Location Dynamics of the Japanese Semiconductor Industry in the Rapid Technological Innovation

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the location dynamics of the Japanese semiconductor industry in the midst of rapid technological innovation. The production of semiconductors in Japan started in the first half of the 1950 s and a technological complex has been developed in Southern Tokyo. The formation of advanced machinery production can not be taken into consideration without the existing production system. The government has played an impor tant role in raising the technological level of semiconductor production, which was behind that of the U.S.A., in a very short time. At the same time, it is very important that many enterprises in competition with one another have taken part in government projects to develop technology from a cooperatively long-term point of view. The production of semiconductors has been supported by the growth of the electric calculator and other durable consumer goods industries and has made great progress in the 1980s. Semiconductor manufacturers which developed in the big city areas such as Tokyo and Osaka have moved their production bases into Kyushu, Tohoku and other provincial areas since the latter half of the 1970s. On the other hand, R & D functions and the nucleus of the industry has remained in the Tokyo and Osaka region. As semiconductor production is strongly linked with various high-tech industries which are concentrated in the Tokyo region, only this region can cope with very rapid technological innovation, and the nation wide production system, with Tokyo as its core, has strengthened. The formation of a global network for the semiconductor industry is now in progress under the strong control of trade in each country. In order to cope with keen international competition, the globalization of the Japanese semiconductor industry is in progress, linked with a nation wide production system.

Corporate Geography Relaunched

“…Primary research is kept in the home country and usually at company headquarters, D & D and wafer fabrication may be located abroad but only in technologically advanced countries, while assembly often goes to low-wage coun tries. NEC, for example, applies the following country hierarchy: Japan, U.K. & U.S.A., China & Ireland & Malaysia & Singapore (Kitagawa 1994;Millward 1995;Takeuchi 1993).…”

Local Agglomeration and Global Networks Of the Semiconductor Industry: a Comparative Study of U.S. and Japanese Firms

“…The large body of work related to it includes Angel (1994), Dedrick (1998), Flamm (1985), Florida and Kenney (1990), Hong (1997), Inoue and Ito (1989), Itami (1995), Kenney and Florida (1993), Kimura (1988), Mathews (2000), Okimoto et. (1984), Okimoto and Nishi (1994), Saxenian (1994), Scott (1987), Angel (1987, 1988), Takeuchi (1993), UNCTC (1986), etc. However, although many of the existing studies present evidence to indicate spatial clustering in the semiconductor industry, it is often the result of research that focuses only on one particular sub-sector of the industry in a specific region.…”