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(★)(Japan´s astonishing industrial growth since the end of World War II has drawn world attention in the past 20 years. A tremendous number of treatises, even entire books, have been published both at home and abroad in an attempt to plumb the secrets of this extraordinary growth. The Japanese style of management has been one of the central themes of these publications. Japanese management has been praised as the wellspring of Japanese industry´s impressive vitality.／ Today, however, Japan´s brilliant recovery from the 1973 oil crisis and the ever-mounting international competitiveness of its major trade products, be they automobiles, televisions, VTRs or steel, in seeming disregard of skyrocketing oil prices, have created a growing need for some new perspective from which to explain Japanese success.／ Representative of these new pet explanations are the ´QC circles´ employed in Japanese companies to maintain high product quality. Japan´s early introduction of industrial robots and their steady diffusion throughout Japanese industry has likewise come in for special attention. Other nations have shown keen interest in the great successes of very large-scale-integrated circuit (VLSI) research and development achieved by Japanese corporations.／ The Western industrialized nations have begun to feel a need to look to technological as well as managerial factors when attempting to understand Japan´s success. At present, however, there are almost no analyses of Japanese technology available outside of Japan itself. There is no dearth of articles about Japanese high technology, but these are simply introductory pieces, perhaps because, for the most part, they are written by economists who are attempting to analyze how the country works.／ Nonetheless, it has finally begun to be recognized that one of the key factors behind Japan´s success has been its great technological capacity. Fujitsu was the first choice among bidders for American Telephone & Telegraph Corporation´s new fiber-optic transmission system, the highest of high technology. Even though the bid was eventually rejected for national security reasons, the choice symbolized the strength of Japan´s technology.／ The question of how modern advanced technology and industrial products interface with Japan´s cultural and social milieu is one of the great remaining mysteries of the Japanese economy. To the man on the street in Europe and North America, Japan is a country long on traditional culture and brimming with Oriental exoticism. There is growing interest in how this prevailing image matches up with contemporary technology.／ This book attempts to shed light on these questions. Though an engineering graduate with direct experience in the field, I have spent the past fifteen years with Nomura Research Institute, devoting myself to the wide-ranging study of technological research and development. Throughout this effort I have concerned myself with analyzing technology from a social perspective, and four years ago arrived at the concept of comparative technology as a framework for my studies. Comparative technology basically means looking at the technologies of different nations in relation to their climate for technology. In itsbroadest sense, it is the study of technology through cultural and historical traditions.／ In this book I set out to track down, from a comparative technology perspective, the secret behind Japan´s ability to produce outstanding industrial products at astonishingly low cost. In Japanese industry, in its emphasis on the place of production, we can glimpse the spirit fostered by Japan´s old samurai in leading their men at the front. They did not hesitate to fight themselves, struggling and sweating alongside their men, nor do present day managers, many of whom have likewise fought their way up from the production line, put the concerns of the workplace behind them. The high level attained by the mass culture of the Edo period, a culture that was the product and possession of the common man rather than the aristocracy, can likewise be seen as still providing stimulus for the high quality of Japan´s mass consumer goods, encouraging companies to work ever harder to refine their products. In much the same way, Japan´s traditional craftsmanship as seen in bonsai and netsuke, the painstaking creation of delicate miniature masterpieces, is still alive today in Japan´s compact and high-performance precision industrial products.／ These are but a few examples of how Japan´s traditional culture remains inseparably linked to the nature of contemporary Japanese technology.／ [from ´PREFACE´, Masanori Moritani, Tokyo, February 1982] ◆Masanori Moritani : Born in 1935. Graduated from Dept. of Naval Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tokyo in 1960. Since 1967, has devoted himself to research and development, and comparative technology, at Nomura Research Institute.／ Author of ´Postwar Japanese Industrial Technology´, ´Japan, China and Korea : Comparative Industrial Technologies´ and ´Japan, U.S. and Europe : Competition in Technological Development´.／) |
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