Learning Process of Core Technology in Sporting Gun Industry of Japan

: Japanese sporting gun manufacturers have competitive advantage in the world market. The unfavorable conditions after World War II resulted in improving the sporting gun processing technology drastically, during which the core technologies and their learning process have shifted in four phases.


Introduction
Sporting gun is for sport and hobby of private use, not for military. In present Japan, the sporting gun industry is not known as an industry having the competitive advantage in the world market. However, Japanese sporting gun manufactures produce 200,000 or more sporting guns annually, and 99% of these are exported.
Nevertheless, sporting gun industry of Japan grew up under a seriously adverse market conditions: 1) Market in Japan is extremely small. 2) There exist law regulations of the arms export from Japan.
In Japan, the law prohibits any kind of export to military forces, Communist bloc, and countries in civil war. The export procedure to safe countries is also very severe.
These unfavorable conditions of domestic and foreign market suggest that the competitive advantage of Japanese sporting gun manufacturers is in their technology.

Gun Industry in Japan
In 1951, the government and GHQ lifted the ban on small arms production. In the 1950's there were over 10 manufacturers in Japan, and manufacturers who won in Japanese market began to export and grow.  Information on the defects of the product was fed back to manufacturers via repair agents and retail stores, though still, it was not easy to discover a defect of this kind.
The hand finishing and fitting by the craftsmen gives the product sensuous value. Refinement in the technology of such hand finishing was important to withstand severe market competition. Nevertheless, discovering and understanding technical problems in the hand finishing was even harder. A product with a bad finishing is insufficient, though it is not a defect.
Neither consumers nor manufacturers could easily notice an improving point. Besides, both the consumers and manufactures need to possess an understanding of the taste of the gun. As delicate adjustment is required for the quality control on the customers' favor, the task required highly skilled workmen.
The difference of these processes resulted in the At first, manufacturers in Japan acquired the processing technology by reverse engineering of overseas products, that is, they started by imitating overseas products. However, Japanese manufacturers acquired competing technology with overseas manufacturers within ten years time.
The Japanese manufacturers in postwar period lacked material with good quality and excellent machine tool. In order to raise the quality of their products, they were forced to make an effort in fields other than the performance of the material and machine. They improved the processing technology and invented efficient and innovative technologies.
Japanese manufactures' inventions were a fruit of unfavorable circumstances.
Reverse engineering is an effort to read the manufacturing process from end products, then to draw blueprints, and to reproduce the products.

Conclusion
This paper divided the development of the sporting gun manufacturers in Japan into four phases and analyzed the core technologies which were the keys to competitive edge in each phase. In addition, this paper showed that technology acquisition and improvement in quality resulted in selection in the Japanese sporting gun industry. The degree of difficulty in discovering the products' defect is greatly related to the Difficulty Level of improvement.
In the sporting gun industry, there were three core technologies. Discovery and improvement were harder to achieve in the following order: hand finishing (sensuous), heat-treatment (chemical), and machining (physical) technologies. As a result, it took the manufacturers more time to acquire more difficult technologies according to Difficulty Level.
Acquisition of the core technology and improvement in quality control brought about competition and selection in each phase.
Sporting gun industry in Japan developed under a seriously unfavorable condition. The adversity caused manufacturers to weed out, however, it also gave birth to innovative technologies in return. This became a powerful source of competitive edge against overseas manufacturers.
In Japan, the sporting gun industry had started as small businesses and its history is rather short.
They had to acquire sporting gun processing technology from zero. This paper draws the learning process of technology the hand finishing, the heat-treatment, and the machining technology, which are the peculiar technologies in firearms manufacturing. Yet, when we paraphrase these terms as sensuous, chemical and physical technologies, the differences of each technology is similar in other industries, too.