The Study On Japanese Scientific And Technical Development

In the early postwar period, Japan is an "inferior student" in the capitalist world in terms of technology and science. However, Japan grasped an opportunity to catch up others and started to introduce a great deal of technology. With Japan’s establishment as an economic giant, Japan gradually stepped in a development path to technology giant. By technological introduction, Japan soon surpassed Germany in1968to become the second largest economic giant following USA. Becoming a technology giant, however, cannot be realized only by technological introduction. That is to say, to become a technology giant, it is necessary to pay more attention to scientific research in addition to technological development, i.e. to pay attention to basic research. Therefore, Japan started to focus on basic research since1970s and brought forth a "Technology-Based Country" strategy in1980s. Afterwards, Japanese government and enterprises made more investment into basic research. However, the subsequent bubble economy as well as economic stagnation in1990s changed the development status of basic research; the enterprises had reduced investment into basic research and focused development research.Based on such a situation, Japanese government played a role to dominate technological development. In1995, it brought forth a "Technological Innovation-based Country" strategy and formulated<Basic Law on Science and Technology> and in1996started to implement the first phase of Basic Plan of Science and Technology. After entering the new century, a series of new strategies have been set up and implemented, including IT-based Country strategy, Intellectual Property based Country, Biotechnology-based Country, Sightseeing-based Country, and Investment-based Country. Due to effective implementation of Technology-based Country, Japan had made a great achievement in IT, life science, new energy, new material and other high and new-tech fields. Thus Japan became a "superior student" from "inferior student" in terms of science and technology and became a genuine technological giant.Based on overall research on development history of Japanese science&technology, this article analyzes Japan’s experience of becoming a technology giant. Also it gives an analysis and study on some issues arising during the technological development in Japan. This article is a overview and summary of Japanese experience and lessons in "Catching-up time", and also a overview of experience and lessons in current technological innovation. Therefore, it can not only provide experience and lessons for those backward countries to catch up, but also provide a reference for those developed countries for further growth.This article is divided into8chapters.Chapter1is an introduction and overview of this article. It explains the authoring background, research motivation and relevant concepts; describes a basic condition of research literature of technological development in Japan; describes this article’s study method, frame structure, as well as innovation and insufficiency.Chapter2gives a description on science and technology theory and intends to study the relationship between technological progress and economic development in theory.Chapter3reviews the development of Japanese science and technology. In this chapter, Japanese technological development course is divided into5phases. It intends to sort out the venation of Japanese technological development.Chapter4reviews the forming and development of Technology-based Country in Japan. This chapter focuses on development of Technology-based Country Strategy, i.e. provides a study and analysis on IT-based strategy and some other new stradegies.Chapter5describes the implementation and achievement of the new Technological Innovation-based Country Strategy. This chapter firstly makes a detailed study on the implementation measures and policies of Technological Innovation-based Country Strategy. Then it reviews the current achievement of the strategy in Japan through latest data.Chapter6gives a discussion on Japan’s experience to become a technology giant. The main experience is:successful technological introduction, private-enterprise-oriented technological R&D system, and government-dominant technological innovation system.Chapter7reviews some issues arising during the technological development in Japan. It give an introduction and study on great lessons occurred during Japanese technological development since the World War II.Chapter8provides a overview and contemplation, also a highlight of this article. This part firstly overviews the history of technological development in Japan and then offers some contemplation on the technological development mode.This article has made some innovation in the below several aspects, such as study content, study method and theory innovation.I Innovation in study contentsThe starting point of study of this article is technological development in the economical recovery period in Japan after the war. It studies until the current new stage of Technological Innovation-based Country in Japan. This study has an unprecedented spanning and completeness.Incorporating the public problems and Fukushima Nuclear Accident into this study will form an impact and contemplation towards high and new-tech development.The latest data is used for empirical analysis on the implementation of current Technological Innovation-based Country in Japan.II Innovation in study methodThis articles discusses the reason that Japan became a "Motor Kingdom", as well as why green technology and humanbeing-focusing technology becomes a new focus in Japan. Public problem is a lesson obtained from the Japanese technological development, which had regarded productivity as priority and overlooked development of environmental technology.This article studies strategic evolution of technological development in Japan by using the importance degrees of science&technology, natural science and social science in different stages of Japanese technological development as perspective or main line.III Theoretical InnovationThe technological development in Japan is divided into two stages: technology-introduction-oriented technical catching-up history and technological-innovation-oriented technology giant period.This article brings forth a reasonable scientific concept of development. It thinks that, the scientific development should not only focus the positive effect of technology on human, but also focus the negative effect; high-tech does not represent "high safety" and also possesses high risks; China should be at first aware of the potential safety hazard when attracting direct investment.Insufficiency. Due to limited study level and inadequate data, it is inevitable that there might be some biased opinions and incomplete argumentation. In addition, due to the inadequacy in technological professional knowledge, the author cannot fully and accurately master specific technological development facts. The author will continue to study in future and make further modification on this paper. Any valuable criticism is welcome.