Reasons For Japan Research Articles

Why is the forecast error of quarterly GDP in Japan so large? – From an international comparison of quarterly GDP forecast situation

We examined the accuracy of prediction of Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States from the viewpoint of forecast errors. Compared with the forecast error of each country at the around same time, the forecast error of Japan is about 2 times larger. In case of Japan, even immediately before release of quarterly GDP, the forecast error is over 1 %, which is the same level of forecast error as 94 days before in the United States and 135 days before in Canada.Evaluating the characteristics of forecast errors, it can be pointed out that Japan's forecasts are as efficient as those of other countries, and the addition of major economic statistics is unlikely to improve forecast errors. The reason for Japan's large forecast errors is the fluctuations in the GDP growth rate. These results provide evidence that volatile GDP may make the outlook worse.Large fluctuations in Japan's quarterly GDP have already been pointed out. It is necessary to examine the factors behind the large fluctuations in the rate of change in Japan's quarterly GDP.

Understanding Moroccan Return Migration and Intermarriage Dynamics : The Case of Moroccan Returnees from Japan

The aim of this study is twofold: Firstly, it investigates the role of intermarriage or ‘Kokusai kekkon’ with Japanese natives in facilitating Moroccan migration to Japan. Secondly, it aims to understand the factors which have pushed Moroccan migrants to return home. Over the last decade, a growing number of Moroccan migrants have relied on ‘Kokusai kekkon’ or ‘intermarriage’ with Japanese natives as a strategy to migrate to Japan. Nevertheless, many of these migrants return to Morocco after years of residence and work in Japan. The study takes the hypothesis of structural reasons in Japan and Morocco as the causes of this act. Drawing from in-depth interviews with six former Moroccan migrants who have returned to Morocco, quantitative and qualitative data was collected and analyzed to understand some of the reasons behind this return migration. The study showed that intermarriage was strategic to migration for the majority of the informants; however, it was not a sufficient factor to prevent their return to Morocco. It also revealed many structural factors in both Japan and Morocco that have encouraged this return; including the inability to generate savings, the incapability to remit as well as Japan’s restrictive citizenship requirements
 Keywords:Kokusai kekkon Intermarriage, n, Moroccan Returnees, Japan’s Migration
 Policies 

Ningen Dock: Japan's unique comprehensive health checkup system for early detection of disease.

Japan's comprehensive health checkup - Ningen Dock - is a unique system for early detection of disease that has developed over the years along with the country's universal health insurance system. Ningen Dock is currently offered at 1,727 facilities nationwide, involving about 3.7 million people annually. The development of the comprehensive health checkup system may be one reason for Japan's long life expectancy. The major purpose of the comprehensive health checkup system is to maintain health in three main ways: early detection of cancer, detection of lifestyle-related diseases, and confirmation of health status. Here, the history and current status of Ningen Dock in Japan, tests and examinations included in the comprehensive health checkup system, the effectiveness of those checkups, and their advantages and disadvantages are described.

The Japanese economic miracle and the role of government in the process of its achievement

The Japanese economic miracle is known as the record period of Japanese economic growth between the end of World War II and the end of the Cold War (1945–1991). One of the reasons for Japan's rapid recovery from post-war trauma was the government's successful economic reform. The government institution that dealt mainly with industrial policy in Japan was the Ministry of Industry. One of the most important economic reforms was the introduction-adaptation of the "Inclined Production Mode". This success has been largely ensured to the interventionist policy of the Government of Japan and, in part, to the assistance provided by the United States in the form of the ,,Marshall Plan“. Keywords: role of government, protectionism, reconstruction, US aid ("Marshall plan"), Japanese economic miracle.

Japan vs the United States (1941—1945). People and Machines

The authors study the military potential of the Japanese Empire and its changes during the Pacific War in order to understand the role of the Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II. In this regard, the authors basing on the losses suffered by Japan on various fronts define the role of the USSR in the defeat of militaristic Japan. They argue that the contribution of the USSR to the victory of the Anti-Hitler coalition in Asia consists mainly in shackling significant forces of the Japanese army in Manchuria and Korea until the end of the summer of 1945, which did not allow the Japanese military to win to a large extent in the southwestern provinces of China, thereby ensuring direct communication with Burma. As for the defeat of the Japanese Air Force, which was the main striking force of Japanese militarism, there was a decisive contribution of the United States, whose Air Force also caused significant damage to Japanese industry by the summer of 1945 with strategic bombing. In this regard, the authors question the need for atomic bombing, which accelerated the surrender of Japan, but did not make it, as the authors prove, inevitable. The authors see the main reason for Japan's defeat in the strategy of its High command, putting the economy in second place. The Japanese admirals exaggerated the capabilities of carrier-based aircraft too much, which became a fatal factor for Japan in the Pacific war. The authors also claim that the actions of the Allied troops in Burma played a significant role in the defeat of Japan.

Japan's rejection of international norms against whaling

This research is intended to explain the reasons for Japan's rejection of the anti-whaling norms. To investigate this, a qualitative approach was used with document-based data methods, both primary and secondary. Japan is one of the industrialized countries that have stopped hunting for commercial breaks because of the moratorium in 1982. This moratorium is a form of development of the anti-whaling norm. This research found that Japan is a country that chooses not to this norm with several reasons that state as a strong background for not including and not accepting the norm. This is evidenced by the continuing Japanese whaling through the scientific whaling program. If Japan stops this norm, so all Japanese whaling practices will also stop. The Japanese decision was the result of consideration in understanding norms through a better social context by Japan itself and Japanese society in general who could state in the concept of legitimacy of international norms. This decision was taken from Japan to decide to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in December 2018 which is also Japan's behavior after understanding this social context.

The Law on Dismissal for Economic Reasons in Japan

The Law on Dismissal for Economic Reasons in Japan

Education Policies, Human Capital Accumulation, and Economic Growth

This study employs an overlapping-generations model featuring public and private education to analyze whether providing child allowances and free high school education influences economic growth. Earlier studies that analyze public and private education (Glomm and Ravikumar, 1992; Cardak, 2004) do not consider models in which fertility is endogenous and individuals can simultaneously choose both public and private education. Earlier studies that consider the effect of child allowances on fertility (Groezen, Leers, and Mejidam, 2003) disregard human capital accumulation. This study assumes people can choose both public and private education simultaneously in a model in which both fertility and human capital accumulation are endogenous. It introduces both child allowances and investment in public education financed by income taxes. It further considers how raising child allowances or investing in public education affects fertility, human capital accumulation, and economic growth. This study is motivated by evidence that the burden of meeting children’s educational expenses is one reason for Japan’s declining birthrate. It analyzes whether child allowances or free high school education can increase the birthrate and promote human capital formation. We find that such policies are unlikely to promote economic growth if they are financed by income taxes that cannot be increased indefinitely.

A study on effect of incentive reward institution for a deficit-ridden bus company on economic welfare

Abstract Recently, number of bus users decreases by some reasons in Japan, e.g., the progress of motorization, depopulation and so on. Under such situation, local government may subsidize a bus company, which operates in the red, for sustaining public transportation service to the residents. Such bus company is hardly motivated to reduce its deficit since the present subsidy system in Japan compensates for almost the same amount as the deficit. For the purpose of motivating the bus company to reduce the deficit, the incentive reward institution is employed in this study. In the institution, the bus company can gain incentive reward from the local government if the deficit decreases. This study aims at developing an economic welfare maximization model by taking the incentive reward institution into account. The model was applied to a real bus company in Hokkaido, Japan, and some alternative scenarios for the company were evaluated in terms of the economic welfare.

An Evaluation of Mechanical Properties with the Hardness of Building Steel Structural Members for Reuse by NDT

The reuse system proposed by the authors is one method to reduce the environmental burden in the structural field. As for reusable members, we take up building steel structures used for plants and warehouses. These buildings are assumed to be demolished within approximately 30 years or more for physical, architectural, economic, or social reasons in Japan. In this paper, the performance of steel structural members of a gable frame is evaluated with a non-destructive test for reuse. First, the flow to estimate mechanical properties of steel structural members such as tensile strength, yield strength, and elongation is shown via a non-destructive test. Next, tensile strength, yield strength, and elongation of steel structural members are estimated, with hardness measured with a portable ultrasonic hardness tester. Finally, the mechanical properties of steel structural members for reuse are estimated based on the proposed flow.

Protective effect of young green barley leaf (Hordeum vulgare L.) on restraint stress-induced decrease in hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor in mice.

Background:Many health experts support the hypothesis that stressful lifestyles are the leading cause of illness, like depression. Therefore, from the standpoint of preventive medicine, it is important to reduce stress. Young green barley leaves are a good natural source of vitamins and minerals, and their juice is widely consumed as a functional food for health reasons in Japan. This study investigated the protective effect of young green barley leaves for stress control.Materials and Methods:ICR outbred mice were exposed to 3-h sessions of restraint stress. Young green barley leaves (400 and 1,000 mg/kg) were administered orally 1 h before the sessions for 5 days. To analyze voluntary behavior, wheel-running activity was monitored during the dark period. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) messenger RNA (mRNA) expression in the whole hippocampus was measured by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction.Results:Restraint stress resulted in a significant decrease in voluntary wheel-running behavior, but this decrease was ameliorated by the administration of young green barley leaves. The leaves also enhanced the decreased levels of BDNF mRNA induced by restraint stress; in particular, a significant protective effect was shown in the exon IV variant as compared to vehicle control mice.Conclusion:The findings suggest that young green barley leaves have potent anti-stress properties, as evidenced by preventing decreases in the levels of voluntary wheel-running activity and hippocampal BDNF mRNA in response to restraint stress. Our findings support the possibility that supplementation with young green barley leaves might be beneficial for preventing stress-related psychiatric disorders like depression.

Japan’s Economic Assistance to the Republic of Korea, 1977–1981: An Analysis within the Framework of the US-Japan Security Burden-sharing Scheme

AbstractIn January 1983, Japan finalized an economic assistance agreement with the Republic of Korea (ROK), pledging to extend $4 billion in economic aid to the country concerned. Prior to the finalization of the agreement, both countries held rounds of negotiation on the aid package conditions, and this led to them entering into a period of growing political friction. Despite this, a political consensus was eventually hammered out in 1983 over their disagreement, and this had a far-reaching effect in stabilizing the political relationship between the countries. Substantial academic research has been carried out on this topic, but the reasons behind Japan’s commitment to rounds of political negotiation with the ROK have yet to be positively analyzed and convincingly substantiated. In light of this fact, the main aim of this article is to analyze the motivational forces that brought Japan to the negotiating table with the ROK. More specifically, it focuses on analyzing the effects of the formalization process of the US-Japan agreement that served to induce Japan to address the ROK-aid negotiation issue conscientiously. The analysis reveals clearly that the major factor that spurred Japan to revisit its ROK’s aid package conditions was Japan’s concern over its security burden-sharing scheme with the United States. It is likely that in July 1981, in his summit meeting with President Ronald Reagan, Prime Minister Suzuki Zenkō pledged to initiate official talks with the ROK in response to the ROK’s request for an extended economic aid package. In tracing the course of US-Japan political negotiations from the period between 1977 and the formalization of the ROK’s aid agreement, this analysis reveals that the United States and Japan were of one mind concerning the need for the agreement as one of the critical means of resolving a myriad of their security concerns. It is also shown, however, that the countries arrived at their shared view from different perspectives, which were politically beneficial to their own interests. On the one hand, the United States expected Japan to assume greater responsibilities in security burden sharing, in line with its global economic status. On the other hand, partly because of the political limitations of shouldering a regional security role, Japan’s primary concern was to minimize its share of security burdens as far as possible and in such a way as not to disrupt its harmonious relationship with the United States. On top of this, insofar as the United States was concerned, it seemed to be unwise to request that Japan overshare the bilateral security defense expenditure, which might be detrimental to its political stability at home and at the same time might affect the credibility of their security alliance. In sum, the article shows that the consensus on aid for the ROK was beneficial to both Japan and the United States in terms of resolving their differences in the political operation of their security alliance scheme, including burden-sharing responsibilities. This was the real reason for Japan’s commitment to revisit its economic aid package with the ROK.

Application of Various NDT Methods for the Evaluation of Building Steel Structures for Reuse.

The reuse system proposed by the authors is an overall business system for realizing a cyclic reuse flow through the processes of design, fabrication, construction, maintenance, demolition and storage. The reuse system is one of the methods to reduce the environmental burden in the field of building steel structures. These buildings are assumed to be demolished within approximately 30 years or more for physical, architectural, economic and social reasons in Japan. In this paper, focusing on building steel structures used for plants, warehouses and offices without fire protection, the performance of steel structural members for reuse is evaluated by a non-destructive test. First, performance evaluation procedures for a non-destructive test, such as mechanical properties, chemical compositions, dimension and degradation, are shown. Tensile strengths are estimated using Vickers hardness measured by a portable ultrasonic hardness tester, and chemical compositions are measured by a portable optical emission spectrometer. The weldability of steel structural members is estimated by carbon equivalent and weld crack sensitivity composition using chemical compositions. Finally, the material grade of structural members of the building steel structure for reuse is estimated based on the proposed procedures.

Japan's Embrace of Soccer: Mutable Ethnic Players and Flexible Soccer Citizenship in the New East Asian Sports Order

Baseball and sumo were Japan's twentieth-century centre sports, but soccer is likely to replace them in the new century. This article outlines several reasons for Japan's embrace of the sport, focusing on how ethnicity and nationality are expressed and confirmed in the world of soccer. It proposes that the Japanese sports world has moved through three eras of ‘sports citizenship’ over the last century. The first four decades of the twentieth century constituted an era of ‘imperial athletes’, a coercively inclusive and hierarchical order of belonging as ‘athletes of Greater Japan’. The post-World War II decades reconfigured sports citizenship around ethnic alterity, establishing a cultural-essentialist binary between Japanese ‘athletes’ and ‘foreign athletes’. What we see now, in and through soccer, is an emerging third era of mobile athletes, mutable ethnicity and flexible sports citizenship, determined in the case of soccer by supra-governmental FIFA eligibility standards and sports federation rules rather than by nation-state laws. Soccer is demonstrating a broader sense of national belonging in and for twenty-first-century Japan than was the case with the more rigid distinctions that characterised the twentieth-century centre sports of baseball and soccer, and this has both domestic and regional consequences.

China policy in the last years of the Satō cabinet: focus on the debate within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs*

This is a translation of an article that reconsiders the controversy surrounding the Satō Eisaku Cabinet's China policy from 1970 to 1972. Previous studies have not focused sufficiently on how top officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs discussed China policy during this era. Based on recently declassified but still fragmentary Japanese diplomatic documents, this article, by carefully organizing these fragments and then comparing them with previously published secondary sources and declassified US diplomatic documents, uncovers historical facts of central importance for understanding Japan's postwar foreign policy. In particular, this article finds that the Foreign Ministry failed to formulate a strategic response to the drastic transformation of the international situation in the early 1970s, thereby indicating that discord within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party was not the only reason for Japan's delayed and reactive response. It also finds that the Ministry decided to establish diplomatic relations with China and severe relations with Taiwan as early as immediately after the Taiwanese government was expelled from the U.N. in October 1971, even though Japan waited for nearly another year before acting.

Japan's Foreign Aid Policy to Africa Since the Tokyo International Conference on African Development

Japan celebrated its fiftieth year as a major donor in official development assistance in 2004, it is appropriate to reflect on the forces and motivations behind the implementation of foreign aid.1 While the literature on Japan's foreign aid has been informative overall, most of it has focused on the relationship between Japan and other Asian recipient countries. Certainly there is good reason for this emphasis, considering that 90 percent of Japanese aid targets Asian countries. However, the reasons for Japan's official development assistance (ODA) policy to Asia are different, in many significant ways, from its reasons for providing aid to Africa. Previous research has tended to conflate information about Japan's motives towards Africa with its motives towards Asia. This article seeks to

Japanese Geopolitics And the Mongol Lands, 1915–1945

Abstract The northernmost border of Japan's informal empire were the Mongol lands and Manchuria. For nearly a century this region lay on the borders between an expanding Russia and a retreating China and was a major area for Japanese ambitions on the Asian mainland. Japan's interest in the Mongol lands (including Manchuria) was spurred by general strategic, economic and ideological factors, and was justified by an academic discourse on geopolitics. Geo-political socialisation was carried out in respective areas and Mongol nationalism was drawn into these affairs. This paper examines the reasons for Japan's interest in these areas, and the arguments used to justify this expansionism.

Japanese aid to Africa: Patterns, motivation and the role of structural adjustment

In 1989 Japan surpassed United States as the world's largest contributor of overseas development assistance (ODA). While there has been considerable material on Japanese aid to Asia, comparatively little has been written on Japanese assistance to Africa. The article attempts to expand the literature by generating and analysing a data set on ODA to each African country from 1959 to 1994. The data indicate an overwhelming influence of structural adjustment lending on ODA. The article shows that structural adjustment programmes are inconsistent with the pattern of Japanese economic development. Based on interviews in Japan's agencies, the article analyses the reasons for Japan's strong support for adjustment in Africa and the more recent disenchantment with these policy packages. The author argues that the most important dimension in the shifting pattern of assistance to Africa is bilateral relations with the United States.

Economic structure and crime: The case of Japan

Despite a high rate of industrialization, crime rates in Japan have declined overall since World War II. This is inconsistent with the “Durkheimian-Modernization” respective which argues that rapid socioeconomic changes increase crime rates. Although a number of qualitative studies investigate possible reasons for Japan's low and declining crime rates, few employ quantitative analyses with aggregate data. This paper systematically examines the impact of poverty, economic inequality and unemployment, on homicide, robbery and larceny rates among the 47 prefectures in Japan. The multiple regression analysis reveals a significant positive relationship between unemployment rates and homicide and robbery and between the degree of economic inequality and larceny. The poverty level is significantly and positively correlated only with homicide, but this relationship vanishes when controls for unemployment rate, the percent of young males and the level of industrialization are introduced. The implications of these findings for Japanese economic policy are discussed.

National Institutional Structures, Transaction Cost Economizing and Competitive Advantage: The Case of Japan

Japan’s economic success since World War II has been striking. Modern Japan was the first major industrial economy to emerge from outside the Western tradition. Economically devastated in 1945, by 1990 Japan had the world’s second largest economy and a GDP per head 20 percent greater than that of the United States. In this paper it is argued that one reason for Japan’s success is that the costs of achieving cooperation and specialization are lower in Japan than in the West. Cooperation and specialization have been acknowledged to have a beneficial impact upon productivity ever since Adam Smith wrote about cooperative specialization in the context of the division of labor. Modern economic theory, however, suggest that in a world of self-interested individuals the costs of achieving cooperation and specialization are substantial. In this paper it is argued that the cultural value system that Japan has inherited from its preindustrial past, and particularly the Tokugawa period, helps facilitate cooperation between individuals and encourages them to undertake productivity-enhancing investments in specialization. This lowers the costs of achieving cooperative specialization. In turn, the lower costs of achieving cooperative specialization have helped Japanese enterprises adopt practices such as self-managing work teams and long-term supplier relations that are consistent with obtaining a productivity-based competitive advantage in the world economy.