ABSTRACT
The origin of the technopolis program lay in late 1979, when Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) began studying the possibility of creating a Silicon Valley in Japan. To understand the technopolis program fully, the essential starting-point is that Japan is not, and never has been, an ordinary market capitalist state. The drive to achieve systematic leadership in world technological innovation is thus one key thrust behind the technopolis project. But there is another, equally important, aim: regional development, to reduce the geographical imbalance, and in particular the dominance of Tokyo. Sendai, 300 kilometers north of Tokyo and the seat of the Miyagi Prefectural Government, is at first an odd site for a technopolis. Located in the center of Japans southern island of Kyushu and a two-hour flight from Tokyo, isolated even from other urban areas on the island by mountain ranges, the entire Oita prefecture has only 1.25 million people.
