Organizer and Chair: Akiko Hashimoto, University of Pittsburgh
Sang-Young Han, Yonsei University, Korea
Assuming the structure of industry, which is determined by the relationship between firms, influences the path of industrial development, this study analyzes how the relationship between personal computer producers shaped the development of the industry. Another assumption is that, if the industrial structure and the trajectory of industrial development are incompatible to each other, a negative consequence will be produced. Currently, the hardware industry, whose products include peripheral devices and components, is successful, while the software business is not so successful in Japan. To analyze this phenomenon from the perspective of industrial structure, this research studies the relationship among hardware and/or software producers, market situation, and social background since 1976 when tool kits were produced for the first time in Japan.
This study argues that the incompatibility between structure of personal computer industry and its development trajectory resulted in a weak software industry. The Japanese personal computer industry was organized around big business that determined development trajectory of the industry. Big firms that were confident in their own technology, productivity, and capital developed products that were not compatible with those of other companies and competed against each other, rather than cooperatively developing a common technology. Segmented by the big firms, the subsequent industrial structure was unsuited for the software industry that requires cooperation among diverse firms. At the same time, the lack of a common technology in hardware architecture of personal computers led the failure to develop a niche market among small and mid-size firms, and final consumers were not formed in the software sector. It implies that the success of Japanese economic organizations should be evaluated in each industry based on inter-firm relationships.
Takeyuki Tsuda, University of Chicago
This paper analyzes the important role of "ethnic transnationalism" in the return migration of the Japanese-Brazilians to Japan in recent years as unskilled foreign workers. Ethnic transnationalism refers to the maintenance of a shared identity and a sense of mutual belonging among members of similar ethnic groups which reside in different nations through the perception of commonalities in culture or descent. I examine how the construction of ethnic transnationalism between the Japanese-Brazilians and the Japanese was ultimately responsible for directing the migrant flow specifically to Japan. A strong transnational identification with the Japanese among the Japanese-Brazilians made Japan the natural migrant destination when they were faced with an economic crisis in Brazil. Likewise, the Japanese government’s decision to legally admit them in response to a domestic labor shortage was also motivated by a similar sense of transnational ethnic commonality. However, I argue that the actual ethnic encounter between the Japanese-Brazilians and the Japanese has not reinforced this mutual ethnic transnationalism but has instead caused it to decline. In contrast to the transnational ethnic affinity that brought them together, the two groups react negatively to each other’s cultural differences by strengthening their separate national identities as Brazilians and Japanese. The analysis concludes with a discussion of the significance of this process for the understanding of both "contiguous" and "non-continuous" globalization and its impact on local identities.
Brian McVeigh, Toyo Gakuen University
I examine how the Japanese state, in its attempts to define "Japaneseness," links ethnicity, citizenship, race, and economics. I do this by describing the activities of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and by unpacking the complex semantics of the word "culture," which condenses and semantically transmutes a number of key meanings, resulting in "Japaneseness." The state’s use of "culture" conflates (indeed, confuses) and ties together disparate meanings. These include: (1) ethnicity (Japanese cultural identity); (2) tradition (Japan’s artistic heritage); (3) citizenship (political affiliation); (4) race (physical appearance); (5) language; and (6) rationality (positivist and progressivist view of "culture" as inherently good; humankind makes progress because culture evolves); and (7) economic progress (defining "culture" as general knowledge, science, and technology, state interests tie it to economic development and prosperity). This complex of key concepts results in the naturalizing and essentializing of Japaneseness, so that physical appearance, language, nationality, and economic success are unquestionably linked. Thus, deconstructing the fictive nature of social identity becomes difficult. "The purity of the Japanese race," "the uniqueness of Japanese culture," "the homogeneity of the Japanese," "the Japanese are harmonious," and "Japanese are like X because our country was closed during Tokugawa" or "because Japan is an island country" are litanies which construct Japaneseness. For some Japanese, there is an essential Japaneseness beyond the constituting factors of language, citizenship, physical appearance, and culture that cannot be dissected.
Mireya Solis, El Colegio de Mexico
Although the rise of Japanese transnational corporations has been widely noticed, the public support mechanisms sustaining Japan’s offshore investment drive remain largely unknown. In an effort to clarify the relationship between Japanese industrial policy and private sector multinationalization, this paper analyzes the system for preferential financing of outward investment devised by the Japanese government. To this end, I examine the division of labor among government financial institutions with a mandate to finance private investment projects abroad. This paper is not only concerned with the institutional evolution of the financing regime for outward investment, but has for the first time collected a comprehensive data set on public credits for overseas investment. This data is employed to assess the degree of subsidization enjoyed by Japanese multinational corporations through public soft loans, and to statistically test for the impact of these credits on Japanese outward investment flows.
This paper addresses the debate on government-business relations in Japan. To most observers of the Japanese political economy, the coexistence of pork-barrel politics and efficiency/growth-oriented economic policies is puzzling. My analysis of outward investment financing shows that while politically influential constituencies (small businesses) have been appeased with soft credits for investment abroad, the current institutional devise prevents rampant subsidization since the brunt of outward investment credits are channeled through institutions (JEXIM) required to operate as profit-generating banks.
Dajin Peng, Waseda University
The East Asian model has received great attention in recent studies of East Asian economies. But what most studies have shown at the core is actually the Japanese model. Until the 1980s, the Japanese model has been indeed representative of the East Asian model. But the rise of the Chinese economies and the critical role of the Chinese communities has played in the Southeast Asian "new tigers" have greatly increased the importance of a different model—capitalism Chinese style. In fact, this new model has many advantages that have not been fully realized by current Asian studies. This paper tries to illustrate the features of this new model. I pay particular attention to the expanding role the new generations of overseas Chinese have played. But the Japanese model is also changing to adapt to the new conditions in the world economy. The paper compares the two models and their interactions. It shows that how the two models interact will greatly impact the future of East Asia and even the world. Very rich materials in three major languages: English, Chinese and Japanese are used for this paper and the author hopes to challenge the conventional studies about the so-called "East Asian Model."