ABSTRACT
Those with a keen sense of Japan’s industrial past will know that its current industrial success was made possible by a policy deliberately aimed at adapting the best of western technology to Japanese needs. In the Meiji era, this policy consisted of a mixture of sending Japanese to study best practice abroad8 and of commissioning reports from overseas. However, the inflow of technology also came through the direct involvement of nonJapanese companies. Dunlop, one of the world’s first great multinationals, established a subsidiary in Japan in 1909, which was later to become Sumitomo Rubber,9 the company that acquired most of Dunlop’s residual European tyre assets in 1984-5. Similarly, NEC was originally a subsidiary of America’s Western Electric (now part of General Electricthe US company).10
