As technology of this sort, based on user needs, makes headlines in Japan, more companies are likely to follow suit, developing technological, labor-saving solutions to a wide variety of needs faced by nursing homes, eldercare facilities, and households with older adults. Even solely for this viscosity-adding vending machine, Fuji Electric, an industrial electronics firm, began selling a mass-produced unit in 2020, aiming at sales of 3,000 by 2023.92 Adding thickener so as not to produce lumps requires the machine to measure precise amounts of hot water while both mixing with a paddle and jiggling the cup93—precisely the sort of industrial precision in which Japanese firms tend to excel.
Conclusion
Japan’s current emerging technological trajectories are driven primarily by the private sector, which sees a large potential demand for products and services, given the depth and scale of the tangible social problems arising from labor shortages and eldercare needs.
Government support has bolstered many instances of private sector solutions aimed at these problems. The “Abenomics” reforms promulgated by late prime minister Shinzo Abe (who was in power from 2012 to 2020) provided a first wave of legitimization and supported certain categories of concrete deployment of technologies. In the “third arrow” of reform (the first two being monetary policy easing and fiscal expenditures), over one hundred specific areas of reform were listed in annual documents listing key performance indicators (KPIs).94 Demographic trajectory technologies, such as digital health records and robotics in nursing, were included, as were general targets such as extending the “healthy” life expectancy. (See Appendix.)
This government support, however, differs from traditional “industrial policy” as seen in the heyday of Japan’s rapid postwar growth. These KPIs do not entail massive subsidies and the use of financial institutions to strategically guide areas of development; instead, they are guidelines, which are sometimes removed when they are not on track for success.
Looking forward, we are likely to see electoral dynamics supporting eldercare and increasing the productivity of Japanese workers to pay for social security and healthcare. Local political leaders, able to address some of the pressing regional issues, such as mobility and transportation, and enabling eldercare and healthcare workers to better serve local populations, may be able to enjoy bragging rights that convert into votes in local elections. Special economic zones can be a useful tool for regional and local experimentation.
Technological trajectories can be influenced by politically driven regulations that arise from key events such as tragic accidents. For example, in April 2019, an eighty-seven-year-old former METI official lost control of his car and struck several pedestrians in a crosswalk in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district, killing a young mother and her three-year-old daughter. National news coverage of the accident led to Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko announcing subsidies of up to 90 percent for devices to be installed in cars designed to prevent accidents caused by owners hitting the accelerator instead of the brakes.95 While young males are statistically far more likely to cause fatal traffic accidents, uncommon accidents like this can galvanize the public to move toward technical solutions, rather than toward enabling seniors to drive as long as possible. Japan’s taxi industry has lobbied successfully to limit ride-sharing services such as Uber by requiring that rideshare drivers be employees of taxi companies. However, the accelerating needs of seniors for mobility, coupled with sensational news of such accidents, can lead to political tipping points. Yet, rather than pitting one interest group against another pervasive voting bloc, regulations supporting technical solutions, such as assistive and autonomous driving, can be accelerated.
Japan is undoubtedly in uncharted demographic territory. If firms inside and outside Japan can use the country’s aging and shrinking population as a development opportunity while the nation remains wealthy overall and can foster firms capable of devising technological solutions along the trajectories that we have identified in this paper, and support them through political and regulatory moves, we may end this inquiry on a note of cautious optimism. Subsequent papers in the project will take deep dives into specific areas, such as agriculture, transportation, healthcare, and eldercare.
Appendix: Selected Abenomics Third Arrow KPIs
| Health, Medicine, and Caregiving | ||
| Year listed | Description | Achieved? |
| 2013 | By 2020, extend the “healthy life expectancy” from the 2010 level (male = 70.42, female = 73.62) by one year. (Revised in 2014 to extend by two years by 2025, revised in 2019 to extend by three years by 2040) | → achieved |
| 2013 | By FY2020, increase the proportion of large hospitals (with over 400 beds) utilizing electronic medical records to 90% | → achieved |
| 2013 | By 2020, implement 20 cases of clinical trials and studies based on registered data of patients and diseases | → achieved |
| 2013 | By 2020, establish around 10 Japanese medical centers abroad (Revised in 2017 from 10 by 2020. There was 1 in 2013) | → achieved |
| 2013 | By 2020, increase the market size for robotic devices in nursing care to ¥50 billion | → Not achieved, new goal in 2020 to sell 25,000 robot nursing care devices by 2025 |
| 2013 | By 2030, increase the number of robotic devices for nursing care to 8,000 units | → achieved |
| Advancement of mobility services, eliminating “mobility disadvantaged” people, and transforming logistics | ||
| Year listed | Description | → Achieved? |
| 2018 | Commence operation of driverless autonomous vehicles on public roads in designated regions by 2020 | → achieved |
| 2018 | Commence operation of driverless autonomous vehicle services in more than 100 areas nationwide | → achieved |
| 2017 | By 2020, increase the share of new passenger cars equipped with automated braking system to over 90% | → achieved |
| 2013 | Increase the share of vehicles (stock) with driving safety support devices/systems to 20% by 2020, and obtain 30% of the world market | → achieved |
| 2013 | Increase the share of vehicles with driving safety support features/systems to approximately 100% of Japan’s entire domestic stock of vehicles | → achieved |
Source: “Growth strategies until now,” Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, https://www.cas.go.jp/jp/seisaku/seicho/kettei.html. | ||
Notes
1 Phillip Y. Lipscy points out a broad range of economic areas in which Japan has been a harbinger for phenomena that occurred elsewhere later. Phillip Y. Lipscy, “Japan: The Harbinger State,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 24, no. 1 (2023): 80–97, doi:10.1017/S1468109922000329.
2 An anthropological study of robots in eldercare settings revealed how the builders in government laboratories were not aware of or interested in the actual deployment situations of the robots. James Wright, Robots Won’t Save Japan: An Ethnography of Eldercare Automation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023).
3 Kozo Yamamura, “Germany and Japan in a New Phase of Capitalism: Confronting the Past and Future,” in The End of Diversity?: Prospects for German and Japanese Capitalism, eds. Kozo Yamamura and Wolfgang Streeck (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 115–46.
4 Kenji E. Kushida, “Leading Without Followers: How Politics and Market Dynamics Trapped Innovations in Japan’s Domestic ‘Galapagos’ Telecommunications Sector,” Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade 11, no. 3 (2011): 279–307, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10842-011-0104-7.
5 Kenji Kushida, “How Silicon Valley Can Drive Closer U.S.-Japan Collaboration,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 9, 2022, https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/03/09/how-silicon-valley-can-drive-closer-u.s.-japan-collaboration-pub-86601.
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9 For example, historically, in its early days as a nation, the United States faced extreme labor shortages coupled with an abundance of natural resources such as wood, leading Alexis de Tocqueville to lament the wasteful use of wood in building houses—a contrast with Europe, where timber was scarce and labor was abundant, leading to labor-intensive craftsman production that conserved wood. During World War II, the United States concentrated its efforts on aviation technologies such as jet engines, as well as on the development of nuclear weapons. In the Cold War era, the United States and the Soviet Union were concerned with ballistic missiles and the “space race,” leading to the rapid development of transistors and semiconductors to handle massive computational needs.
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91 “コーヒー、緑茶…とろみ飲料じわり人気 病院や介護施設に自販機続々”[Thickened Beverages, Such as Coffee and Green Tea, Slowly Gain Popularity; Increasingly Installed in Hospitals and Care Facilities], Mainichi Sinbum, May 10, 2019, https://mainichi.jp/articles/20190510/k00/00m/040/291000c.
92 Reo Takahashi, “｢とろみ飲料｣自動調理器が介護施設で担う使命” [The mission of the “Tomi Beverage” automatic cooker at nursing care facilities], Toyo Keizai, December 7, 2021, https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/472711.
93 “富士電機が本格展開する「とろみ飲料自動調理機」で狙う顧客” [Target customers for Fuji Electric’s full-fledged “Thickened Beverage Automatic Cooking Machine”], Newswitch, October 10, 2021, https://newswitch.jp/p/29141.
94 For more on Abenomics’ Third Arrow reforms, see Kenji E. Kushida, “Abenomics’ Third Arrow: Fostering Future Competitiveness?” in Japan Decides 2017: The Japanese General Election, eds. Robert J. Pekkanen et al. (Springer International Publishing, 2018), 261–295; Kenji E. Kushida, “Abenomics and Japan’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Is the Third Arrow Pointed in the Right Direction for Global Competition in the Silicon Valley Era?” in The Political Economy of the Abe Government and Abenomics Reforms, eds. Takeo Hoshi and Phillip Y. Lipscy (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 394–420.
95 “東京都、急発進防止装置の購入費用の9割を補助へ…小池知事「ペダル踏み間違い対策は緊急課題」” [Tokyo metropolitan government to subsidize 90% of purchase cost of rapid acceleration prevention device—Governor Koike: ‘ measures to combat accidental wrong pedal stepping is an immediate issue] Response, June 12, 2019, https://response.jp/article/2019/06/12/323361.html.
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