"Japanese Economy and Global Patent Management in the 21st Century" (in Japanese)

This paper analyses the 21st century Japan by investigating the global patent management of the Japanese firms. We focus especially on Tokyo as a Global City (Saskia Sassen). Though we are inclined to consider Tokyo failed to be a global city after the burst of the bubble in the early 1990s, Tokyo still has a rising ratio of expert service and financial industry, which is usually regarded as a feature of a global city. Looking into the data of international patent applications, we find the international patent business in Japan is highly concentrated in Tokyo, making the city the pivot of global patent management of Japanese large manufacturers. Instead of losing its position as a global financial centre, Tokyo is growing as global headquarters of manufacture. Therefore, Tokyo is increasingly embedded into the global capitalism in the way different from other global cities with financial centres, i.e. New York and London, supposedly dividing the Japanese economy into global areas and the remaining regions.