Recovery of Japan's industries will come only as quickly as it can stabilise its power supply, New Zealand Asia Institute director professor Hugh Whittaker said.
The intensity 9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami and aftershocks that hit the country over the last several days have crippled its nuclear power generating capability and damaged a lot of its oil refining capacity.
"The first thing is to determine what is going to happen with the nuclear power stations. The recovery of electricity and predictability of supply is crucial in getting the economy moving on its feet again," Whittaker said at a institute conference on the economic impact of the disaster.
"Basic infrastructure has undergone a serious blow. I would be looking at how quickly that basic infrastructure can be stabilised and supply Japanese manufacturing again because that is the lifeblood."
Whittaker said Japan's strong just-in-time concept of production and inventory management, an epitome of efficiency in the pre-earthquake industrialised country, is now negatively affecting economic recovery.
The rolling electricity supply initiated by Tokyo Electric, while helpful to householders, is "hugely disruptive" to industries because the supply chains feeding Japan's industries are very much interdependent. "You might as well stop the whole thing because if different parts stop at different times, you can't actually get your activities going again,''he said.
While most of the headquarters and research and development of Japan's iconic industries are in Tokyo, their manufacturing bases and sources of supply are geographically spread throughout the country, "requiring about seven hours for parts and supplies to be brought in and out" of assembly lines.
The interdependency of volume manufacturers in manufacturing centres and small contractors in outlying areas "is very tight" and that is why most automotive and electronic manufacturers declared early on to close not only in earthquake and tsunami hit areas like Sendai but elsewhere in Japan "because they knew they'd run out of parts," he said.
"The incapacitation of heavy and other industries means a serious blow on Japan's industrial capability," he said.
The semiconductors industry in the area around Sendai assembles some 30 per cent of the world's flash memory for computers, and this commodity alone would now be in short supply, he said.
In terms of the toll to the Japanese people and their social structure, Asian Studies sociologist Dr Rumi Sakamoto said it will take a long time for the "psychological health" of the people to heal, "much longer than Kobe [earthquake].''
She said the "whole disaster made it clear that there is inequality in Japanese society" and that the discipline exhibited by the Japanese people is starting to show cracks with "many questioning the authority of government authorities", which before the quake was rarely seen.
Mistrust of the information released by the authorities is also happening, she said, because what the government is saying or not saying is often contradicted by widespread media coverage of the disaster.
Source: www.stuff.co.nz
The intensity 9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami and aftershocks that hit the country over the last several days have crippled its nuclear power generating capability and damaged a lot of its oil refining capacity.
"The first thing is to determine what is going to happen with the nuclear power stations. The recovery of electricity and predictability of supply is crucial in getting the economy moving on its feet again," Whittaker said at a institute conference on the economic impact of the disaster.
"Basic infrastructure has undergone a serious blow. I would be looking at how quickly that basic infrastructure can be stabilised and supply Japanese manufacturing again because that is the lifeblood."
Whittaker said Japan's strong just-in-time concept of production and inventory management, an epitome of efficiency in the pre-earthquake industrialised country, is now negatively affecting economic recovery.
The rolling electricity supply initiated by Tokyo Electric, while helpful to householders, is "hugely disruptive" to industries because the supply chains feeding Japan's industries are very much interdependent. "You might as well stop the whole thing because if different parts stop at different times, you can't actually get your activities going again,''he said.
While most of the headquarters and research and development of Japan's iconic industries are in Tokyo, their manufacturing bases and sources of supply are geographically spread throughout the country, "requiring about seven hours for parts and supplies to be brought in and out" of assembly lines.
The interdependency of volume manufacturers in manufacturing centres and small contractors in outlying areas "is very tight" and that is why most automotive and electronic manufacturers declared early on to close not only in earthquake and tsunami hit areas like Sendai but elsewhere in Japan "because they knew they'd run out of parts," he said.
"The incapacitation of heavy and other industries means a serious blow on Japan's industrial capability," he said.
The semiconductors industry in the area around Sendai assembles some 30 per cent of the world's flash memory for computers, and this commodity alone would now be in short supply, he said.
In terms of the toll to the Japanese people and their social structure, Asian Studies sociologist Dr Rumi Sakamoto said it will take a long time for the "psychological health" of the people to heal, "much longer than Kobe [earthquake].''
She said the "whole disaster made it clear that there is inequality in Japanese society" and that the discipline exhibited by the Japanese people is starting to show cracks with "many questioning the authority of government authorities", which before the quake was rarely seen.
Mistrust of the information released by the authorities is also happening, she said, because what the government is saying or not saying is often contradicted by widespread media coverage of the disaster.
Source: www.stuff.co.nz
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