Japanese Industrial-Policy Path Dependence / 日本产业政策路径依赖

Japanese industrial-policy path dependence is vol.125.日本到底还行不行？ | 串台东亚观察局’s explanation for why a historically successful development state can struggle in newer innovation cycles. [[FanYiru|樊一如]] invokes postwar bureaucratic coordination, MITI-style industry organization, and large-firm alliances as a model that worked for textiles, cars, and manufacturing catch-up.

The source’s concern is that the same system can become rigid. High-level coordination, consensus among established firms, and experience-based planning may help in known industrial domains, but internet, software, AI, and frontier entrepreneurship often reward small teams, fast iteration, tolerance for failure, and disruption of incumbents.

Key Claims

• Bureaucratic coordination can accelerate catch-up when the target industry and technology route are knowable.
• The same coordination can protect incumbents and slow experimentation when the frontier is uncertain.
• Postwar success can become an institutional memory that makes later reform harder.
• Japan’s large-organization prestige and young people’s risk aversion reinforce the path-dependence problem.

Connections

• Japan, Strategic Industrial Policy, Keiretsu Business Groups / 系列, and Japanese Enterprise Price-War Avoidance / 日本企业避免价格战 - existing industrial and corporate-governance context.
• Japanese Innovation Retreat / 日本创新退潮, Youth Entrepreneurship, and Japanese Galapagosization / 日本加拉帕戈斯化 - entrepreneurship and inward-technology branch.
• China Divergent Technology Route and Supply Chain Sovereignty - adjacent state-capacity and technology-route concepts from other sources.