Divided sun

Scott Callon

Divided Sun is the story of the methods and machinations that have driven Japan's high-tech industrial policies over the last two turbulent decades. It focuses on MITI and Japan's giant electronics firms - their ambitions and conflicts - in the context of the core of MITI's high-tech strategy since the 1970's, the so-called "cooperative" technology consortia. The author finds that despite widespread claims to the contrary, MITI's industrial policy in high technology has proved to be neither cooperative nor successful. He shows that the policymaking process is torn by conflict and competition: between MITI and other bureaucracies, between MITI and powerful Japanese companies, and between the different companies. As a result, the elaborate structures created to promote cooperation are in many cases a public show masking the underlying reality of fierce competition and conflict. Equally...