RIJE Newsletter No.2
Research Group on the Asada Archive
ISHII Kanji
- Tokyo / Siena Project
Yoshikawa Hiroshi
- RIJE Research Projects 1997/1998
- RIJE Workshops
- Discussion Papers
- Research Group on the Asada Archive
- ISHII Kanji
- The Archives of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Tokyo keep several kinds of historical manuscripts of Japan. The most famous one is the Shiroki-ya Archive which is composed of the documents of Shiroki-ya, one of the biggest textile merchants in Edo city, and the historical materials on the merchant guilds in Edo city. Since Dr. Reiko Hayashi analyzed this Shiroki-ya Archive and published a book titled Edo Ton-ya Nakama no Kenkyu” (A Study on the Merchant Guilds in Edo), the Shiroki-ya Archive kept by the Archives of our faculty became well-known among the Japanese historians.
- Another main manuscript kept by the Archives of our faculty is the Asada Archive which is composed of the documents of the Asada Family, a landowner in Kamikoma village (now Yamashiro town) in the southern part of the Province of Yamashiro (a part in Kyoto Prefecture), and the historical materials of the
- premodern village office kept by the Asada Family who had been one of the village officers in Yamashiro. The Asada Archive, which contains over 3,000 account books and around 12,000 sheets of paper including letters, is very valuable manuscripts because it enables us to study the history of the village and the Asada Family from the latter half of the 16th century to the first half of the 20th century.
- These documents were sold by a secondhand bookstore in Kobe immediately after the Second World War to Mr. Keizo Shibusawa who had been the head of the Shibusawa Financial Clique and were donated by Shibusawa to our faculty. Perhaps it was because Mr. Shibusawa was the intimate friend of Professor Takao Tsuchiya who was teaching the Economic History of Japan at our faculty. Professor Tsuchiya and his successor Professor Kazuo Yamaguchi, however, had no time to classify and make the list of the Archive. Professor Haruhito Takeda and myself, who are the successor of Tsuchiya and Yamaguchi, tried to make the list of the Asada Archive. Through the hard work from 1980 to 1991, we published two volumes of the lists of the Asada Archive. Archivist Sachiyo Ogawa made a great contribution to complete the lists.
- In March 1986, the Research Group on the Asada Archive was organized by Ishii and Takeda. Other main members were Reiko Hayashi (Professor of Ryutsu-keizai University, now Research Scholar of the Edo-Tokyo Museum), Noriko Sugano (Assistant of Hitotsubashi University, now Professor of Teikyo University), Shigehiko Ioku (Assistant of Kyushu University, now Associate Professor of Ryutsu-keizai University), Yuriko Suzuki [now Yoshida] (Assistant of Ochanomizu University, now Associate Professor of Tokyo Foreign Languages University), Yuki Sakurai (Lecturer of NHK School), Hiroko Aburai (Lecturer of NHK School), Sachiyo Ogawa (Archivist), Masayuki Tanimoto (Assistant of Toyama University, now Associate Professor of the University of Tokyo).
- The Research Group made the field surveys of the southern part of the Province of Yamashiro several times and found many historical materials concerning the Asada Family or the economic conditions of the area. At the research meetings, which were held over fifty times, many interesting historical facts were reported. The most important facts were as follows.
- The lands of the four villages (now a part of Yamashiro town) in Tokugawa era continued to be mixed together like the villages in medieval Japan. The Asada Family, who moved from Asada in the Province of Settsu, became the village officer and bought up the lands of other peasants. As the main product of this area was cotton, the land tax was partly paid by silver money and the other part which was paid by rice was also sold in the village before sending to the lord. As the village officer, Asada played a role of the merchant of cotton and rice and lent money to the peasants who could not pay the land tax, so that Asada concentrated the lands. It is interesting that one member of the Asada Family opened a drugstore named Yamashiro-ya in Edo city, which sold medicines produced in the southern part of Yamashiro. The profit of the drugstore was sent to Yamashiro in order to invest in land. In the middle of the 18th century, this area was often damaged by the floods of the River Kizu, so that the population of the area decreased drastically. Young people went to Kyoto, Nara, or Osaka in order to find their jobs. After the opening of Japan to the world in 1859, the main industry in this area changed from cotton growing to tea manufacturing. Until now Yamashiro town has been one of the most important trading center for tea in Japan.
- The Research Group will publish the results of their research from the University of Tokyo Press as a book titled Kinsei-Kindai no Minami-Yamashiro, Men-saku kara Cha-gyo e” (The Southern Yamashiro in the Pre-modern and Modern Era: From Cotton Industry to Tea Industry) by the end of March 1998. The publication of the book is subsidized by the Tokyo Daigaku Keizaigaku Shinko Zaidan (University of Tokyo Foundation for the Promotion of Economics).
- Tokyo / Siena Project
- YOSHIKAWA Hiroshi
- Under the auspices of the RIJE, the Tokyo/Siena Conference was held at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Tokyo during 6-8, October 1997. The programme of the Conference is as follows:
- <Monday, October 6, 1997>
- žEconomic Integration
- Toru Iwami, The Economic Integration in East Asia: A Comparison with European Countries
- Francesco Farina, More Market or More Governance? On Exchange Rate Regimes and Macroeconomic Stability after the EMS Experience
- žAgriculture
- Elisabetta Croci Angelini and Tateshi Mori, Regulation, Efficiency and the Role of Public Good of Agriculture
- žMacroeconomics
- Massimo Di Matteo and Hiroshi Yoshikawa, Economic Growth: The Italian and Japanese Experiences
- žEconomic History
- Kanji Ishii, Comparative History of the Silk Reeling Firms in Japan and Italy from 1859 to 1941
- Giovanni Federico, Was Italy the Land of Small Companies? : The Case of the Silk Industry
- <Tuesday, October 7, 1997>
- žGovernment and Firms
- Bruno Miconi and Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara, Bureaucracy and Industrial Policy in Italy and Japan
- Kiyohiko G. Nishimura and Lionello Punzo, How Much Do Buyers Pay for Distribution Services in Three Countries?: A Comparative Study of Distribution Margins in Italy, Japan and the United States
- žDemography
- Francesca Bettio, Naoto Kunitomo and Takashi Nakamura, On Recent Trends in Fertility and Participation: Towards a Comparative Study on Japan and Italy
- žBusiness and Labour Market (1)
- Paolo Carnazza, Alessandro Innocenti and Alessandro Vercelli, Small Firms and Employment in Manufacturing: Japan and Italy (1980-1995)
- Maria Grazia Pazienza and Marcello Signorelli, Occupational Performance, Employment Structure and Demography of the Firms in the Japanese and Italian Economies
- Hotaka Katahira and Alessandro Innocenti, New Product Acceptance and Information Seeking: Italy/Japan Comparison
- Luigi Luini and Yutaka Umezawa, Comparison of Italian & Japanese Computer Industries
- <Wednesday, October 8, 1997>
- žBusiness and Labour Market (2)
- Yoshiro Miwa and Yuji Genda, Small Business in Japan
- Tsuneo Ishikawa and Giorgio Brunello, Education and Employment in Italy and Japan
- Fabrizio Barca, Katsuhito Iwai, Ugo Pagano and Sandro Trento, Institutional Shocks: An Interpretation of the Divergence of Italian and Japanese Governance Models
- Altogether fourteen Italian Scholars participated in the Conference. At the end of the Conference, Dr. Andrea Boltho of Oxford University, Professor Alessandro Vercelli of Siena University and Professor Hiroshi Yoshikawa of the University of Tokyo were elected to be the editors of the Conference volume to be published in English in 1999. The Tokyo/Siena project was to be completed at the end of this academic year, but the editorial procedure toward publication of the book will continue throughout 1998
- RIJE Research Projects 1997/1998
- <1997>
- Overseas Activities of Textile Industry in Japan, by Eisuke Daito
- The Development of Historiography and Social Sciences in Wartime and Postwar Japan, by Akira Hara
- Socio-economic Studies on the Development of Rural Markets in China: With Special Reference to Lunan County, Yunnan Province, by Katsuji Nakagane
- Accounting Standards for Financial Instruments, by Shizuki Saito
- The Future of Japan’s Financial System, by Akiyoshi Horiuchi
- Evolution of the Ideas and the Institutions of Leisure in France, by Isao Hirota
- Theory of Social Norm and Evolution, by Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara
- Study on Fiscal Sociology, by Naohiko Jinno
- Theoretical and Empirical Research of the Mark-to-Market Accounting for Financial Instruments, by Satoshi Daigo
- Russian Peasantry in the 1920s: Its Politico-economic Demand, by Hiroshi Okuda
- Economic Analysis of Corporate Law, by Yoshiro Miwa
- Studies on the Cross-section of Japanese Equity Returns, by Takao Kobayashi
- Economic Policies of the Modern Capitalism, by Toru Iwami
- Financial Structure and Banking System in Japan, 1868-1990, by Masanao Ito
- The Japanese Business Development and Economic Policy, by Haruhito Takeda
- Economic Analysis of Housing Policies, by Yoshitsugu Kanemoto
- Comparative Studies of the Electricity Supply Industry in Britain and Japan, by Kazuo Wada
- An Economic Analysis of Political Competition, by Toshihiro Ihori
- Statistical Inference for Quantitative Time-Spatial Model, by Yoshihiro Yajima
- Toward New Foundation of Macroeconomics, by Kiyohiko G. Nishimura
- Inference on Statistical Models in Multivariate Analysis, by Akimichi Takemura
- A Study on the Institutional Evolution, by Tokutaro Shibata
- Local Government and Economic Development in Japan, by Nobuki Mochida
- Study of Distribution System of Dairy Products in Japan, by Masamitsu Yasaka
- Urbanization and Transport in Imperial Germany, by Satoshi Baba
- Comparative Study on the Making Process of Employers’ Associations in Engineering and Shipbuilding Industry in Some Districts of Britain and Germany, by Tomoji Onozuka
- Studies in Convention, Cooperation and Rationality, by Michihiro Kandori
- Bounded Rationality and Learning Behavior, by Hitoshi Matsushima
- The Determinants of Long-term Loans in Japan, by Shin-ichi Fukuda
- <1998> (Projects for 1998 are subject to change)
- The Development of Historiography and Social Sciences in Wartime and Postwar Japan, by Akira Hara
- Study on the “ComitJ InterministJriel de la Politique ExtJrieur” in France, by Isao Hirota
- Studies in Macroeconomics, by Katsuhito Iwai
- Interrelation between Japanese Business System and Accounting Rule: With Special Reference to the Main Bank System and Reciprocal Ownership, by Satoshi Daigo
- Study of Russian Peasantry in the 1920s, by Hiroshi Okuda
- Workplace Industrial Relations in the Post-war Era: Japan and England, by Tateshi Mori
- Studies on the Cross-section of Japanese Equity Returns, by Takao Kobayashi
- The Japanese Business Development and Economic Policy, by Haruhito Takeda
- International Comparison of the Housing Market, by Yoshitsugu Kanemoto
- Comparative Studies of the Electricity Supply Industry in Britain and Japan, by Kazuo Wada
- Stratified Structures of the World-Economy, by Masaki Takenouchi
- Industrial Structure and Economic Growth, by Hiroshi Yoshikawa
- A Theoretical Analysis of Redistribution Policy, by Toshihiro Ihori
- Statistical Analysis of Economic Time Series with Seasonality, by Naoto Kunitomo
- Industrial Structure and Macroeconomic Foundation, by Kiyohiko G. Nishimura
- International Comparative Studies on Housing Finance, by Tokutaro Shibata
- Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations, by Nobuki Mochida
- Review on the Deficiency Payment System for Milk, by Masamitsu Yasaka
- An Inter-Industrial Comparative Analysis of Effective Product Development Patterns, by Takahiro Fujimoto
- A Nonparametric Test on the Expected Utility Hypothesis, by Kazuya Kamiya
- Japanese Industrial Policy in the Period of Economic Recovery: The Priority Production Policy Revisited, by Tetsuji Okazaki
- How Britain Was and Should Be Described in Social Sciences: A Review on Its Images, by Tomoji Onozuka
- Studies in Convention, Cooperation and Rationality, by Michihiro Kandori
- Theory of Statistical Estimation and Its Applications, by Tatsuya Kubokawa
- The Role of Traditional Factors in Japanese Industrialization, by Masayuki Tanimoto
- Game Theoretic Analysis of Economic Norms, by Akihiko Matsui
- Seasonal Cycles and Business Cycles, by Shin-ichi Fukuda
- Asset Price Determination and Macro Economy, by Noriyuki Yanagawa
- RIJE Workshops
- The Workshop for Economic Theories and Contemporary Capitalism
- This workshop started from 17th June 1995. It aims at promoting cooperative research works on the structural changes in contemporary capitalism in the light of recent theories of political economy. It also intends to push forward researches in both basic and intermediary theories in political economy in view of recent capitalism.
- One of the focal points in the structural changes in capitalist economy since the 1970s has been the impact of micro-electronics (ME) information technologies. ME technologies were broadly incorporated in workplace under the pressure of protracted economic difficulties, and reintensified competition among capitalist firms in many ways. The monetary and financial system has also been widely restructured. All these changes have revitalized both globally and domestically the competitive market economy, but simultaneously increased its instability. The restructuring of capitalism through the digital revolution may thus be causing a historical reversal over a century for a more competitive free market. The basic theory of capitalism would then reinforce its relevancy as a frame of reference to many aspects of contemporary economic situations.
- The members of the workshop have more or less in common these hypothetical perspectives as well as an academic background in the Marx-Uno theories. The number of members is now sixteen. The workshop had four discussion meetings in 1997 on the reports as follows;
- 21st March 1997: Makoto Itoh (University of Tokyo), Dynamism of the Contemporary Capitalism”, Atsushi Shimizu (Musashi University), The Recent Development of Monetary Theory and Marx”, Koji Daikoku (Ryukoku University), Quantitative Theory of Money and the Theory of Central Bank”.
- 10th May 1997: Michiaki Obata (University of Tokyo), Reconstruction of the Theory of Business Cycle”, Harunobu Yokokawa (Musashi University), The Administered Capitalism: Structural Stage Theory about the Postwar Capitalism”, Hideaki Tanaka (University of Shiga), The Development of Market System and the Business Cycle”, Sosuke Hirai (Tokyo Kaijo Kasai Co.), Financial-Insurance Capital and the Advanced Information System”.
- 12th July 1997: Tetsuji Kawamura (Teikyo University), The Meanings of Pax Americana in the Stage Theory of Capitalism”, Masaki Handa (Tohoku Gakuin University), Contemporary Capitalism and the Cyber Space”, Osamu Sudoh (University of Tokyo), Digital Money and the Reorganization of Finance System”.
- 4th October 1997: Makoto Nishibe (Hokkaido University), Dynamics Theory of the Multilayer and Decentralized Market”, Kazutoshi Miyazawa (Ibaraki University), Credit System and Accumulation of Capital”, Yutaka Fukuda (Denki Tsushin University), The Waver Structure on Networking”, Yoji Takahashi (Shizuoka University), Keynesian Theory and the Marxian Accumulation Theory”.
- Two books that contains these reports are going to be published in 1998 with common title Marxian Political Economy.
- The Workshop on Modern Business Organization
- The purpose of the workshop is to promote communication among researchers in the area of corporate strategy and organizational behavior. The workshop accomplishes this purpose through providing those researchers with a communication place for presenting and discussing their research works. Although formal research conferences play the role of being such a place, this small-group meeting is particularly important for the research activities in their developing stage. Through participating in the workshop, researchers exchange their ideas and develop mutual understanding of the research in the area, which will eventually contribute to the enhancement of our knowledge on business organizations.
- The workshop was organized in June 1995 by faculty members in the field of Markets and Corporations (Business Administration), Faculty of Economics, the University of Tokyo. Those are Professor E. Daito, Professor Y. Umezawa, Professor K. Wada, Professor H. Katahira, Associate Professor T. Fujimoto, Associate Professor N. Takahashi and Associate Professor J. Shintaku. Other members of the workshop are graduate students and alumni of the Faculty and researchers outside the university who are interested in business organizations. The total number of the members is about thirty at present. The workshop is held twice a month in average during a semester. In principle, the time is from three to six o’clock on Wednesday, and the place is the Audio-Visual Room.
- In each session of the workshop, one or several members present their own research work in the first half of the time, and then others participate in the discussion in the left time. Members are diverse in their approach to and interest in the strategic or organizational issues of business organizations. Their empirical studies cover firms in various industries: the automobile industry, the electric and electronic industries, the communication industry, the synthetic fiber industry, the chemical industry, the pharmaceutical industry, venture businesses and so on.
- The followings are examples of the topics presented in the workshop in 1997.
- Effective Product Development in the Pharmaceutical Industry.
- Core Value Facilitating Organizational Learning.
- The Changes in the Vertical Inter-Firm Relationship in the Japanese Synthetic Fiber Industry.
- Cross-licensing: The Case of the Semiconductor Industry.
- New Wave of the Rapid Software Development.
- The History of Globalizaion in Toshiba.
- Inter-Organizational Relationships as the Factor of the Firm's Growth.
- Efficient Product Development through Global Architecture Management.
- The Research Group on the
- Contemporary World Economy
- In the 1990s we live in a historical transition period. First, Pax Russo-Americana was over because of the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Second, the Golden Age” of modern capitalism in Pax Americana was also over in the 1970s. We do not have a stable political and economical system any more. From the viewpoint of the present transition period, how can we formulate a historical transformation of modern capitalism in the twentieth century?
- The purpose of this research group is to promote cooperative research works on the structural change in the contemporary world economy. It has five small research groups; (1) on the international trade and finance, (2) on the US economy, (3) on the economy of Europe, (4) on the Japanese economy and (5) on the world economy and business cycle.
- The number of members is now twenty-five. The research meeting is held, on principle, four times in every year. In the meeting, one of the group members gives a presentation, followed by members’ discussion on the issues raised from it. The meetings from October 1996 to September 1997 were as follows:
- October 12: Tokutaro Shibata (University of Tokyo), US Economy After the End of the 1980s”.
- December 21: Koretaka Kono (Takushoku University), Japanese Public Finance in the 1980s”.
- April 12: Masahiro Fujikawa (Hosei University), Japanese Monetary Policy After the Nixon Shock”.
- September 13: Mitsuhiko Takumi (Rissho University), Book Review; R. I. Mckinnon, The Rules of the Game: International Money and Exchange Rate, 1996, MIT Press, B. Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System, 1996, Princeton U. Press”.
- Through these meetings, an idea to work out a series of books on the contemporary world economy has grown. A Publisher, Nihon-hyoronsha is interested in the idea, and agrees to publish five books in a series.
- Macroeconomics Workshop
- This workshop's main focus is macroeconomic theory and macroeconomic empirical analysis, but it has a wider scope than a traditional macroeconomic workshop in incorporating, for example, industry analysis and law and economics, so long as they have a macroeconomic perspective. The workshop is usually held on Thursday from 5pm to 6:30pm throughout the academic year. The participants are mainly faculty members and graduate students of the University of Tokyo, but the workshop is open to all economists who are interested in the topic. A bulletin of the future workshop schedule is routinely circulated among other universities and research institutions. Professors Hiroshi Yoshikawa, Fumio Hayashi and Kiyohiko G. Nishimura organize this year's workshop.
- The following are speakers and their titles in the seminars up until September 30:
- April 24: Mitsuhiro Fukao (Keio University), Japan's Financial System and the Structure of Corporate Governance”.
- May 1: Makoto Saito (Kyoto University), An Empirical Investigation of Intergenerational Resource Allocation”.
- May 8 (Joint with Micro Workshop): George Mailath (University of Pennsylvania), Heterogeneous Outcomes in Labor Markets with Two Sided Search”.
- May 15: Shin-ichi Fukuda (University of Tokyo), The Role of Long-Term Loans for Economic Growth”.
- May 22: Makoto Shirai (Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry), Measurement of Sectoral Technological Progress in Japan Revisited”.
- May 29: Masanao Aoki (University of California, Los Angeles), Stochastic Equilibrium Dynamics of Market Shares”.
- June 5: Toshiaki Watanabe (Tokyo Metropolitan University), Option Pricing under Stochastic Volatility: A Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo Approach”.
- June 12: Masaya Sakuragawa (Nagoya City University), Is Aging Harmful for Growth?: Theory and Evidence”.
- June 19: Yasushi Iwamoto (Kyoto University), Do Borders Matter?”.
- July 3: Hidehiko Ishihara (University of Tokyo), A Demand-Constrained Economy: A New Approach to Keynesian Economics”.
- July 10: Akihisa Shibata (Kyoto University), Financial Cycles”.
- September 17 (Joint with Micro Workshop): Koichi Hamada (Yale University & Kobe University), Why Are the Number of Suits So Few in Japan?”.
- September 18 (Joint with Micro Workshop): Nobuhiro Kiyotaki (London School of Economics), Private Sector Development in Transition Economy”.
- Microeconomics Workshop
- This workshop focuses on current Research on microeconomics such as game theory, general equilibrium theory, and contract theory. The members are faculty and graduate students who are actively engaged in research in microeconomics. The group meets every Tuesday at 5pm throughout the academic year, with each one and a half hour session devoted to the presentation and discussion of a research paper by a member or an invited speaker. The seminars from April 1997 to December 1997 were as follows:
- April 15: Kota Eguchi (Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo), Job Security Rather Than High Payment in Self-selection: Wage Profile, Layoff and Incentives for Skill Accumulation under Adverse Selection”.
- April 22: Dominique Peeters (Tsukuba University and Catholic University of Louvain), Prices, Location and Monopoly”.
- May 6: Takashi Shimizu, Procedural Rationality, Nash Equilibrium and Focal Points”.
- May 8: George Mailath (University of Pennsylvania), Heterogenous Outcomes in Labor Markets with Two Sided Search”.
- May 13: Roger Lagunoff (University of Pennsylvania), A Theory of Constitutional Standards and Civil Liberty”. Larry Epstein (University of Toronto), Uncertainty Aversion”.
- May 20: Naoki Shintoyo (Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo), Firm Specific Training and Unemployment” (in Japanese).
- May 27: Ken-ichi Shimomura (Osaka University), The Walras Core of an Economy and Its Limit Theorem”.
- June 3: Satoshi Kawanishi (Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo), Evolutionary Cycles in a Model of Financial Intermediation”.
- June 10: Taiji Furusawa (Fukushima University), Adjustment Costs and Gradual Trade Liberalization”.
- June 17: Tomas Sjostrom (Harvard University and Osaka University), Moral Hazard and Overlapping Generations with Endogenous Occupational Choice”.
- June 24: Se-il Mun (Tohoku University), Traffic Network and Multi-Country System”.
- July 1: Koji Ishibashi (Keio University), Optimal Financial Contracts for Long-Term Projects under the Presence of Competing Firms”.
- July 15: Toshiki Honda (Stanford University), Optimal Portfolio Choice for Unobservable and Regime-Switching Mean Returns”.
- October 4: Serdar Dinc (University of Tokyo), Bank Reputation, Bank Commitment and the Effects of Competition in Credit Markets”.
- October 21: Hitoshi Matsushima (University of Tokyo), Entrepreneurship and Inter-Contextual Reasoning”.
- October 28: Shigeru Matsushima (Ministry of International Trade and Industry), Organization of Small and Medium Enterprise: History and Functions”. (in Japanese)
- November 4: Jota Ishikawa (Hitotsubashi University), Control of Foreign Pollution through Input Restrictions under Asymmetric Information”.
- November 11: Tomotaka Fujita (Seikei University), Contract, Bargaining and the Legal Rule: An Recent Aspect of Law and Economics. (in Japanese)
- November 18: Akihiko Matsui (Tsukuba University and University of Tokyo), Policy Reversals: A Democratic Nixon and a Republican Clinton”.
- November 25: Kiminori Matsuyama (Northwestern University), Growing through Cycles” Shigehiro Serizawa (Shiga University), Strategy-proof and Symmetric Social Choice Functions for Public Good Economies”.
- December 2: Shinji Yamashige (Hitotsubashi University), Social Signaling and Optimal Income Redistribution”.
- December 9: Yun, Kwan Koo (University of Tokyo), The Lens Condition for Factor Price Equalization”.
- The Research Group on the Korean Automobile Industry
- The Research Group on the Korean Automobile Industry, established in June 1994, continued to be active throughout the 1996 and 97 calendar year. The purpose of this group is to deepen our understanding about the dynamics and diversity of the Korean and Asian automobile industry. In order to accomplish this purpose, the group has held bimonthly meeting/lectures involving both academic researchers and practitioners in this field. Professor Kazuro Saguchi and Professor Takahiro Fujimoto of the University of Tokyo, as well as Mr. Ryuji Fukuda of Sogo Kyoiku Kikaku Inc., played a leading role in organizing the bimonthly meetings at the Faculty of Economics building. The number of the members have grown to 54 as of September 1996. The clerical office was run by Mr. Kiyoung Ko and Mr. Jaewhon Oh, the doctoral students of the Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
- As a summary of the group's activity in the first 17 meetings (June 1994 ~ March 1997), the research group published a RIJE discussion paper, Kankoku Jidosha Sangyo no Genjo to Kongo” [The Korean Automobile Industry: Present and Future] (Fujimoto, Ko and Oh, eds., 97-J-8). The paper contains synopsis and presentation materials of the 17 lectures.
- Since the summer of 1997, the group decided to expand its research scope by including not only Korean but also Asian automobile industries. The first meeting of the expanded group was held in July 1997, when Mr. Yoshitaro Iiyama, President of AMAX Consulting, gave a lecture on technology transfer to Asian auto industries.