The discourse of knowledge-based society, which has been spread worldwide, has attracted attention among many. However, the substance of knowledge-based society has not yet been clarified. This article examines the process and mechanism of development of highly qualified human resources in the chemical industry to show one direction of the empirical approach toward knowledge-based society. The chemical industry in Japan employed more graduate students among all other manufacturing industries in the 1960s; in the process of structural changes from petro chemical to fine chemicals in the 1970s and mid- 1980s it began to recruit more graduate students from various fields of study. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the chemical industry laid more emphasis on Research and Development (R&D), and also increased the employment opportunities for doctoral students. But, R&D and highly qualified human resources in the chemical industry show signs of decay at the start of the twenty-first century due to the global competition and declining population. Many factors affect the development of a knowledge-based society and a knowledge- based society does not necessarily develop linearly. Therefore, a research theme or area of knowledge-based society continually requires of us the historical verification.
