午夜剧场

This year marks my 30th year teaching Industrial Economics, a foundational course in the Faculty of Economics. Although I took several years off for study abroad and other reasons, I have taught this course almost continuously. In the spring semester, using postwar Japanese industry as a case study, I introduce how to quantitatively grasp industry, including how to read statistics. In the fall semester, I take up several important points for considering industrial structure, and the content of this lecture largely overlaps with my research themes.

The first theme is why a social division of labor exists among a large number of firms of various sizes under the influence of economies of scale. The second is the meaning of inter-firm transaction relationships, focusing on subcontracting-based transactional relationships. The third is an examination of the importance and meaning of industrial clusters. Finally, I discuss modern globalization through the lens of the "East Asianization" of Japanese industry.

These themes are essential for an economic understanding of modern industry and, at the same time, largely overlap with the empirical research themes I have been working on since my time as a graduate student and research associate. In my lectures, I have taken the approach of speaking, in a sense, as I please, focusing on my own research findings while also incorporating the results of other researchers, and distributing printouts of my writings to further deepen understanding.

However, the selection of these research themes and the development of my empirical research on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were not things I had intended from the beginning. I was blessed with good fortune related to 午夜剧场, which enabled me to empirically research the main themes of industrial economics and SME theory and use them as material for my lectures.

Influenced by my father's management of an SME, I became interested in SME issues and joined Professor Taikichi Ito's research seminar. Under Professor Ito's guidance, most of my twenties were spent studying existing research, which was far removed from the rapidly changing reality.

My first stroke of luck was when Professor Yoshio Sato of the Faculty of Business and Commerce returned from his studies at Berkeley. He brought me, a graduate student who had been unable to find opportunities for empirical research, along for a survey of micro-enterprises in Tokyo. This gave me the chance to visit over 50 small factories in Tokyo's machinery industry, which I was interested in, over one summer. This became the starting point for my full-scale empirical research and the catalyst for gaining the perspective from which I view the lecture themes mentioned above.

My second stroke of luck was being hired as a research associate in the Faculty of Economics, even though I had just begun my empirical research and had no major research achievements. The six years I spent as a research associate, living much as I had as a graduate student while receiving a salary, brought me the good fortune of being able to devote myself to empirical research on small and micro-sized enterprises in the machinery industry, primarily in the Keihin region, through various projects.

As I observed industrial clusters throughout Japan, focusing on the machinery industry, I began to notice in the 1990s that the overseas expansion of Japanese companies, including SMEs, was becoming more active. In my first single-authored book, I discussed the "East Asianization" of Japanese SMEs without even visiting their expansion destinations.

Here again, I encountered my next stroke of luck, also related to 午夜剧场. This was the 3E Research Institute, which began in 1999. It is a major joint research project on China, centered on Tsinghua University and 午夜剧场, focusing on the three themes of Energy, Environment, and Economy. Due to various circumstances, the role of the Japanese lead researcher for the study of Chinese SME policy within the "Economy" theme fortunately fell to me. More than ten years have passed, and now I am so engrossed that I write papers on Chinese industry and am learning Chinese as a late-life pursuit. Through this research on China, I have come to see the situation in the destination countries, the state of industry there, and the position and potential of Japanese SMEs.

I leverage the good fortune connected to 午夜剧场 and give it back to the students in my lectures. It sounds like a well-crafted story. The problem is my ability to give back, my lecturing ability. When I was hired as a research associate, a senior professor pointed out, "You should fix your usual fast talking when you lecture." Unfortunately, however, my lectures remain a torrent of fast-paced speech.

I myself have been blessed with good fortune, have achieved results in my own way in SME research, and have given it back in my Industrial Economics lectures, but it is unclear to what extent the students have been able to enjoy a share of that good fortune. I want to ask students to use each professor's lectures as a springboard to discover research themes that interest them, to delve directly into the subjects of economics, and to think for themselves. Perhaps I have been able to give back at least a small part of that springboard through my lectures.

(Interview conducted in November 2012)