Current State History Forecast Top News 5 Page  1   2   3    The Automotive Industry Drives the Japanese Economy    There was a time when production, that is to say the Japanese manufacturing industry, was so overwhelmingly strong that Japan was said to be the "factory of the world." It began shortly after World War II with the textile industry, followed by the steel and chemical industries. From the post-war economic boom onward, consumer and industrial electronics gained strength. However, Taiwan, Korea, and now China caught up with Japan in terms of consumer electronics, and we have seen, for example, related Japanese plants being moved overseas or scaled down. The production line of Nissan Motor where robot machines stand in rows in Tochigi Plant    During the 1980s, Japan was the world leader in semiconductors. At one point, it had an 80% share of the world market for Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) storage elements. But, with the rapid growth of Korean manufacturers and the recovery of American firms, major Japanese players pulled out of this market, one by one. There are no longer any remnants of what used to be an industry that was closely associated with Japan. The same is happening in the case of personal computers. The exception in this field is digital cameras. When OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer; production under the brand name of another company) is included, digital cameras manufactured in Japan account for a 75% share of the global market.    Even under such a climate, the automotive industry retains a top global position. It is an industry that is representative of Japan in every aspect. Statistics announced by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry show that value of the domestic production of automobiles has reached nearly 38 trillion yen, accounting for 13% total output by the Japanese manufacturing industry. The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association estimates that more than 10% of Japanese workers, or roughly 7 million people, are employed in fields related to automobile manufacturing. The number of cars produced in Japan in 2002 reached 8.62 million, as compared with 5.12 million in Germany and 5.02 million in the Untied States. Japan is truly the world's top manufacturer of cars.    There are several reasons why automotives have come to represent strong industry in Japan today and show outstanding performance while other traditional manufacturing industries are struggling. An automobile is comprised of twenty to thirty thousand parts, and combined strength in many fields, such as machine tools, metal molding, robotics and electronics, become essential. In this sense, conditions were favorable for Japan, which has a broad industrial base. Furthermore, the spread of the Just-in-Time production system originated by Toyota, Japan's technological development capabilities as represented by hybrid cars, and the success of offshore production in the US as well as Europe are some of the other reasons.