Author: Japan Commission on Industrial Performance
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262100606
Category: Industries
Page: 452
View: 215
For three years, seventeen university researchers worked with representatives of thirty-four corporations to analyze the present state of Japanese manufacturing and to identify the challenges Japan will face in the twenty-first century. The result of their study is Made in Japan. Winner of the Shingo Research and Professional Publication Prize for 1999In 1989 the MIT Press published Made in America, a landmark study by The MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity, an interdisciplinary group of MIT faculty members. The study analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of American industry and set forth a strategic plan for revitalizing American productivity. Inspired by the MIT study, the Japan Techno-Economics Society formed the Japan Commission on Industrial Performance (JCIP). For three years, seventeen university researchers worked with representatives of thirty-four corporations to analyze the present state of Japanese manufacturing and to identify the challenges Japan will face in the twenty-first century. The result of their study is Made in Japan. Made in Japan has a broader perspective than its American model, whose focus was limited to issues of productivity. The book is divided into three parts. Part I is a general overview. Part II is an in-depth analysis of seven industries: industrial electronics, consumer electronics, automobiles, metal products, industrial machinery, chemicals, and textiles. Part III identifies common problems and makes recommendations for industrial policy. The topics covered in the study are grounded in such fundamental issues as global environmental problems, competitiveness, and the free market economy system.
Colonel Sanders, Elvis, Mickey Mouse, and Jack Daniels have been enthusiastically embraced by Japanese consumers in recent decades. But rather than simply imitate or borrow from the West, the Japanese reinterpret and transform Western products and practices to suit their culture. This entertaining and enlightening book shows how in the process of domesticating foreign goods and customs, the Japanese have created a culture in which once-exotic practices (such as ballroom dancing) have become familiar, and once- familiar practices (such as public bathing) have become exotic. Written by scholars from anthropology, sociology, and the humanities, the book ranges from analyses of Tokyo Disneyland and the Japanese passion for the Argentinean tango to discussions of Japanese haute couture and the search for an authentic nouvelle cuisine japonaise. These topics are approached from a variety of perspectives, with explorations of the interrelations of culture, ideology, and national identity and analyses of the roles that gender, class, generational, and regional differences play in the patterning of Japanese consumption. The result is a fascinating look at a dynamic society that is at once like and unlike our own.
For centuries the accommodation between Japan and Christianity has been an uneasy one. Compared with others of its Asian neighbors, the churches in Japan have never counted more than a small minority of believers more or less resigned to patterns of ritual and belief transplanted from the West. But there is another side to the story, one little known and rarely told: the rise of indigenous movements aimed at a Christianity that is at once made in Japan and faithful to the scriptures and apostolic tradition. Christianity Made in Japan draws on extensive field research to give an intriguing and sympathetic look behind the scenes and into the lives of the leaders and followers of several indigenous movements in Japan. Focusing on the "native" response rather than Western missionary efforts and intentions, it presents varieties of new interpretations of the Christian tradition. It gives voice to the unheard perceptions and views of many Japanese Christians, while raising questions vital to the self-understanding of Christianity as a truly "world religion." This ground-breaking study makes a largely unknown religious world accessible to outsiders for the first time. Students and scholars alike will find it a valuable addition to the literature on Japanese religions and society and on the development of Christianity outside the West. By offering an alternative approach to the study and understanding of Christianity as a world religion and the complicated process of cross-cultural diffusion, it represents a landmark that will define future research in the field.
This volume concentrates on the effect of Japanese trade competition on the UK and Europe, it also provides an illuminating picture of political, social and military conditions in Japan in the early twentieth century.
Made in Japan serves as a comprehensive and rigorous introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary Japanese popular music. Each essay, written by a leading scholar of Japanese music, covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Japan and provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music, followed by essays organized into thematic sections: Putting Japanese Popular Music in Perspective; Rockin’ Japan; and Japanese Popular Music and Visual Arts.
The term "business novel" is a translation of the Japanese word kezai shosetsu, which may be translated literally as * 'economy novel.'' Critic Makoto Sataka first used the word "business" in place of "economy" in his monograph How to Read Business Novels (1980).l Business novels are "popular novels" (taishu bungaku) widely read by Japanese businessmen, their wives, students, and other professionals.. Business novels were recognized as a * 'field'' or a literary sub-genre in the late 1950s. It was Saburo Shiroyama's Export (Yushutsu) (1957), if not his Kinjo the Corporate Bouncer (Sokaiya Kinjo) (1959), which marshalled their enormous popularity. The seven short works in this collection represent prototypes of the business novel. Their distinctive features are that business activities motivate plot developments, although psycho-socio-cultural elements are tightly interwoven.
He shows how the war left an important imprint on the structure and culture of Chinese business enterprise by encouraging those traits that had allowed it to survive in uncertain and dangerous times."--BOOK JACKET.
This book explains the increasingly turbulent Sino–Japanese relations since the 2000s by innovatively investigating the formation mechanism of mutual misperception deeply rooted in China-Japan-U.S. trilateral structural dynamics. The political and security relationship has been increasingly deteriorating against the high interdependency between the world’s second and third largest economies. More ironically, both sides have also shown the intent and made efforts to improve bilateral ties. The author systematically conducts a focused comparison of the evolution of the Sino-Japanese mutual perceptions and policies toward one another during the past decade and a half. Empirically, Yun Zhang closely examines five case studies that provide insights to IR students and scholars and policy makers on how misperception and mistrust have formed, replicated, and intensified.
The book is a precious reference book for development economics or the political economy of development in Asia or anywhere else. Unlike other books, first, it deals with all the East Asian countries, including Japan and other Asian countries. Second, it offers some empirical research findings based on surveys conducted by the author's group. Research on developing countries has been limited by individual scholars' observations, particularly about the value-related issues like politics or religions. Thirdly, the book digs into the nation-building problems which are often neglected by economists. It bridges the politics, sociology and economics in East Asian countries and is an important reference book for graduate students. Contents:Introduction: My Research on Asian DevelopmentThe Present and the Future of Japan and Asia:When Can Asia Play a Leading Role in the World?The Lessons of the Lost Two Decades of the Japanese EconomyA Postmortem Diagnosis of Asian Financial CrisisWho are Responsible for the World Financial Crisis in 2008?Policies for Aging Population with Declining Fertility RateThe Stages of Economic Development and Nation Building:Economic Development and Nation Building in StagesRegional Development PolicyDevelopment Policies in StagesDecentralization Policies in Asian DevelopmentEmpirical Survey Studies of Southeast Asia:The Choice of Appropriate Technologies I — The Influence of Socio-Economic Factors and Government PoliciesThe Choice of Appropriate Technologies II — Survey Findings in Indonesia, Thailand, and the PhilippinesThe Socio-Economic Behavior of Peasants in Central Java and Central ThailandJapanese-style Management in Asia — IntroductionJapanese-style Management in SingaporeJapanese-style Management in IndonesiaJapanese-style Management in China — A Summary ReportPolitical and Cultural Problems of Asian Nations:Nationalism and Asian Political LeadersIs the Clash of Civilizations or Nations? Readership: Undergraduates, graduates and researchers who are interested in development economics or political economy of development in Asia. Key Features:It is a comparative study of Japan and all other East Asian nationsIt is based on the author's own empirical survey findings in Southeast Asian countriesIt deals with the nation-building issues along with economic development and offers new viewpoints of the authorKeywords:Japanese;Asian Development
The wntmgs by Japanese and Gennan economists presented here originated against the backdrop of ongoing globalization processes and notable fluctuations in regional economic dynamics observable at the same time, primarily in the East and South East Asian area. They provided the occasion for these writers to come to tenns with globalization processes, and in particular with the stabilizing and destabilizing elements at work in them. This is the basis for their investigation of the options provided by economics and economic policy for stabilizing an ever more tightly interwoven world economy. The regional focal points of the contributions are the East Asian realm and the European Union, and the points of view are in every case both from the Japanese and the Gennan side. Questions of international competition and mechanisms of the spread of the crisis in the wake of globalization processes lie at the centre of the analyses by Hisashi Watanabe and Willy Kraus. Hisashi Watanabe focusses on the relationship, an especially important one from the Japanese perspective, between Japan and South Korea and takes up the problem of South Korea's demand that Japan should energetically promote its own transition to a service-sector-oriented society and withdraw from certain areas of manufacturing. This, it is argued, will grant Japan's Asian neighbours better chances for development and make a positive contribution to the economic stabilization of the region.
This title, first published in 1921, aimed to present for the reader a glance into what the position was in Eastern Asia at the beginning of the twentieth century. This book will be of interest to student of history, politics and Asian Studies.
