• Current Industrial and Technological Trends in Aerospace
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.3-14
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• 2010

In this paper, I will introduce brief history and industrial structure of japanese aircraft industry, and analyze the reasons of recent restructuring of it. Even though japanese aircraft industry is known as having a high level technologies, it has faced serious problems since 1990's, because of the end of cold war, economic shrinking, fast development of new entrants such as China, and political relationship of her most important ally, U.S.A. But after 2000, realizing situation will be worse if nothing changed, japan started restructuring of aircraft industry. Restructuring has been carried out not only in the industry, but also in the whole national decision making system including government organization such as METI and R&D organization, JAXA. Almost at the same time, a few new plans, including MRJ Project, were built to revitalize the aircraft industry. Watching the process of these tries might be necessary to understand, analyze, and anticipate japan and world's future aircraft industry, which this paper is aiming at.