As the industrial structure of Japan changes, the regional structure-in particular, the relationship between large cities and the local areas, has been changing at intervals of approximately ten years.
The decade of the 1960s was the period of population concentrating in large cities, and the decade of the 1970s was the period of decentralization. The decade of the 1980s was again the period of population concentration to metropolitan areas. This time, however, it was differnt to the phenomenon seen in the 1960s, in as much as the concentration was focused only on Tokyo, and income differences between regions have again expanded.
The stagnation of local economies in the 1980s had exactly the reverse effect to the relative boost enjoyed in the 1970s. This was the result of local areas passively reacted to the favorable (to local areas) conditions of the 1970s, without exploiting them for the creation of conditions for independent economic development.
The economic prosperity we are now enjoying-this could be the beginning of a new economic growth in Japan, requires a fundamental change in the industrial structure. Moreover, as enterprises's active attitude are supporting this boom, various structural imbalances are increasing among individual industries or regions. Such problems are covered by the present good economic conditions, but no doubt these will be exposed once the economic boom is over.
The formation of in-house division of labor on a world-scale would make the position of the region even more vulnerable. Therefore the reginal economy, namely the factors of independence and endogeny in the development of employment in a region, become important.

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Japanese economy is experiencing the increasing presence of transnational capital. The object of this paper is to make clear the process of structural change of economic space in Japan by the evolution of globalization of Japanese companies and to point out the problems involved in it.
Two interrelated processes, the development of transportation technology and communication technology, underlie the transnationalization of capital. These two external conditions integrated world economies into a single sphere of economic interaction and urged to shift the labor-intensive production function from Japan to low-wage developing countries especially in Asia. In other words, transnationalization of capital fostered the emergence of hierarchical spatial division of labor on a world space.
Transnational capital is the only organization that can utilize efficiently the geographical differences concerning the locational factors such as labor cost, language, manners and customs, climate, natural resources, distance from the mother factory in developed country, infrastructure, tax system on the world wide plane. Spatial projection of hierarchical structure of organization on the earth shapes the hierarchical structure of world space, hierarchical network of world cities.
As transnationalization of capital has developed, Japanese and foreign transnational capital management functions have been concentrating and agglomerating in the center district of Tokyo.
This process has affected fundamental structural change of the location of industry, laboratory and the spatial disparity of wage and income.
Over the decade or so, the pre-existing regional structure, based on the concentrated production on the pacific belt area, has changed and recently production and research functions have shifted to the outskirts of Tokyo metropolitan area, which is closely linked to Tokyo by highways.
It is considered that the continuous extention of transnationalization of capital should magnify the geographical unequality and the urban problems which is occurring in the world city Tokyo.

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Since the beginning of 1970's, the circumstances of the world economy have been changed from the stage of high growth rate of GNP in the developed countries to the stage of its low level. To escape from their pressures, business firms are trying to reconstruct the industrial society based on a new technology depending on microelectronics. Their endeavor at rationalisation has aimed at the higher productivity of labor.
New technology has tried to replace the function of intellectual human work with ME machine.
Economists have proposed the theory of the scope merit in their social networking theory against the scale merit in mass production. Change propagates from one industry to related section as a chain reacton process, in inducing succesive change. It takes real time to change. On this point we should learn Prof. A. O. Hirschman's concept of “sequential solution.” This may be a key word to understand the global economic dynamism.
Now the new production systems are being developed world-wide. America is developing CIM system (Computer integrated manufacturing). This system integrates each system (from order-receive to product delivery) and aims at customised system.
Japan is developing HIM system (Human Integrated Manufacturing) and IMS (Intelligent Manufacturing System).
Both systems involve JIT/TQC as a basic module and allow co-existence of man and machine. The ideal is to manufacture everything in lots of one within the same efficiency as mass production (Product-mixed is produced in the same manner nearly as mass production).

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The semiconductor industry is one of the important high technology industries which occupies a strategic position in the United States, Japan, and Europe industry. That development influences to the restructuring of industial structure.
The semiconductor industry is becoming currently the global industrial organization. It is clear by the glabolity of semiconductor market, the globalization of manufacture plant, and the international alliance of semiconductor firms.
The globality of semiconductor market has the sense of which the generation shift, the silcon-cycle and a market expansion occur concurrence in the world. The globalization of manufacture plant has the sense of which the worldwide semiconductor firms, as Taxas Instrument, NEC and Philips from the global production system round U. S., Japan, Europe and East South Asia. The international alliance of semiconductor firms has the sense of which Japanese firms spread out Memory alliance and U. S. firms spread out MPU alliance with U. S., Japan, and Europe firms.
Therefore, semiconductor firms compete each other in the global market round U. S., Japan, and Europe, by way of which semiconductor firms produce manufacture plant at U. S., Japan, Europe, and East South Asia, and form the international alliance.

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This article aims at clarifying the economic situation as to how disproportionately the regional economy develops, differently from the whole scheme of Japanese capitalism. The object of my study is here to elucidate the development of Okinawa economy.
At the beginning of the 1970's, when Japan regained Okinawa from the American occupation, Japan was in the final period of high economic growth, suffering from the stagnation of the equipment investment on the one hand, and from the surplus fund on the other. Under such circumstances, Japan made an economic advance into Okinawa by investing in the land, rather than planting new factories there.
By the end of '70s, Okinawa economy had set up the industrial structure, which made a great shift to particularize into the tertiary industries, including the tourist industry in the main, and which produced the new structure that the central government in Japan supplies the defficiency of Okinawa's dependent economy with the financial funds.
Such a structure of regional economy can be noticed not only in Okinawa, but in the northern and southern part of the Japan Islands, and also commonly in the coastal regions of Japan Sea, where the heavy chemical industry is difficult to make an advance.

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