The Technological Transformation of Japan: From the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century

A survey of the major developments in Japanese technology and industrial policy the book also reinterprets the processes of technological change in Japanese society. Japan's rapid technological transformation is usually attributed to far-sighted government policies or to the innovative management techniques of large Japanese companies. This book gives an alternative explanation based an the concept of social networks of information. Tessa Morris-Suzuki argues that new ideas were conveyed quickly from large 'modern' enterprises to small traditional workshops and factories often in remote parts of the country. This transfer was possible because of the nature of social institutions which had begun to develop before the opening of Japan to the west and which were maintained after contact.