How Modern Japan Is Described in Textbooks around the World
(Select a Country to review excerpts)
Europe ……………
Austria,
France,
Germany,
Switzerland,
UK
Asia ……………… China,
India,
Indonesia,
Korea,
Malaysia,
Russia,
Singapore,
Vietnam
North America ……
Mexico,
USA
South America ……
Brazil
EUROPE
Germany
Title:
World Geography
Pages: 5, 25-26
Publisher: Klett-Perthes, Gotha, Germany, 2002
Excerpt:
Industrial Countries in the World Economy
Industrial countries need a lot of raw material, so that they can provide a variety of industrial products. But some of the leading industrial countries in this world, Japan for example, have limited access to these raw materials. In contrast to that, many areas have a lot of raw material but relatively little industry. Therefore, many channels of transportation connect the globe. An interconnected world economy is important for all countries. Yet only with a good transportation infrastructure can effective imports and exports be made possible. These worldwide economic connections create global intertwining and weave a close net of cooperation across the world. Each country needs to understand that because of these necessary alliances, the world market depends on each participant.
There are some centers in the worldwide economy, the USA, Europe, and East Asia for example, that are in competition with each other. South East Asia, meanwhile, has become an increasingly more serious competitor within this group.
Japanese Producers Escape to Thailand
Bangkok, Thailand is seeking to change from a largely agricultural economy to more of an industrial state. The relatively rapid growth of their economy is due to the growth of exports, political stability, and the extremely low wages which make it an interesting base for foreign countries. More and more Japanese business people have discovered in this South East Asian land an ideal spot for their industrial production. Thailand’s political regime understands the need to give foreign investors special locations to establish their businesses, as well as generous tax incentives. Wages there are even lower than in Singapore, Taiwan and the Philippines.
Japan – An Industrial World Power without Raw Material
Today’s Japanese economic miracle rests on a foundation of 800,000 industrial companies, which employ more than 20,000,000 people. Other countries harbor a mixture of admiration and possibly some secret fear when the talk is about exporting, or the high-technology world leaders from Japan. But what really lies behind every single Japanese person? In 1991, their economic production was about 39,000 Deutschmark per person (approx. 2,500,000 Yen). After WWII, the ground rules have been established which developed into the gigantic export industry of today’s Japan. Harbors and industrial areas were combined. Through this, they reclaimed new land by creating embankment barriers and filling up areas with soil to create new coast line properties that could be put to industrial use. Through this procedure, they created 650 square kilometers of usable land through the mid-1970s - in Tokyo, Osaka- and Ise-Bay near Nagoya. For example, in the Mitsushima (?) industrial complex near Kobe, by 1972 they had already employed 45,000 workers in 93 industrial firms.
