産業からのアジア研究―その遺産と展望

抄録

This article reviews the evolution of studies on the Asian economy over the past several decades in Japan with a special focus on “industry studies”: the scholarship that investigates the interactions among firms and other economic actors clustered around a specific product or service. When JAAS (Japan Association for Asian Studies) was established in 1953, agriculture was the main research interest of Asian studies scholars, reflecting their serious concern about the region’s prevailing poverty and economic stagnation. As the industrialization started to spread across East Asia after the mid-1980s, the research focus shifted to elucidate the dynamics of manufacturing sectors, reflecting Japanese business sectors’ growing interest in the region as the destination of investments and markets. In the 1990s, Japanese scholars began to publish case studies on specific industries. In these studies, the scholars drew on the rich intellectual assets accumulated by industry studies and business history studies based on Japan’s cases. Among these assets, analytical concepts and empirical findings derived from case studies of the Japanese automotive industry, especially those on supplier systems and industrial organizations, became valuable academic assets that helped Asian studies scholars investigate inter-firm relationships in various industries. Since the fragmentation of production processes unfolded in the 2000s, industry studies have faced new challenges, calling for novel perspectives to grasp the new phase of industry dynamics.