Human resources in Japanese industrial development

THIS monograph deals with the process through which Japan generated human skills and talents required by modern economic activities since the beginning of Japanese industrialization more than a century ago. Because of the vast scope and complexity of the process, the authors decided to focus primarily on institutions established or utilized in major large-scale modern industries that have been leading sectors in Japan's achievement to become the second largest national economy of the world. We have examined these institutions against the background of Ja pan's overall economic and educational development. However, many other areas of the Japanese industrializing experience de serve treatment that we were unable to include in this study. In narrowing the scope of this work, we wished to concentrate on those large-scale industries that appear to represent the greatest departures and challenges for an agrarian society, such as Japan was in the 1870s, in developing human resources for industrialization. The reader will recognize that this is not the entire story and that a full analysis would include still other large-scale modern industries as well as agriculture and small-scale industrial and commercial sectors.