ABSTRACT
The national experience that Japan underwent with the Meiji restoration is unique in world history in the suddenness with which it brought about a reversal in social and cultural values, from medieval conformity to a scramble for things from the West. By the early 1960s the hierarchical structure of the industry and the machinery for exporting high-quality products were established. Other capital-intensive industrial sectors, such as electric-power generation, chemicals, and materials processing, achieved substantial recovery from the devastation of World War II. Japan, Inc., was ready to jump into the semiconductor age. Post-war Japanese industrial development was due to two mechanisms; government-led machinery, and the grass-roots scramble for new technologies. The former system has been magnified in the eyes of Western observers; however, the latter has played equal or more significant roles, particularly in the development of consumer electronics.
