Structural adjustment in Japan, 1970-82

This study on Japan is the first in a series of studies on the industrial adjustment process in industrialised, newly industrialising and developing countries. Japan has a central position in these studies. Most other industrialised countries, would no doubt name it among the causes for the pressure to make adjustments at home. Yet at the same time Japan has undergone a very thorough process of adjustment itself. Only a few decades ago it evoked protectionist reaction because of its low-cost, labour-intensive exports of manufactured goods. Today, and partly as a result of this protectionism, Japan is a major force in virtually all fast-growing, high technology industries apart from aerospace. Its ability to become an important producer and exporter in many of these new areas, and to do so with apparently a minimum of friction and unemployment, makes it a rare example of successful adjustment.

The countries studied in the research project on Employment, Trade and North-South Co-operation, carried out within the ILO's programme on the inter national division of labour, include Brazil, Cameroon, the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Singapore, Tunisia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Publications on several of these countries, together with two final volumes on the project as a whole, are in preparation.