Japan's Economic Research Articles

Key Directions of Japan's Economic Development (1950 – Present)

Key Directions of Japan's Economic Development (1950 – Present)

The Changes in Japan's Economic Strength after World War II and Its Impact on Japan-US Bilateral Relations

After World War II, the bilateral relations between Japan and America has undergone ups and downs. In the early post-war period, the relationship between these two countries was very tense and unfriendly due to the hostile relation. However, after the policies of Japan and America changed when America started occupying and managing Japan, their relationship improved. Japan ushered in an economic miracle of 50 years after the war, one of the most essential reasons for it is the support of America. Also, the growth of the economy has brought Japan more opportunities to cooperate and negotiate with America, and the relationship between the two countries has shifted from unilateral support to competition through cooperation. This paper is mainly focusing on the Impact of Japan's Economy on Japan-US Bilateral Relations. In order to find out the process and changes of the Japan-US Bilateral Relations, this paper analyzed some references about this topic and found out that the economy has deeply influenced the relations between these two countries and Japan's economic miracle and stagnation made America restart locating the diplomatic relationship with Japan. This paper could help scholars have a better understanding of the influences of Japans economy on US-Japan Bilateral Relations.

Japan's Economic Repercussions of the Atomic Bombs

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in August 1945 forever altered both Japanese and global history. Beyond the immediate death toll and destruction, the country's economy was profoundly and irrevocably impacted by these events. A comprehensive analysis of the financial impacts of the atomic bombs on Japan from the immediate post-war period to the contemporary is the goal of this research work.

The growing role of intellectual property in Japan's national economic security: legislative provision

Keywords: intellectual property, innovation, national security, economic security,critical technology, critical infrastructure, inventor, non-disclosure guidelines, securityexpertise, secret patent
 The article examines the role ofintellectual property, in particular, the Institute of Secret Inventions in the developmentof the Japanese economy, ensuring the national economic security of the state.An analysis of the new Law on Strengthening National Security through ComprehensiveEconomic Measures, adopted on May 11, 2022, is given. The organizational andeconomic mechanism for ensuring measures aimed at strengthening Japan's national economic security is considered: a system that ensures a stable supply of critical materials,a system for supporting the development of critical technologies, and a secretpatent system. Japan's Economic Security Act gives the Japanese government theright to determine economic threats and risks associated with foreign economic activity.Focusing on four areas of economic security — supply chains, basic infrastructure,advanced technology and the publication of patents on sensitive technologies — thelaw allows the national government to intervene in Japanese companies' deals withforeign companies. It is concluded that the economic and legal institution of secret inventions,which directly affects national security, will gain more and more importance.And certain provisions of the Law can be used in law-making and law-enforcementactivities in Ukraine: a system for supporting the development of critical technologies,designated patent classifications (Designated Patent Classifications) in thefields of technology that can affect national security, guidelines for non-disclosure, securityexpertise, a system of preliminary determination secrecy, government compensationfor restrictions in the form of payment of «ordinary damages», sanctions forleaking undisclosed patent information.

How Does Japan's Economic Performance Look When We Take into Account its Shrinking Working-Age Population?

How Does Japan's Economic Performance Look When We Take into Account its Shrinking Working-Age Population?

LEARNERS' CONFESSION FOR BIDIRECTIONAL TRANSCRIPTION EFFECTIVENESS FOR BEGINNERS IN THE PROGRAMMING COURSE

The Adoption of programming education has become a global trend. In Japan, the Japan Revitalization Strategy 2016, announced by the Headquarters for Japan's Economic Revitalization in 2016, set forth the aim of making programming education compulsory in primary and secondary education. The purpose of this is to cultivate basic logical thinking skills through programming education, as part of efforts to develop and secure human resources for sparking economic growth. On the other hand, it will likely be necessary to review previously existing programming education in ICT human resources development courses at various types of schools. In the programming education for beginners that we are implementing at a college of technology, there is a considerable percentage of students who feel they are not up to programming. Thus, this study proposes "bidirectional transcription learning" for beginner programmers as an educational method to help strengthen programming education. It focuses on the process of converting a natural language to a programming language in the final stage of unplugged to code writing. Based on experience, transcription learning is regarded as effective for mastering programming, but we have conducted a trial to further improve efficiency and deepen understanding, and here we provide an overview and report on our results.

A Study on Japan's Economic Retaliation against Korea -Focusing on the core elements and reality of conflict

A Study on Japan's Economic Retaliation against Korea -Focusing on the core elements and reality of conflict

Deferential Surrogates and Professional Others: Recruitment and Training of Migrant Care Workers in Taiwan and Japan

This article compares Taiwan's guest worker program and Japan's Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) program to examine how intimate labor and affective labor are culturally defined and institutionally regulated in different ways. Facing the similar problems of population aging and care deficit, Taiwan and Japan have nevertheless adopted divergent approaches to recruiting and training migrant care workers (“deferential surrogates” vs. “professional others”). This comparison demonstrates national diversity in the intersecting formation of care regime and migration regime. It also shows that cultural values and social practices associated with care, such as familism and gendered division of care work, are subject to transformation under the influence of state intervention and transnational outsourcing.

For Basketball Court and Company Cubicle: New Expectations for University Athletes and Corporate Employees in Japan

During Japan's High Economic Growth Period (1955‒1973), school-affiliated sports clubs served as important socialization mechanisms creating strong, healthy, and disciplined workers who would later serve Japanese companies. Since the 1980s, however, there have been new approaches in the management of companies and sports teams in Japan, especially in terms of a new performance-based hierarchy that places the onus on individuals to think independently and be creative on the court or in the cubicle. While sports clubs continue to habituate members into a particular vocabulary that encourages effort, discipline, and teamwork – language that will continue to be used after they join corporate Japan – changing economic landscapes have ushered in the introduction of new coaching pedagogies to Japanese sports, and therefore new expectations for Japanese athletes. These athletic expectations happen to mirror new expectations of young Japanese workers. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with a university basketball club, this article demonstrates that while sports continue to be perceived as educational tools that build ‘team-players’ to serve companies, they are today being asked to cultivate independent, innovative, and flexible company employees as well; and reconciling these two rather conflicting goals has proved to be easier said than done.

Japan's Economic Development 1945–55: Governance, Aid, Trade, and Foreign Policy

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the degree of importance of governance, which has in recent years been emphasized in the field of development economics as a factor contributing to economic development, in Japan’s postwar reconstruction during the period 1945 to 1955. In addition, in order to determine the relative importance of governance, the importance of aid, trade, and foreign policy will also be examined. To date, very little study has been carried out on the importance of foreign policy in economic growth analysis. However, this paper will demonstrate that foreign policy is a key factor.

The Discourse of Local Ownership in Development: Rhapsodies about ‘Self-help’ in Japan's Economic Assistance to Africa

This article explores Japan's initiatives toward the development discourse on Africa through the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), and specifically in regards to a concept that is increasingly becoming a core tenet of the TICAD, the ‘national ownership’ of development. The article examines the literature on development ownership before concentrating more specifically on the Japanese responses to the discourse. The analysis explores Japan's emphasis on the principle of self-help in national development and suggests that the conflation of self-help and ownership in the Japanese discourse of development needs to be disentangled for clarity as the two concepts are not the same. Generally the article endeavours to bring into perspective Japan's attempts to stitch itself more forcefully into the fabric of the discourse on African development with the objective of contributing a more nuanced approach to the global initiative to finding a solution to Africa's development problematic. It is suggested that in doing so Japan is transposing its understanding of development, along with its belief in the state-centric approach to economic growth onto Africa. How the African policymakers have responded to the concept of ‘ownership’ in the context of TICAD is also assessed.

China Trade Embargo and Japan's Economic Viability

China Trade Embargo and Japan's Economic Viability

A Study on Japan's Economic Partnership Agreement and Rules of Origin

A Study on Japan's Economic Partnership Agreement and Rules of Origin

Expansionism on the Concept of Security: Focused on the Case of Japan's Economic Security

Expansionism on the Concept of Security: Focused on the Case of Japan's Economic Security

On Japan's Economic Assistance to China

On Japan's Economic Assistance to China

Accelerating Japan's Economic Growth: Resolving Japan's Growth Controversy. By F. Gerard Adams, Lawrence R. Klein, Yuzo Kumasaka, and Akihito Shinozaki. New York: Routledge, 2008. xviii, 182 pp. $150.00 (cloth).Reprogramming Japan: The High Tech Crisis under Communitarian Capitalism. By Marie Anchordoguy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005. xii, 257 pp. $41.95 (cloth).The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan

Accelerating Japan's Economic Growth: Resolving Japan's Growth Controversy. By F. Gerard Adams, Lawrence R. Klein, Yuzo Kumasaka, and Akihito Shinozaki. New York: Routledge, 2008. xviii, 182 pp. $150.00 (cloth).Reprogramming Japan: The High Tech Crisis under Communitarian Capitalism. By Marie Anchordoguy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005. xii, 257 pp. $41.95 (cloth).The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan

Japan's Economic Ties with China

This presentation analyzes the rapid growth of Japanese industrial investment in China over the past 25 years, and the ways it was shaped by Chinese industrial policy. It highlights the role of Japanese corporations in expanding ties with the PRC, and points out the ways they successfully expanded market share in key sectors. Significantly, the Japanese companies avoided major technology transfer in the early years of interaction. However, under Chinese government pressure, the Japanese moved to share more manufacturing knowledge by the beginning of the 21st century.The presentation first chronicles the early years of Japanese investment following China's economic reforms of the early 1980s. It focuses on key sectors such as consumer electronics, information technologies, and automobiles. It indicates that in most of these areas Japanese companies had greater bargaining power than did the Chinese, and therefore succeeded in gaining market access while sharing little knowledge with potential competitors. By the mid-1990s, the strength of the PRC economy and Chinese political imperatives dictated Japanese companies would have to play a role transferring knowledge. Major companies such as Toyota, Toshiba, Honda, and others moved to build research and development centers, and train Chinese engineers and scientists. Japanese market share grew, but at the price of some key technology transfers.The presentation, based on case study archival fieldwork and interviews done in both Japan and China, concludes that Japan has belatedly begun to follow the path of other nations that early on traded technology transfer for market access. However, Japanese corporate protectionism likely remains strong enough to safeguard the most vital knowledge while still expanding companies' roles in the PRC economy.

The Foreign Exchange Origins of Japan's Economic Slump and Low Interest Liquidity Trap

Japan's macroeconomic problem has yet to be properly diagnosed. Throughout the 1990s, policy makers could not decide on the proper macro economic measures to combat the country's severe economic slump. We propose a unified explanation, with deep historical roots, of why aggregate private demand failed to recover after Japan's stock and real estate bubbles burst in 1991 and deflationary pressure continues. The problem is not purely made in Japan. It arises from Japan's unbalanced mercantile relationship with the United States. Starting in the early 1970s, numerous trade disputes between the two countries created tensions that were (temporarily) resolved by the yen going ever higher against the dollar up to 1995. In the last two decades, this persistent pressure for the yen to rise was further aggravated by Japan's large current-account (saving) surpluses as the counterpart of America's large current account (saving) deficits. The legacy is the expectation that trade and financial tensions will recur so that the yen will be higher 10, 20, or 30 years from now - with Japan's (wholesale) price level forced correspondingly lower and nominal interest rates on yen assets remaining more than four percentage points less than those on dollar assets. This fear of yen appreciation, whose timing is erratic and unpredictable, now inhibits private domestic investment by both Japanese firms and households. Our theory also explains why, in the late 1990s, nominal interest rates on short-term yen assets were compressed toward zero so as to destroy the normal profit margins of the banking system. In this liquidity trap, the Bank of Japan-whose monetary policy has been quite expansionary - is powerless to stimulate the flagging economy. To spring the liquidity trap, eliminate deflationary pressure, and restore macro economic balance in Japan, the American and Japanese governments must act jointly to quash the expectation that the yen will be higher in the future than it is today.

Demystifying Japan's Economic Recovery

After having undergone protracted economic doldrums, Japan has begun to attract the world's attention. Prime Minister Shintaro Abe, taking office in September 2006, pledged to continue his predecessor's reforms while looking to closer economic ties with Japan's neighboring countries. This paper examines the challenges the Abe administration must address, the reforms the administration still needs to tackle, and the problems that lie ahead. It starts with an evaluation of Japan's economic condition from a long-term perspective, especially the drastic change in its labor market and its rapidly aging society. It then discusses the unfinished reforms the government is facing—restored fiscal balances, a less-regulated economy both at home and abroad, and a new innovation-driven growth path. In sharp contrast to his single-minded and charismatic predecessor, Prime Minister Abe has taken a less spectacular and more nuanced stance toward reforms. A more market-principled Japan will create increased competitive conditions for economic players in both the private and public sectors. Japan's economy will face a precarious state—swinging between an economy armed with marketbased principles (but suffering from a “growth pain”) and an “ugly Japan” that divides the haves and the have-nots.

Special Feature: Perspective on Japan's Economic Inequality

Special Feature: Perspective on Japan's Economic Inequality