How the Japanese State Deals with International Oil Majors?: Internationalization, Cartels, and Licensing

Abstract

From a historical perspective, the central concern for late industrializers was how to establish and promote the national economy. This meant the protection of strategic but infant industries from foreign competition and nurture them to be competitive. Regulation was required and protective tariffs have been most instrumental. As with all advanced Western countries, Japan, as it entered the modern world, had to protect and nurture its own industry by erecting tariffs. However, the new leadership, so-called Meiji oligarches, failed to recover the right of tariff autonomy that was lost by the unequal treaties concluded before their seizure of power.' But the loss did not lead to free trade. Mercantilism prevailed as they experimented various sorts of industrial policy that would meet both the necessity of protection and the pressures from the enforced free trade.