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ASIAN STUDIES CONFERENCE JAPAN
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ASCJ
Executive Committee |
Summer 2000 ASCJ Conference Details 5.
Individual
Paper Session: Trans-national
Economic Trends in the Asia-Pacific Region Chair: Junji Shiba, Faculty of International Studies, Meiji Gakuin University Paper 1)
Neyde Sati Ishioka, University of Tsukuba. "Japan's
Role in the International Political Economy after the Cold War: A
Case Study of ODA to Latin America" The study analyzes the impact of the end of the Cold War in the Japanese foreign policy in terms of its bilateral ODA in the Fourth Era of International Finance (1985-1998). Despite the characteristic tendency of Japanese bilateral ODA towards Asian countries and North American preoccupation towards Latin America and Caribbean, the issue of development of this region assumes a new relevance after the Cold War. The hypothesis is that there is a convergence of the Japan's and USA's programs in terms of development assistance and international cooperation towards the region, which may be caused by a similar pattern present in Japan's ODA policy towards Asia. There is to say, the estimation of the order of relevance of three different but concomitant levels of causation: state, society and international system. The theoretical framework applied is the hegemonic stability theory to this period of hegemonic dissociation. Also, the analysis proposed by Prof. David Arase of the association of the Three-into-One economic cooperation formula is used. The statistical analysis of OECD's DAC (Development Assistance Committee) data as well as the ones of Japanese institutions is made in order to support the main hypothesis. Paper 2) Aida Marcia Lissa, University of Tsukuba. "Industrial Restructuring and Regional Division of Labor: Japanese Electronics production Networks in Southeast Asia" Abstract: This study discusses the industrial restructuring promoted by Japanese transnational corporations (TNCs), through the analysis of some linkages
between international production and international trade. Production
networks are analyzed as one of the instruments by which TNCs have been
influencing the international allocation of economic activity, generating
a complementarity between global and regional trends. The
main hypothesis tested is the extent to which production and flows of Such
an attempt shows indeed that the process of internationalization of Paper 3) Mauricio
Lorence, Sacred Heart University (USA). "The Japanese Immigration to Brazil and its Contributions to
Agribusiness in Brazil" Japanese
immigration to Brazil must be viewed within the context of the Japanese capitalist development at the of
the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century. This process also had to do with the transformation of rural labor,
the introduction of agricultural industry, and the need for the expansion
of production in the rural areas of Sao Paulo. Changes were also taking place in Japan as well. In the Tokugawa era, Japan was isolated for the outside world considered undesirable for Japanese society. At the time, Japan was an agrarian society in which both the warlords and the samurai had lost control over the economy. When, in 1868, Japan was forced to open its doors, a whole new era began called the Meiji era and it lasted until 1912. As the Meiji era began, many samurai were no longer employable in a newly modernized society and the government could not find a viable niche for them in it renovated social structure. Given these circumstances, a group of Japanese diplomats and business cooperatives met in 1893 in Brazil to discuss sending Japanese labor there. At the time, Brazil was desperately in need of dedicated and skilled laborers who were willing to work and Japan was equally desirous of solving "the samurai problem," a population which met all the criteria required by the Brazilians. From that time on, Japanese immigration to Brazil expanded. Japanese immigration and investments were focused on the State of Sao Paulo because it had immense tracts of land that needed to be populated, explored and exploited. The Japanese provided both the people and the necessary labor for this undertaking and Sao Paulo became a major producer of coffee, Brazilfs major national product. Another important factor in the need for Japanese lay in the fact that many of the European works who provided labor earlier chose to return to their countries of origin or move on to Argentina. Faced with an ever increasing void in their working forces, the landowners turned to the Orient to fill this vacancy. To do so in 1891, however, the landowners were obliged to put pressure on the Brazilian government in order to circumvent the numerous laws then existing regulating access to Brazil by Asians and to reach an agreement permitting the introduction of Japanese workers in the state. There were successful and, on November 6, 1907, Jorge Tiberica, President of the State of Sao Paulo and Rio Medzuno, President of the Empire Emigration Company, presented a signed agreement to the Secretary of Agriculture, Carlos J. Botelho. Other factors that
pushed the Japanese to immigrate to Brazil were rooted in the Japanese
economy. The K.K.K.K., a
Japanese company dealing with Japanese laborers destined for Brazil as of
1920 monopolized emigration to Latin America. In 1924, they were subsidized by the Japanese government, and were
entrusted with the emigration of Japanese workers to Brazil. In effect, they embodied the voice of the Japanese
government in Brazil. Most important of all to the planned colonization of Brazil was the establishment of a maritime treaty in 1927 to push for more immigration. It was the same year as the formation of the Tokyo Maritime Association, which had a branch office in Sao Paulo called the Society of Colonization in Brazil (Yugen Sekinin Buraziru Takushoku, commonly known by its acronym, BRATAC. It was a dual-purpose corporation and its capital was used solely for real estate and the recruitment and guidance of Japanese emigrants to work as farmers. By 1935, Brazil became
Japanfs principal trading partner. By extension, because whatever was
produced in Brazil was destined for Japanese markets, Brazil was transformed into Japanfs mail outlet for its
investments. Japanfs contribution to the development and growth of Brazilfs
coffee business can be observed plainly in the Brazilian state of Sao
Paulo. Paper 4) Yasuba
Yasukichi, Osaka Gakuin University. "Assessing
the Economic Growth of the Asian NIEs, 1966-1997"
In an article published in Foreign Affairs in 1994, Paul Krugman
suggested that rapid economic growth in the Asian NIEs, being based
almost totally on the growth
of the input of capital and labor, cannot be
sustained for long and that they will never catch up with the West
in the foreseeable future.
This paper examines in non-technical ways Krugman's
appraisal and prediction. It finds that Krugman's appraisal was
almost entirely wrong and
that his prediction was already contradicted by history.
Krugman s appraisal was wrong because he chose to downgrade Asian
technical progress comparing it with the American one estimated by
Robert Solow, based on the quality-unadjusted input of capital and labor.
If the Asian performance is
compared with Christensen-Jorgenson estimate with
quality adjustment, its technical progress will be found to have
been much faster than in the
United States. Krugman's evaluation of the Asian growth as "the miracle based upon perspiration" (greater input of labor) and the result of the present satisfaction (high saving-rate) can neither be accepted. The former should be rejected because the greater input of labor was achieved mainly by the change in the age-composition of the population rather than by harder labor. No sacrifice in present satisfaction was made since consumption was allowed to grow all the time much faster than in the United States. These favorable factors continued into the 1990s, letting Singapore overtake the United States by 1997 as the world's highest income country, with long Kong following closely behind. Paper 5) Byung-ok
Kil and Richard Robyn, Kent State University. "Lessons of
European Integration for the Asia-Pacific
Economic Area: A Leadership
Role of Japan"
The idea of Asian-Pacific economic integration has evolved in a
piecemeal fashion
from an informal sub-regional effort to a multilateral official forum.
Compared with the European Union (EU), however, the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) is still weakly institutionalized. Optimists who support
APEC agree on the general idea of economic integration, but not on the
means. Pessimists may conclude that further Asian integration is not likely
due to the lack of commonalties such as language or culture. To examine
these perspectives, we employ a social constructivist approach to show
how arguments that essentialize a so-called "lack of a common
culture" are
in fact employed without merit to cast doubt on integration efforts. In doing
so, we assess the changing nature and the evolutionary process of regional
economic integration in the Asia-Pacific, focusing in part on the problem
of a lack of a meaningful leadership role on the part of Japan. A closer
look at the EU, arguably the clearest example of successful economic and
political integration in the world at the present time, would suggest then
two significant lessons for APEC: 1)
the need for a strong leadership role
such as that currently played by France and Germany and 2) that arguments
centering on the so-called "lack of common characteristics" in
fact may
simply mask the powerful trends toward a common identity that are shaping global
politics and economics.
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