, Japan lacks the immense internal resourcebase upon which the nineteenth-century United States could count. But a Sino-Japanese economic symbiosis could remedy that. Far from tweaking the nose of the United States, Japan is trying to emulate U.S. policy toward Great Britain in the late nineteenth century: Turn the old leader gently and gradually into thejunior partner. No doubt there are acute difficulties in such a project, not least of which is the cultural distance, but it is not an inherently unfeasible objective. No doubt, also,Japan eventually will have to assume a military posture consonant with such a role, but there is no rush. Remember the slow transformation of the U.S. military from 1873 to 1945. Against this Pacific Rim geopolitical alliance, whose pioneer was none other than Richard Milhous Nixon (as he more or less constantly reminds us, most recently on The New York Time's Op Ed page of February 28, 1982), Western Europe has nowhere else to turn in order to survive economically but in the direction ofa similar geopolitical alliance with the U.S.S.R. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the French signing of the gas-pipline arrangements with the U.S.S.R. precisely when French public opinion was more angrily anti-Soviet than at any other moment in recent history because of the developments in Poland. The raison d'état of Charles de Gaulle is the raison d'état...

Tunnel planning in Shinkansen project : Yoshimura, H Proc International Tunnel Symposium, Tokyo, 1978, P143–150. Publ Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979

Construction of the Shinkansen lines is planned to bring forth a high-speed railway network linking all the principal cities. The scheme calls for the construction of many tunnels. At present, a huge number of underground-development projects is being taken up by various kinds of enterprises in Japan. In the plan for construction of the Shinkansen lines, tunnel engineering works occupy a considerably large proportion, qualitatively as well as quantitatively. The paper discusses various difficulties posed and dealt with by this work, planning, and the methods employed in executing the tunneling works for the Shinkansen lines.

The Development of the Steel Enterprises in Japan around the Period of the Ist World War

The Development of the Steel Enterprises in Japan around the Period of the Ist World War

THE EMPLOYMENT AND WAGE SYSTEMS IN POSTWAR JAPAN

This paper presents an analysis of the systems of employment and wage decisions in, for the most part, large‐scale enterprises in Japan, and of changes therein as well as of the controlling factors. Hence particular attention is paid to the systems of temporary and external employees hired by subcontractors, lifetime employment, and seniority wages (by length of service). While there is obviously no doubt that these are characteristically Japanese systems, they can be regarded as reflecting nothing more than the fact that in Japan the operation of some of the various general factors which control the labor market is particularly strong while the operation of other such factors is especially weak. And these systems are being altered, having taken on Japanese forms.

A Study on the Nutritional Control of Mass Feeding

The investigations were conducted in three times (i.e. Aug. 28, 1965, Nov. 30, 1965 and Feb. 1966) at 10 meal service institutions belonging to Textile industries. They were selected among the industries in the district of Bisai Health Center, a central district of minor textile enterprises in Japan. Vitamin B1 content and bacterial counts in the cooked rice of breakfast were examined immediately after it was served.(1) In summer considerably many counts of bacterias (28×102-46×106) were found in contrast to those of winter (30×10-33×104).The results show that the rice is liable to spoil in summer.(2) At 6 institutions enough vitamin B1 was supplied (1.15-5.55μg/g rice), however 4 institutions served rice containing about 0.11μg/g of Vitamin B1 in all seasons.The value do not satisfy the standard requirement of Vitamin B1.

The Medium and Small Enterprises in Japan and Their Forms of Corporation

The Medium and Small Enterprises in Japan and Their Forms of Corporation

Enterprises and Their Workers in a Industrial Area

This report is on a portion of the research in a crowded factory area in Tokyo conducted by the sociology department in the Tokyo University of Education from December 1953 to April 1954. The factories studied are primarily printing and bookbinding establishments which generally fall into the category of middle and small scale enterprises in Japan, while the industry has been recently attracting attentions by sociologists and economists who have made some studies but treated the problems horizontally and quantatively in most cases. That is why their conclusions are varied. The characteristics of the middle and small scale enterprise, especially in industry, are “subordination to big capital”, “industry lacking in the technical basis for the mass-production”, “dependecy on the personal abilities of its managers”, “more human factors in comparison with the materialized (verdlinglichten) big factories, ” “backwardness of lador relationships, ” etc. Apart from the question, in what degree these characteristics exist in reality, it is true that each of the factories with the above stated tendencies is functioning as a collectivity. The common element in the above theories is that small or middle enterprises are in a handicapped position relative to the big ones. Considering this point, they need strong internal unity and external flexibility as social groups to withstand the pressure of big enterprises. These requisites will naturally manifest themselves both in their inner group organization and in the external activities. Sociological study should aim at the study of these problems. In the actual research for this object of study, the qualitative understanding in essential rather than quantitative representation. The author was led to the case study both of enterprises and of workers. The characteristics of the bookbinding enterprises were set forth, then the conditions in the community which make it possible for them to survive, and their linkage to other enterprises. Thirldy, examples of six different types of (a) external activities and (b) internal organizations were considered. Lastly, eight qualitatively different cases of workers were described and analyzed. Its aim is to observe a phase of the worker's consciousness in order to understand the enterprises dynamically. The author's intention is limited on the presentation of the materials by the field work of the bookbinding trade and the methodological essay of the study of the enterprises.