The city of Hiroshima owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Dr. Kinji Gonda, whose guidance culminated in its Guidelines for Science and Technology Policy in the 21^<st> Century. Truly innovative industrial policies have been implemented based on these Guidelines. One example is the highly successful automobile design and engineering company we created based on Dr. Gonda's technology cluster theory. Hiroshima's future will depend, to some extent, on Dr. Gonda's visitor industry strategy, in accordance with which we are working to double our total number of visitors between 2001 and 2010. Another important and quite unexpected legacy of Dr. Gonda's approach is the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons by 2020 now being implemented by Mayors for Peace, a Hiroshima-based NGO that boasts more than 1200 member cities in 114 countries and regions. Hiroshima intends to prove to the world the vital importance of Dr. Gonda's intellectual contributions by achieving this goal.

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The present work reviews the research activities of the late Kinji Gonda, a pioneering figure in the study of regional science and technology (S&T) policy and innovation. His work in the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy and its later development, implications in policymaking and international applications attests his clear foresight. The author reviews how Gonda's analysis of regional S&T resources (organizations, researchers, expenditures, etc.) served as fundamental information in evaluation and further development of regional S&T policies, and has established itself in the national system of policy formation and evaluation in the second-term Science and Technology Basic Plan. The author's "Composite Indicators", based on Gonda's factual survey and analysis, has been helpful in evaluation and analysis of regional S&T and innovation activities. The comparative analysis on S&T Parks which Gonda conducted in the middle 1990s lead to regional cluster studies which flourished later in many countries and stimulated related policy programs in Japan. Gonda was also instrumental in initiating the Regional Science and Technology Policy Research conference (RESTPOR), an international meeting of specialists intended for verification and further development in international context of research outcomes obtained in Japan. He has lead fine consecutive RESTPORs to a great success.

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Iwate Prefecture has been in close contact with Prof. Gonda since the beginning of its science and technology (S&T) promotion initiatives in 1989. To commemorate his achievements, we held a roundtable discussion by five persons who know him well on his contribution to the prefectural policy for promotion of S&T and industry, particularly his research on trends in S&T parks, along with some of his catchwords for Iwate. Gonda pioneered in recognizing tendency of decentralization and necessity of regional autonomy, and proposed practical methodology for sustainable innovation based on S&T resources. His amazing foresight has been amply verified in many aspects. We only wonder what strategy Prof. Gonda would develop for the accumulation of S&T resources in Kitakamigawa region which is now approaching the critical mass to form an S&T park. The discussion reflects our will to realize the dream he evoked in us. We express our hearty gratitude to the guidance of Prof. Gonda, a great admirer of Kenji Miyazawa and pursuer of his utopia Ihatovo.

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The theory developed by Gonda for elucidating geographical distribution of industry is reviewed to extract viewpoints useful for study on the regional systems of innovation. Some political implications of the theory are derived using empirical data related to Gonda's research agenda. Gonda's concept of "semantic space", intended for explanation of factors that give rise to industrial agglomeration, means absolute proximity of actors in a space, since the actor is inseparable from the space. This is in contrast the relative proximity of actors as derived in the clustering policy. The authors have performed a survey on enterprises in Hokuriku district to demonstrate that the competitive edge of the district is based on the diversification starting from the local industry, and that the diversification succeeded due to sharing a semantic space by enterprises and their customers. They also argue that success in diversification should be supported by corresponding diversity in regional policies.

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In order to apply control mechanisms found in biological phenomena to social design, K. Gonda developed a theory of "fields" which simulates the process of knowledge creation in a community as a dynamically stable system involving self-organization under multiple controls. This theory is an original type of cluster theory, which focuses attention to the spillover of knowledge in a community. Meanwhile, in other countries, the network analysis has been developing which focuses on the network of actors in a particular region as a knowledge generation system, while the recent evolutionary economics argues that the flow of knowledge in a cluster is selective and heterogeneous depending on the relational distance between enterprises in the cluster, thus criticizing econometric assumption that emphasizes the role of spatial distance in the flow of knowledge. Thus the cluster theory in Europe and America has overcome simplistic knowledge spillover model based on the spatial distance between the actors and proceeded to an approach based on the system theory. The current studies by the author on clusters from the viewpoint of network analysis have led him to reaffirm Gonda's foresight incorporated in his research agenda.

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Using the example of rice species improvement, essentially R&D in agricultural species improvement, this paper proposes an evaluation method especially set up to clarify the specific economic effects (impacts) to whole Japan of R&D in agricultural technology. It then formulates a system for classifying the effects of the said technology, develops a method for calculating the economic effects according to the specific effects targeted, and introduces practical calculation examples. For evaluating the economic effect on rice species improvement technology, the author referred to data from a previous survey by Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc. (MRI) commissioned to MRI by the Institute of the Society for Techno-innovation of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in order to evaluate the economic effect of R&D in rice species development as part of the "Survey Regarding Evaluations Made of Past Technology Development Programs", an FY 2000 project set up to support the introduction of administrative procedures related to new agricultural policies. Specifically, the author targeted the yield improvement and product taste improvement effects (including the resulting price increase), and evaluated the economic effects, respectively, by estimating the extent to which a new species contributes to yield improvement and determining the relationship between taste score and market price. As a result, it was shown that the method to evaluate economic effect proposed in this paper can apply effectively.

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This research clarifies the relation between reform, restructuring of local governments' laboratories and their R&D policy, by taking local governments' laboratories for rural industry as cases. In Japan, rural industries prospered from 1935 to 1955 under the rural crisis before the war and shortage of food, destructed industry after the war, but they began to decline from round 1955 due to food industries' revival. Under this industrial construction change, local governments' laboratories for rural industries lost their raison d'etre and they were forced to reform and restructure themselves. The laboratories that focussed on non-industrial R&D like rural side-business and rural diet improvement faded out. However, the laboratories that gave priority to industrial R&D survived and developed to various types of laboratories, depending on their strategies. These cases show that R&D policy of local government's laboratory plays an important role to control course of reform and restructuring of the laboratory.

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Citation analysis and Journal Impact Factor have become handy devises for tracing science and technology activities. In some EU countries today, they are systematically used to evaluate research and serve as important decision-making instruments for government R&D funding. While these measures are useful, their systematic application to research evaluation can also be harmful. Complaints of victims assessed by such means are regularly published in journals such as Science and Nature, in which abundant cautions and warnings reveal the danger of incorrect usage. In Japan, the creation of the National Institution for Academic Degrees and the advent of University Evaluation by external experts in April 2000 marked a key S&T policy development. With the evaluation of research institutions and researchers, however, comes the danger of using citation and impact factor indicators systematically for individual researcher evaluation or employment of R&D personnel. To use these methods correctly is critical and their accurate management should be of concern not only to those who evaluate, but also to those who are being evaluated. In this article, we depict the pitfalls of Citation and Journal Impact Factor analysis and draw attention to the danger of applying them to evaluate individual researchers without comprehensive knowledge and sufficient experience of their use.

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