The internationalization of Japan.

• Author: Bronfenbrenner, Martin

The 17 chapters of this volume are selected from 28 papers presented in Septembcr 1989 to a general (non-specialist) audience on the 25th anniversary of the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Sheffield, England. The editors are senior staff members at the Center; the majority of the papers are authored or co-authored by visitors from Japan.

"Internationalization" processes usually work in two or more directions, but the emphasis here is on their effects for various Japanese institutions, as distinguished from the growth of "Japan-consciousness" in the rest of the world. Individual chapters deal with topics in history, politics, sociology, and education, along with economics and business. The six chapters in two of the book's seven sections have substantial economic content. These constitute Part 3 (Chapters 6-8) on "Japan and the World Economy" and Part 5 (Chapters 11-13) on "Labor Markets and Migrant Workers." The present review concentrates on these two parts, although many chapters in other sections are well worth interdisciplinary or semi-professional reading. This reviewer's recommendations would be Part 1, comparisons with the earlier internationalizations of Britain (by Professor Andrew Gamble of Sheffield) and of America (by Professor Richard Falk of Princeton), Part 6 on "Education and the Individual," and Chapter 3 on internationalization and inter-dependence in the large, by Ms. Sadako Ogata (U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees).

Professor Ippei Yamazawa (Hitotsubashi) leads off the international economics section with a trade-policy chapter stressing the importance of maintaining international harmony. Mr. Katsuzo Sakamoto (Daiwa Securities) collaborates with Mr. Richard Conquest on Japanese capital exports, and Professor Koichi Shimakawa (Hosei) presents a case study of the internationalization of the Japanese automobile industry.

These are three very different papers. Yamazawa is an apologetic free-trader of a compromising kind not uncommon on Japanese campuses. His paper is a gem of academic diplomacy in regretting Japan's numerous lapses from trade freedom without casting blame or pointing fingers at any particular Japanese persons, groups, or organizations. The Sakamoto-Conquest paper chronicles the rise of Japan to a position of global creditor nation, and raises the possibility of the yen taking over the dominant role in world money markets exercised previously by sterling and yen by the dollar. (The paper...