著者

山本 健兒

出版者

法政大学

雑誌

経済志林 (ISSN:00229741)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.69, no.4, pp.271-302, 2002-03-28

被引用文献数

3

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The chief aim of this paper is a reexamination, within a Japanese context, of the "learning region" concept. Since the mid l990s, this concept has often been employed in the economic geography of the Western World, where it generally focuses upon industrial clusters of high-technology small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) under the pressure of economic globalization. However, the same concept can also be applied to the middle-tech and low-tech manufacturing industries in the l970s. A concrete instance is aptly provided by the Suwa-Okaya district of Nagano Prefecture in Japan. In this region, after World War II, precision machine industry was developed, followed in the l970s by micro-electronics industry for office instruments; together, both SMEs and larger corporations learned technologies and skills of NC (numerically controlled) machines with and from each other. The Precision Technology Research Institute of Nagano Prefecture played an important role for the establishment of the NC Technology Research Association, in which over fifty corporations took part; more than half of them were based in the Suwa-Okaya district. Through the activities of the association, participants could obtain knowledge of NC machines. At first, the skills accumulated in individual firms as tacit knowledge, which, in the course of association activities, was transformed to codified knowledge. With the collaboration of a machine manufacturer located outside the district, one of the participating SMEs contributed to innovations of NC lathe technology. In l982, due to diffusion and skill development among SMEs in Nagano Prefecture, the association was dissolved. But the same year saw the birth of its successor: a new association, which continues its activity today. The sustainability of the Suwa-Okaya district as an industrial cluster can, at least in part, be attributed to the network of local corporations.