Japanese Challenge Research Articles

English Acquisition as Human Capitalfor Sustainable Management:The Japanese Challenge

English Acquisition as Human Capitalfor Sustainable Management:The Japanese Challenge

Ancillary testing: Japanese challenge for brain-death diagnosis after announcement of world consensus

2020年に脳死判定に関する新しい国際コンセンサスが作成された（determination of brain death/death by neurologic criteria: The World Brain Death Project）。これによると，解消できない要因により脳死判定に関わる臨床検査を完遂できない場合に，補助検査を施行するべきとされている。補助検査は主として脳血流検査および電気生理学的検査に大別される。特に脳波検査は本邦の法的脳死判定では必須とされているが，今回の国際コンセンサスにおいては，脳波検査は脳幹機能を検査できないため，これを判断基準とすべきでないとの記載がある。また，脳血流検査においては，近年普及しつつあるCT血管造影やMRIについても言及されているものの，臨床的データの少なさから，現状では脳血流停止を評価するための補助検査として使用しないことが提案されている。我々には，本邦の脳死判定基準の歴史や国際コンセンサスとの整合性を図り，補助検査を活用することが求められている。

Ownership Matters: French Governments and Automotive Industrialists Facing the Japanese Challenge, 1974–1986

Between 1974 and 1986, the intervention of various French governments on both the right and the left—in addition to corporate maneuvering and increased focus on competitiveness and lean production—resulted in foreign direct investment, mergers, plant closures, and bankruptcies among struggling French automotive suppliers. This article will explore why these efforts were unsuccessful by revisiting the first Japanese attempts to enter the European automobile industry. It does so not only through the case of Nissan in the United Kingdom in 1984 but also through the essentially unfamiliar and contemporaneous example of French automotive suppliers.

THE TESTING OF WASHINGTON SYSTEM WITH JAPANESE INITIATIVES AND THE FAILURE OF DETERRENCE IN EAST ASIA

The study aims to assess the Japanese challenge to the status quo established with the “Washington System” during the interwar period under the American leadership from the perspective of deterrence. Deterrence is based on cost/benefit calculations. When the cost of challenging the status quo is greater than the potential benefit, the challenger prefers to maintain the status quo. At this point, satisfaction with the status-quo and credibility are two determining factors of deterrence success and sustainability of the status quo. The changes in power asymmetry in East Asian regional order since the second half of 19 th century caused the fall of the Chinese Empire, the rise of Japan, and the opening of the regional states to Western-style international relations. However, the Washington system established under the US leadership after World War I (WWI) created a dissatisfied Japan with the status-quo in the region. As its capabilities increased, Japan began to take challenging initiatives shaking the Washington System. Due to the isolationist policy of the US after the WWI, US’ responses toward Japanese aggression were minimal and shied away. Thus, it made the US in the eyes of Japan as a status-quo power having retaliatory capacity but not the intention. This study shows that the main reasons for the deterrence failure on the road to the Pearl Harbor attack were the dissatisfaction of Japan with the status-quo and Japan’s misperception of American credibility. As a result, the war became a more beneficial option in Japan’s eyes despite its unacceptable costs, and deterrence failed.

Japan, Philips and the Making of Europe’s Single Market, 1984-1994

Japanese competition has been a prime factor in overcoming European economic fragmentation. In the course of the 1980s Japanese technology - especially in consumer electronics - as well as Japanese business practices were key incentives for the establishment of Europe’s Common Market. The confluence of two distinct but mutually supportive non-state actors, the Philips/RTE lobby and the Action Committee for Europe (ACE) played a decisive role in setting the agenda for what is now known as the ‘EU Common Market’. The former campaigned for a pan-European single market, the latter for institutional changes needed to bring about its realization. The two lobbies were in close contact with each other. For Philips, the Japanese challenge was much more than a storm in a teacup. ‘Japan incorporated’ threatened its very existence, or so it was perceived. Seen in this light, fighting Japanese protectionism and campaigning for overcoming Europe’s economic fragmentation, were two sides of the same coin. It is a testimony to the quality of the company’s lobbying efforts on how successfully it managed to frame its private interests on both issues as Europe-wide continental interests.

Confronting the Japanese Challenge: The Revival of Manufacturing at Intel

Like many other American corporations, Intel was outcompeted in manufacturing by Japanese firms in the late 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. By 1985, it became clear that the corporation's weakness in production endangered its long-term survival. Responding to the Japanese challenge, Intel's upper management instigated a fundamental reform of manufacturing. At their behest, production engineers and managers adopted Japanese manufacturing technologies and operating procedures. They put microchip fabrication on a scientific footing. They developed new ways of transferring processes from development to production and standardized the firm's factories. This major transformation enabled Intel to reach manufacturing parity with Japanese chipmakers by the early 1990s.

山村振興調査会 伊藤滋・小島孝文・榛村純一・高橋裕・永田信・古井戸宏通・門馬淑子著『日本の難題を問う 森林と水源地』（書評）

山村振興調査会 伊藤滋・小島孝文・榛村純一・高橋裕・永田信・古井戸宏通・門馬淑子著『日本の難題を問う 森林と水源地』（書評）

Japanese historical challenge of social inclusion: from the digitally restored household survey data on receiving social security in 1952

This paper explores the historical challenge of social inclusion relying on the example of the Japanese social security system. The current public assistance system in Japan is grounded on the Public Assistance Act of 1951, which was originally constituted in 1946 and already declared equal treatment of all citizens. We will focus on a hidden aspect in this introductory period of the public assistance system, the actual situations of people who depend on it. We have digitally restored a survey data for households receiving public assistance. This data was collected in a Japanese prefecture in 1952. The results of this survey indicate that differences in poverty by gender are remarkable. For male householders, the total number of events that caused the onset of public assistance, principally injured or diseases, in 1950 or 1951 was more than that of 1944 or 1945. On the other hand, for female householders, the events of 1944 or 1945 were related to the Second World War, principally the death of male breadwinners, which induced poverty. Moreover, we broke down recipients by gender, age, and household types and revealed, in particular, two facts. First, many widows were receiving public assistance, but not all had lost their spouses in the war. Second, the largest age cluster of recipients was composed of children in the compulsory education age group. The increasing inclusion of the ‘standard’ type of household indicates the success of the Public Assistance Act’s universalism. This digitally restored sample has much potential to provide detailed descriptions of life courses and information on the jobs of household members.

Emergency government response team for global infectious disease outbreaks-a Japanese challenge.

The Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa made it clear that international emergency assistance must be strengthened [1]. The Japanese government has contributed to combating infectious disease outbreaks by extending emergency aid to affected countries through international organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Red Cross, and by providing emergency relief directly to affected countries. The Japanese government also dispatches individual experts on infectious diseases to affected regions through the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network of the WHO [2]. During the Ebola virus outbreak, Japan contributed approximately USD173 million in emergency aid and through various technical cooperation programs, and dispatched 20 experts to the affected countries through the WHO [3].

Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination by Robert Bickers

Reviewed by: Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination by Robert Bickers Parks Coble (bio) Robert Bickers. Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. xli, 532 pp. Hardcover $35.00, isbn 978-0-674-97687-0. The Opium War famously began China’s “Century of Humiliation” in which foreigners invaded, defeated, and humiliated the Chinese. Blatant racism in the treaty ports, exemption from Chinese laws and police authority, and reliance on foreign gunboats to intimidate locals were just some of the many indignities visited on China. This gaping wound is not at all forgotten in today’s China; the memory of these events is cultivated and perhaps distorted by China’s leaders. It forms the basis for much of the Chinese government claims of legitimacy. Robert Bickers has already detailed the origins of this system in his 2011 book, The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832–1914. The current volume picks up the story from World War I until the return of [End Page 148] Hong Kong and Macao at the end of the twentieth century. A substantial volume of over 500 pages, it details almost every aspect of the foreign presence in China and why it causes such a strong reaction. This is a story of conflict. Bickers uses Western rather than Chinese sources for the most part, but he has done a prodigious job of research, turning up many surprising aspects of the Western presence in China. Bickers is also known for his lively writing style; his clear, jargon-free prose makes this a work accessible to undergraduates and the general reading public while still being of interest to scholars. Bickers often begins chapters with an obscure or overlooked episode from which he teases out hidden insights. At other times he takes a familiar episode but presents it in an unfamiliar light. The first chapter, “Armistice,” begins with the celebrations in China at the end of World War I. All across China there are commemorations of the event in which Chinese participated alongside the Western powers. Yet there was a disjuncture between foreigners and Chinese. China was part of the victorious Allied coalition but was not treated as such by the British and French; the celebrations highlighted the tension and the racism of the day. War memorials in the Treaty Ports omitted mention of China, and China’s treatment at Versailles was a bitter disappointment. Bickers provides a rich description of the 40,000 foreigners who resided in the forty-eight treaty ports at war’s end. Bickers contends that most came to China as a career move, often living a better lifestyle than would have been possible at home. But they were a diverse lot—missionaries, businessmen, diplomats, and Comintern agents, among others. In chapter 2, “Making Revolution,” the author turns his attention to the First United Front in Guangzhou and the fallout from the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925. Much of this is familiar territory, but Bickers opens with a novel approach, contrasting the modernization occurring in the Chinese city of Guangzhou with the old-fashioned foreign enclave on Shamian Island, a relic of the treaty port days of old, where the violence of May 30th took a sudden turn for the worse. As foreign diplomats began to recognize the need to accommodate a rising Chinese nationalism, old China hands in Shanghai resisted even the most modest of changes. Even the adding of a few token Chinese to the Shanghai Municipal Council was fought to the bitter end. The Western community in China was diverse and often at odds with the diplomats from their home countries. By contrast, the Japanese kept fairly strict control over subjects of the Japanese Empire in China. Those from Japan were required to join the Japanese Residents Association which answered to the home government. As tensions between Japan and China worsened in the 1930s, Japan demanded greater participation in the Shanghai Municipal Government, a move resisted by Britain in particular. The British clung to their privileged tradition in a rearguard action as the Japanese challenge [End Page 149] mounted. After war...

Introduction

Le seisme du 11 mars 2011 qui a frappe le Japon a provoque une catastrophe majeure dont les images, largement diffusees dans les medias, ont rappele par la violence de l’alea (evalue a 9 sur l’echelle de Richter), la vulnerabilite des societes humaines face a l’enchainement des risques naturels et humains. A la succession de destructions ayant fait pres de 20 000 victimes, et a l’accident nucleaire de la centrale de Fukushima n° 1 pres d’Iwaki, s’est ajoutee une crise alimentaire severe qui a...

Antibodies generated by immunization with the NS1 protein of West Nile virus confer partial protection against lethal Japanese encephalitis virus challenge

Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) and West Nile virus (WNV) are two medically important flaviviruses that can cause severe hemorrhagic and encephalitic diseases in humans. Immune responses directed against the NS1 protein of flaviviruses can confer protection against lethal viral challenge. Previous studies have shown that the WNV NS1 protein harbors epitopes that elicit antibodies that cross react with JEV. Here we demonstrate that the WNV NS1 protein not only contains cross-reactive epitopes, but that the antibodies elicited by these cross-reactive epitopes provide partial protection against lethal JEV challenge in a mouse model. Mice immunized with WNV NS1 protein showed reduced morbidity and mortality following both intracerebral and intraperitoneal JEV challenge. WNV NS1 immunization attenuated the extent of lung pathology generated following JEV challenge, and delayed the appearance of other pathological findings including vascular cuffing. By screening and identifying the specific WNV NS1 protein-derived peptides recognized by serum antibodies elicited by immunization with WNV NS1 protein and by JEV challenge, we found after JEV challenge will induce several new epitopes, but which epitope primarily contribute to antibody-mediated cross protection need further evaluation. The knowledge and reagents generated in this study have potential applications in vaccine and subunit vaccine development for WNV and JEV.

The Japanese global leadership challenge: what it means for the rest of the world

The rise of the modern Japanese economy in general and of Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs) in particular has been well documented. However, as the Japanese economy has struggled and as emerging markets including China have taken off, interest in Japanese multinational firms has slid. This is unfortunate, because the relative failure of Japanese MNCs to adapt to a more complex, global marketplace can provide lessons for the rest of the world, particularly MNCs from emerging markets. The purpose of this work is to examine why Japanese firms succeeded first at home and then in exports, but overall failed to move successfully into international operations and globalization. This work is informed by examining the relative performance of Japanese firms on several databases, such as the Fortune Global 500 and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and through in-depth case studies – one of which we share here. Our research found that many of the factors that helped Japanese firms succeed at home and with exports became stumbling blocks as they set up operations overseas and later tried to globally integrate their increasingly complex worldwide operations. Specifically, their efforts to transplant into foreign operations methods that worked domestically and with exports created huge unanticipated negative consequences. In particular, the reliance of Japanese firms on home-country expatriates combined with their failure to identify and develop local talent or to promote non-Japanese leadership talent to regional and global positions severely hurts their ability to globalize their operations and grow their non-Japanese revenue, especially when compared to North American and European multinational firms. We review the huge challenges this posed not only on Japanese affiliates in general but on the people at senior leadership positions at home and abroad in particular. Understanding the psychology of both Japanese and foreign managers is critical to gaining insights into how and why so many Japanese multinational firms derailed over the past decade. We review not only the conditions that led to the failure of so many Japanese firms, but also the actions they need to take to regain their place on the global stage. Finally, our research offers a cautionary tale for multinational firms from emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China. Many firms from these countries are in situations that are similar to those of Japan 30 years ago. Failure to learn the lessons from the Japanese global leadership challenge could increase the chances that in not learning from history they are doomed to repeat it.

Sharing the beginning versus sharing the end: Spoken word recognition in the visual world paradigm in Japanese

Several studies have suggested that in English spoken word recognition, words sharing beginnings compete more than words sharing ends (i.e., the cohort competitor has an advantage relative to the rime competitor). We investigated the relative activation differences between the cohort competitor and the rime competitor in Japanese CVCV words using the visual-world paradigm (Allopenna et al., 1998). Results were analyzed using linear mixed effects models (Magnuson et al., 2008). Participants fixated referents of rime competitors more than those of cohort competitors when the cohort competitor shared only the first consonant with the target while the rime shared the rest of the word (VCV). When both competitors shared a syllable with the target, the rime competitor was fixated as much as the cohort competitor and the recognition of the target was delayed. The results suggest a syllabic or moraic basis to Japanese spoken word recognition, where lexical activation requires at least one mora of the word to match the signal. The weakness of cohort effects in Japanese challenge fully incremental models of word recognition. Whether the results would also hold for English is unclear as previous visual world spoken word recognition studies in English did not systematically manipulate degree of overlap.

The Japanese Challenge to the American Neoliberal Order: Identity, Meaning, and Foreign Policy (review)

Reviewed by: The Japanese Challenge to the American Neoliberal Order: Identity, Meaning, and Foreign Policy William W. Grimes (bio) The Japanese Challenge to the American Neoliberal Order: Identity, Meaning, and Foreign Policy. By Yong Wook Lee. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2008. xvii, 284 pages. $60.00. The Japanese Challenge to the American Neoliberal Order is an ambitious piece of work. In it, Yong Wook Lee seeks not only to describe and explain what he sees as the "Japanese challenge" to a U.S.-dominated international economic order but also to issue his own challenge to the field of international relations by developing and applying a sophisticated theoretical framework. Lee's basic thesis is that the late 1980s and 1990s saw the development of a distinctive Japanese approach to international economic matters, based on the formation of a new developmentalist "identity" among policymaking elites. Developmentalism challenged the dominant neoclassical paradigm championed by the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and provided a meaning structure for interpreting events and formulating responses. This developmentalist identity constituted what Lee calls the "primary reason" for Japan's attempt to challenge the United States and IMF by proposing the creation of an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) in the midst of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–98. Lee presents the AMF proposal as a momentous event: "Intentionally excluding its all-time postwar [End Page 126] ally (or patron) the United States from membership in such an international institution was Japan's boldest and most independent policy initiative in the postwar era" (p. 12). The book consists of a critique of existing approaches to the study of international politics, an explication of Lee's own theoretical framework, a historical analysis of Japanese economic thinking, and an empirical analysis of Japan's roles in the World Bank's East Asian Miracle study and the Asian Financial Crisis. Lee begins by critiquing international relations theory. He is particularly critical of realism and neoliberalism, which rely on expectations that states or subnational actors will rationally pursue their interests. Lee counters that neither rationality nor interests can be assessed without placing them in their correct contexts, through careful analysis of how actors arrive at their values and causal beliefs. He argues that by assuming that states' interests are logically derivable, these "rationalist" approaches miss the essential fact that international actors have agency—i.e., they make choices and exhibit intentional behavior. Although existing constructivist approaches fare better in his analysis, Lee is also critical of many of them for their willingness to engage in tautological reasoning about interests, structure, and behavior. Lee therefore calls for a more rigorous constructivist approach that allows for falsifiable hypotheses and specifies a method for evaluating actors' belief systems and the ways those beliefs condition their actions. To do so, Lee develops what he calls an "identity-intention analytical framework." Using Alexander Wendt's definition of identity as "a property of intentional actors that generates motivational and behavioral dispositions" (p. 9), he argues that actors operate based on a set of beliefs about who they are, what they value, and about their opponents and partners. These identities are constantly constituted, challenged, and reconstituted (pp. 45–46). There is much more to Lee's theoretical sections, including the notion of "double agency" (meaning that actors have agency first in interpreting a situation and then deciding what to do about it, pp. 57–62), but this is the theoretical and methodological core of the book. Chapter 4 seeks to add substance to the "identity" of Japanese economic policymakers by examining the history of Japanese economic thought in order to "inductively uncover the deep-seated meaning structures that the Japanese themselves have historically attached to the role of the state in the Japanese economic development experience" (p. 64). Lee examines how neoclassical economics, Marxism, and developmentalism were debated by economists and policymakers, focusing in particular on what he calls "normal-abnormal meaning structures" (p. 65). He argues that both neoclassical economists and Marxists in Japan began by situating the country as "abnormal" in the context of universalizing theories; over time, the debate shifted to seeing Japan first as a special case of universal forces [End Page 127...

Innovative Business Models and Varieties of Capitalism: Financialization of the U.S. Corporation

How does economic organization affect economic performance? This analysis of the historical transformation of the U.S. economy from the business model of the “old economy” to that of the “new economy” demonstrates that the Japanese challenge of the 1980s was an important catalyst for the shift. Anchored by the “Chandlerian” corporation, the old model delivered economic growth that was much more equitable and stable than the new one. Furthermore, the business model that underpinned the Japanese challenge represented a superior version of the old U.S. prototype. The fi nancialization of corporate decision-making under the new paradigm has been the prime source of inequity and instability in U.S. economic performance over the past three decades. As manifested in outsized executive pay and massive stock buybacks, the fi nancialization of the U.S. corporation threatens long-term economic growth.

The Japanese Challenge to the American Neoliberal World Order: Identity, Meaning, and Foreign Policy (review)

The Japanese Challenge to the American Neoliberal World Order: Identity, Meaning, and Foreign Policy (review)

The Japanese challenge to neoliberalism: Who and what is ‘normal’ in the history of the world economy?

ABSTRACT Since the end of the Cold War, the US has spearheaded the homogenization of the world economy along neoliberal lines. The US-led neoliberal international order, however, did not go unchallenged. Since the late 1980s, Japan has challenged the foundation of the neoliberal international order by asserting the role of the state in economic development. In the vein of constructivist scholarship with emphasis on the meaning-oriented discursive production of the world that has social effects, I ask the question of what made it possible for Japan to challenge neoliberalism. To answer this question, I examine the Japanese developmentalist discourse to uncover a historically constructed collective meaning that enabled the Japanese challenge to be conceivable as a justificatory foundation. I find a shared, intersubjective meaning called ‘normalcy,’ which the Japanese developmentalists have historically attached to the role of the state in economic development. Here ‘normalcy’ means that state-led economic development has been a normal practice for all the successful industrializers in the history of the world economy. In the eyes of the Japanese developmentalists, what is truly ‘normal’ or ‘universal’ is the proven validity of state-led economic development across time and space. I argue that this shared ‘normalcy’ meaning available in the Japanese developmentalist discourse creates the very possibility of the Japanese challenge.

Asia‑ Pacific Economic and Security Cooperation: New Regional Agendas

Asia-Pacific Economic and security Cooperation: Regional Agendas. Edited by C. M. Dent. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Pp 271. Governing the Asia Pacific: Beyond the New Regionalism. Edited by K. Jayasuriya. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pp 192. Both edited volumes by Christopher Dent and Kanishka Jayasuriya together marshal respectively twelve and nine eminent chapters on the Asia-Pacific Economie Co-operation (APEC) from a multidisciplinary armament of economics, politics, and political economy, and equally encompassing geography. Both share a certain predilection beyond the economics of APEC into political-security and regional governance rooted in domestic coalitions which are inevitably socio-political. They thus complement and supplement each other very effectively. Unsurprisingly, APEC is the primary pioneering case study together with ASEAN, ASEAN Plus Three, and new bilateralism in the Asia-Pacific region in both volumes. With the hindsight of the Asian crisis and the 11 September 2001 Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States, and with global reverberations and consequences, Dent's volume revisits the Asia-Pacific through three analytical lens. One is the tension between post-shock forces of imperative co-operation and the counter-forces of Asia-Pacific complex diversity. Two is the growing conflation between economic and security issues or the economic-security nexus in Asia-Pacific international relations. Finally, there is the relationship between Asia-Pacific's new economic and security bilateralism and regional-level forms of co-operation, integration, and governance. Accordingly, Dent's edited volume in four sections has Part 1 developing the three prime dimensions, Part 2 covers the global contexts, Part 3 the regional overviews, and Part 4 on the micro-geographic, subregional perspectives on events and developments. The prime dimensions thematic framework offers further conceptual and theorizing as new forms and structures of foreign economic policies incorporating security are the realistic consequences of both the Asian crisis with poor political and corporate governance affecting economic security as much as September 11 directly impinges on security. Part 2 saw Asia-Pacific regionalism having the potential as a substitute for the consensus, which began to fail even the United States as its domestic recession broke, also demonstrated by the Japanese challenge of its AMF even if that was stillborn with the United States' veto. The Asian crisis may be blamed for the missed opportunity for Asia-Pacific regionalism, but, in truth, that was a much needed blessing in disguise to show the bad roads and bad drivers in the reckless drive and exuberance of Asian miracle economies. In the final analysis, the consensus minus its American imperial Washington prefix, may still have some good points on good governance as a fundamental building bloc. That Asia-Pacific by and large is not quite globalization-ready, with globalization's impact on security, including human security and its impact on economic, environmental, societal, and military revived. As much as East Asian regionalism is launched, it has to straddle globalization and harness globalization well, so long as East Asia remains dependent on the triad for trade, capital, technology, and other factor and market flows. That the Asian crisis enforced co-operative realism, in cognizance of the demise of the Cold War and a new regional imperative to balance globalization, institution-building and global governance as analysed in Part II. The relevance of ASEAN, ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Plus Three, growth triangles and bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) growing apace since 1998 are all as defining developments as reality checks. The bilateral, plurilateral figures in Chapter 5 are not just artistically elegant, they have a lot of both thinking regionally, acting bilaterally overtones and not-so-silent undertones which are far from being a closed book. …

Improving the work ability of aging workers, who are becoming a majority of the Japanese labour market, and implementing effective activities to achieve that improvement: A Japanese ergonomist's challenge

Improving the work ability of aging workers, who are becoming a majority of the Japanese labour market, and implementing effective activities to achieve that improvement: A Japanese ergonomist's challenge