Much existing research demonstrates the effectiveness of introducing kaizen to developing countries. However, the literal translation of kaizen obscures important connotations that are difficult to translate. Why is this seemingly simple term difficult to translate? It is also unclear how the method can be applied to private firms in other countries. This raises the question of which aspects of kaizen could or should be transferred. This study investigates historical and social background of kaizen as it developed in Japan with aid from the United States. This provides groundwork to examine the extent to which the kaizen approach can be exported to other countries. Though the benefits of kaizen are desirable, they are difficult to extricate from other aspects of the management-labor relationship historically practices at large Japanese companies. In particular, the worker protection aspect of kaizen cannot be transferred directly to other countries where companies'commitment to lifetime employees is different. Therefore, it is vital for those on both the Japanese and foreign sides to comprehend its connection to labor conditions.

Endogenous development has been discussed in both Japanese and Western discourse on development. However, the concepts developed from different roots, giving rise to distinct concepts. This paper examines the Japanese perspective on endogenous development, shaped largely by the work of Kazuko Tsurumi, and its difference from that of the Western concept. The paper identifies similarities and differences between the two with a particular focus on four core elements of Tsurumi's theory. It concludes by discussing the significance of Tsurumi's theory in the contemporary international development context.

Yen loans are long-term, low-interest loans provided to developing countries as part of the Japan's Official Development Assistance (ODA), mainly for infrastructure development as a foundation for economic growth of recipient countries. They have been a continuing object of criticism in light of dominant norms, championed by the United States and European countries, that development assistance is a form of charity by rich countries for the sake of poor countries, and thus should take the form of grant and technical assistance. In other words, yen loans have been symbolic of the heterodoxy that flows through the history of Japan's ODA. This chapter questions the nature of this heterodoxy and examines how discord has been navigated between Japan as norm-taker and the norm-makers―the United States and European countries―who generally lack flexibility with respect to different way of development assistance.

This paper examines the history behind using “the trinity” to explain Japan and China's development cooperation approach. In particular, this paper explores the meaning of the trinity in development practice in Japan and China and how it has changed over time. Though attracting little attention in Japan in the 1980s when it was first used as an economic cooperation-related concept, the trinity became a focus for debate with the rise of China as an emerging aid donor. In the process, the trinity became a concept for the simultaneous implementation of aid, investment, and trade measures to achieve a win-win relationship between the donors and recipients of development cooperation. By examining the processes that have formed and transformed this concept, this paper highlights that the meaning of the trinity as used in early development discussions is significant as it offers a perspective on loss and gain in development cooperation today.

This paper aims to examine and clarify the Japanese concept of hito-zukuri, paying attention to international and internal development policies of the Japanese government. Hito-zukuri has been generally translated as “human resourses development” related to technical cooperation in the context of international development. However, hito-zukuri has also been given the element of formal and nonformal moral education to nurture “Japaneseness” both for Japanene youths especially in the postwar high economic growth period, and for people in currently so-called developing countries through international development or cooperation. Therefore we cannot translate hito-zukuri directly into human resources development only. Hito-zukuri holds two types education: technological and moral. In hito-zukuri, educators look precisely its educands as a technologically and morally developing people. There are eyes of stratification. That is why the educational and developmental ethics is essential in hito-zukuri.

This paper discusses the concept of genba-shugi by focusing on contexts in which the term has been used: Japanese-style in business management and in technical cooperation, and organizational reform in JICA, which is an implementing agency of Japan's ODA. These contexts have share in common an attempt by people close to genba (field or locality) to emphasize their superiority and initiative against imaginary rivals: Western-Style and Central ministries. While these are rationalized based on authorities such as abstract “models” from developed countries or the interests of the central government, the theory of genba-shugi draws on feelings and experiences in genba for its justification.

As the international development landscape has become increasingly polycentric, there has been growing efforts towards decentring and decolonising in development studies globally. In contrast to such decentring and decolonial efforts elsewhere, International Development Studies in East Asia (IDS) has been rather passive and silent on postcolonial thinking. By problematising this silence through its roots and consequence, the paper argues for the case of postcolonial thinking via fuller and more explicit engagement with questions of postcolonialism and/in development. A postcolonial thinking necessitates (critical) self-reflection, an understanding of historical processes of our own research field to restructure both the academia and pedagogy. As a step towards such endeavour, this paper explores the politics and process of knowledge production in Korea's IDS. In doing so, the paper first reviews central questions of postcolonialism and/in development that are of critical relevance to IDS to better define postcolonial thinking in this paper. Then to explore the state of knowledge production in IDS more concretely, the paper focus on Korea's Knowledge Sharing Programme (KSP) to explain how and why epistemic and ethical positions drawing upon more explicit postcolonial thinking have not successfully taken roots in the region's IDS. In doing so, the paper critically examines two key aspects of KSP in light of postcolonial questions. The paper concludes with possibilities of IDS towards more explicit postcolonial thinking - therefore, a more critical and self-reflexive field.

This paper argues that sociology's development in the country reflects the broad socio-structural features of Philippine society over time. The article will proceed by tracing the discipline's historical development and how these were anchored in the social conditions pervasive during these periods. Primary of these influences is the US colonial education of the pioneers in the discipline before and immediately after World War II. The emergence of student activism, coupled with the criticism of the modernist project, contributed to many sociologists and social scientists, who, through their research and writings, resisted Marcos' authoritarian regime in the 1970s and the 1980s. The opening of the democratic space after the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution institutionalized civil society groups' participation in state affairs. Sociological theorizing and methodological approaches of the 1990s and early 2000s reflected the expansion of negotiation space between social structures and the agency of these academics. However, efforts to mainstream a more indigenized theorizing among the country's sociologists proved more difficult. The paper ends by discussing some of these challenges and the possible trajectory of the discipline.