Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship played a critical role in transforming Japan’s  telecommunications sector. Between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, in a sector long dominated by a stable set of large actors with well-established patterns of interaction, entrepreneurs introduced new technologies, new business models, and new norms of  interaction.

The subsequent transformation of Japan’s telecommunications sector was dramatic, providing consumers with not only fast and sophisticated services but also low prices and an entire new ecosystem of mobile content—a considerable departure from Japan’s long track record of being known as producer- rather than consumer-oriented, with consumers enjoying high-end services and products, but at high prices.

Yet, these transformative entrepreneurs were not acting in a vacuum. Regulatory shifts in telecommunications were critical in providing opportunities for entrepreneurs, while simultaneously protecting them from large incumbent firms. These regulatory shifts were driven by the political dynamics of the 1990s as Japan struggled through its post-bubble economic malaise and political changes.

Image

Prior to March 11, 2011, many observers had all but written Japan's economy off; after all, it was said, Japan produced only 10 percent of global manufacturing output. Four days later, the world realized that a good portion of that 10 percent sits at a critical upstream spot in the global supply chain, in many products that we not only like (such as the iPad) but also need (e.g., fine chemicals for lithium-ion batteries, silicon wafers, or microcontrollers). In some cases, more than half of global output in critical input materials was located in the Tohoku region. Remarkably, by May 2011, most of the factories not located in the radiation zone had repaired the earthquake damage and resumed operations. 

This presentation explores Japan's role in producing components and materials that are critical in global manufacturing, and then zooms in to analyze the speedy efforts at reconstruction by Japanese business after the Tohoku disaster. It argues that Japan is unlikely to relinquish its leading role in supplying critical components due to this shock, precisely because these "New Japan" companies are competitive, nimble, and fast.

Ulrike Schaede studies Japan’s corporate strategy, business organization, management, financial markets, and regulation. Her book Choose and Focus: Japanese Business Strategies for the 21st Century (Cornell UP, 2008) argues that Japan’s business organization has undergone a strategic inflection so fundamental that our knowledge of Japanese business practices from the 1980s and 1990s is no longer adequate. Her current research looks at “New Japan” companies that have assumed global supply chain leadership in materials and components. She also works on projects regarding corporate restructuring, changing human resource practices, and entrepreneurship in Japan.

Schaede holds an MA from Bonn University, and a PhD from the Philipps-Universtät in Marburg, Germany. She is trilingual and has spent a total of more than eight years of research and study in Japan. She has been a visiting scholar at the research institutes of the Bank of Japan, Japan's Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and at the Development Bank of Japan. Before joining the University of California, San Diego in 1994, Schaede held academic positions in Germany (Philipps-Universtät Marburg) and Japan (Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo), and she was a visiting professor at the business schools of UC Berkeley and Harvard.

Japan's experience with China's rise thus far suggests an increasingly tumultuous Northeast Asia. For a decade or more, the Sino-Japanese relationship has been punctuated with a series of political crises, and while the two governments in Beijing and Tokyo have sought to define a new forward looking agenda for their nations, it is the management of these crises that have shaped Japanese attitudes towards a rising China. Sheila Smith will present her analysis of Japan's domestic response to China's rise, and how it has affected the constellations of interests that shape Japan's policy response. She argues that these various moments of contention in Japan's relations with China, from Koizumi's Yasukuni Shrine visits, to resource development in the East China Sea, to the Gyoza "war," and the Senkaku "shock," could have provided the opportunity for building cooperative more effective conflict resolution mechanisms in the Sino-Japanese relationship. Yet within Japan, these various issues of contention have hardened Japanese attitudes rather than produced support for greater diplomatic compromise. As Chinese influence grows, Japan's postwar institutions and policy preferences are being sorely tested not only in the diplomatic realm, but from deeply within Japan's own society. Postwar beliefs about Japan's past, its security and its ability to cope with an increasingly volatile Northeast Asia are all being challenged.

Sheila A. Smith, an expert on Japanese politics and foreign policy, is senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Smith directed the Council on Foreign Relation’s New Regional Security Architecture for Asia Program and currently leads a project on China and India as Emerging Powers: Challenge or Opportunity for the United States and Japan? She joined CFR from the East-West Center in 2007, where she directed a multinational research team in a cross-national study of the domestic politics of the U.S. military presence in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. Smith was on the faculty of the Department of International Relations at Boston University (1994–2000), and on the staff of the Social Science Research Council (1992–1993). She has been a visiting researcher at two leading Japanese foreign and security policy think tanks, the Japan Institute of International Affairs and the Research Institute for Peace and Security, and at the University of Tokyo and the University of the Ryukyus. Smith earned her PhD and MA degrees from the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. She regularly contributes to CFR’s Asia Unbound blog.