Japan’s Economic Growth Strategy through realizing Industrial Revolution 4.0 (Society 5.0)

Abstract

It is widely recognized that new information technologies such as IoT (Internet of Things), Big Data and Artificial Intelligence will play decisive role in competitiveness of each company and industry itself. In this paper, I describe how Japanese government recognized the importance of these technologies. In 2016, the control tower for realizing Industrial Revolution 4.0 headed by the Prime Minister was established and started coordination among each ministry's policy measures.

New rules and regulations will be necessary in order to control and promote new information technologies. In the latter half of this paper, I examine rule making process of small-scale pilotless planes (including drones) as a test case of controling and promoting these technologies. In this process, Japanese government invited multi-stakeholders in the very early-stage of the discussion and reached common understanding of rulemaking through drafting technology development road map of pilotless planes together.