Japan and Globalization

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Japan, home of some of the largest multinational technology corporations in the world, has been influenced in myriad ways through globalization. The effects of globalization on Japan provide valuable insights into the transformation of Japanese society. Global processes have increased wages and homelessness, strengthened environmental management programs, shifted governance towards regionalism, and threatened linguistic diversity in Japan.
Numerous studies on Japan’s economy provide both the positive and negative effects of globalization. Nakamura (2013) used Japanese wage censuses from 1998, 2000, and 2002 to explore the effects of inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) on the wages of Japanese workers in manufacturing industries (p. 401). Nakamura (2013) concluded that foreign ownership, especially of fifty-percent or more, increases workers’ wages (p. 402). While these wage increases are positive, such increases imply a growing divide between the incomes of workers for globalizing firms and workers for non-globalizing firms and between the wages of large firms and small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), since most large firms participate in FDI whereas SMEs do not (Nakamura, 2013, p. 396). Such conclusions are not surprising; in an increasingly connected world, successful businesses must be able to coordinate across national borders. Wage increases and income disparities are some notable effects of globalization on Japan’s economy.
The process of continuous economic transformation and development in Japan has not been solely positive. Hasegawa (2005) attributes the rise of homelessness in Japan to three structural changes: “(a) a shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, (b) urban redevelopment, and (c) g...

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...om http://www.jstor.org/stable/27785046
Nakamura, M. (2013). Globalization and sustainability of Japan’s internal labor markets: Foreign direct investment (FDI) and wages at Japanese manufacturing firms. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 48(4), 396-412. doi: 10.1177/0021909613493601
Seargeant, P. (2005). Globalisation and reconfigured English in Japan. World Englishes, 24(3), 309-319. doi: 10.1111/j.0083-2919.2005.00412.x
Tsukamoto, T. (2011). Devolution, new regionalism and economic revitalization in Japan: Emerging urban political economy and politics of scale in Osaka–Kansai. Cities, 28(4), 281-289. doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2011.02.004
Tsukamoto, T. (2012). Neoliberalization of the developmental state: Tokyo's bottom-up politics and state rescaling in Japan. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 36(1), 71-89. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.01057.x

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