2011 Volume 48 Issue 2 Pages 69-80
This paper aims at the analysis of reproduction structure in Japan by reorganizing Input-Output tables, based on the theory of the reproduction scheme. The survey of reproduction structure of post-war Japan shows that Japanese economy had become more deeply dependent on foreign demands from the second half of the 1970's to the first half of the 1980's and from the last of the 1990's to the first half of the 2000's. In the 1970's, after the high growth of Japanese economy, the international competitiveness of Japanese companies, in particular those of companies related to the machine industries, such as the automotive and electric industries, had been strengthened due to "slim management" and the introduction of micro-electronics technologies. "Slim management" reduced employment and capital investment, utilized flexibility in relation to the operating rate of the facility and increased the intensity and efficiency of labor in order to build up capital effectively. From the point of view of the reproduction structure of the nation, "slim management" not only realized a sharp increase in production and strengthened international competitiveness but it also brought about a contraction of the domestic demand for both investment and consumption. As a result, domestic production expanded far greater than domestic demand. However domestic demand had grown greater than export from the second half of the 1980's to the first half of the 1990's, Japanese economy have become more deeply dependent on foreign demands again since the last of the 1990's. In the 2000's, while the international competitiveness of Japanese companies related to the electrical equipment has been weakened, the domestic outputs of the automotive, the industrial machinery, the metal products and the chemical products have increased, especially depended on exports. On the other hand, domestic demand had less expanded than domestic outputs during this prosperous period in the same way as in the second half of the 1970's. Because Japanese companies of their prosperous industries had employed more non-regular workers, such as dispatched workers, contract workers, part-time workers and others, than regular employees to maintain and strengthen their competitiveness, low-wage labors had increased in Japan. Therefore, Japanese economy, in which domestic expansion between production and consumption has become inevitable, has very deeply stagnated, confronting the today worldwide depression.
