Japanisation

The emergence of Japan as one of the world's economic powers in the 1970s and 1980s astounded the developed world. Okumura (1989) estimated that Japan's contribution to world GDP grew from just 2 percent in 1967 to more than 10 percent in 1987. Japanese economic growth rates were unprecedented; according to Maddison (1995: Table D-1a) average Japanese incomes in 1950 were approximately 18 percent of those in the USA, and reached 82 percent in 1989. This enormous achievement rested upon a steep technological learning curve in manufacturing. In 1950, Japan specialised in relatively unsophisticated goods such as textiles and clothing but moved rapidly up the scale of technological sophistication, to sewing machines, watches, transistor radios, cameras, motorcycles, televisions, automobiles and so on. Japanese firms dominated the protected domestic market and then aggressively sought opportunities overseas.1 The story of Honda's domination of world motorcycle production and its near elimination of the British industry demonstrates the combination of assertive marketing and world class production (Koerner 1995; Boston Consulting Group 1975; Pascale 1996). Similarly Japanese electronics firms laid waste European television manufacturing capacity (Owen 1999: 276–82).