Kindai Nihon no kenkyu kaihatsu taisei 近代日本の研究開発体制 [The National Innovation System of Modern Japan]

Review: Kindai Nihon no kenkyu kaihatsu taisei

P.-Y. Donzé

Many academic and journalistic books were published in Europe and in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s on the so-called Japanese economic miracle. Technology was a key issue in all of them. In a sometimes caricatured view, the attention of scholars focused on the state (industrial policy) and the acquisition of foreign technology as the most important ways to achieve industrial development and economic growth after the Meiji Restoration. Industrial technologies were at the core of development and the catching-up process in the modern and contemporary history of Japan. But the historical roots of this phenomenon are far more complex than solely the industrial policy implemented by the state. This book by Minoru Sawai on the Japanese National Innovation System during the first part of the twentieth century gives an illuminating understanding of technological and industrial development in Japan and...