Japan’s Space Programme

Japan is a wonderfully unique place and could be said to be a realm of contrasts, anomalies and anachronisms. But, at the same time, it is Asia’s first modern and industrialised nation and has been involved deeply in world trade for over four decades [1]. Contemporary Japan is a great success story of twentieth century. In various fields, Japan challenged Western hegemony and succeeded in setting world­beating standards. The world admired, applauded and envied Japan. In fact during 1980s for a short period, it appeared that Japan may even dislodge the United States from global leadership positions in certain areas [2, p. 191]. It had maintained itself as the world’s second largest economy from 1968 until 2010, till the time China overtook it. This probably happened because of the ‘rise of China’ and the change in economic and political circumstances with Japan at the end of twentieth century. Again twenty-first century has arrived with certain positive impetus to take Japan towards a brighter future.

It is important to remember that Japan could be viewed as a ‘victim’ of Peace Constitution as opposed to the view that it was not born with a Peace Constitution. The Peace Constitution was thrust upon it post-World War II by the United States [3]. Probably, it is the unique country which was ‘told’ to renounce its right to build and deploy armed forces. Their own constitution does not allow them to have a military force even for self-defence. As per the Article 9 of their constitution, they cannot use war as a sovereign right for settling international disputes and cannot maintain land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential.[110]

The positive aspect of not investing military could be that it allowed Japan to concentrate on other areas of development. Japan the only country to face the wrath of nuclear weapons emerged like a phoenix from the 1945 defeat and became one of the most powerful economies in the 1980s. One reason for this to happen could be its policy of moving away from labour-intensive textile production to consumer elec­tronics. They created a niche market for their products like television sets, radios and hi-fis. During same time, the US industry was concentrating on pioneering large – scale goods for the space programme and military industrial complex [2, pp. 31,38].

Japanese industry was found focusing more on the audio-video products and concentrating on a market involving customers from middle-class background. On the other hand, the US agencies were investing into technologies which had both economic and military ramifications in the long term. Space technology was one such technology which was attracting the attention of both the civilian and military scientists. For the US industry, also this was a challenging task. Over a period of time, the US industry started adopting technological innovations from other industries and looked for synergistic solutions for the rapid development of their space programme. On the other hand, Japan could be said to be late starter at the global level. However, same was not the case at Asian level.

Japan is the first Asian country to send satellite into the space (February 1970). It is the fourth country in space after erstwhile USSR, USA and France. Only two countries were successful in sending a satellite to the geostationary orbit before Japan and also the spacecrafts to Moon and Mars. Japan is an important participant in the International Space Station (ISS), with its own orbiting laboratory, Kibo. Onboard of the American space shuttle few Japanese have gone to the outer space also some have experience of walking in the space (spacewalk). The first media representative into the space was a Japanese journalist who flew to the Mir space station in 1990 [4, p. xii]. He was funded by a commercial enterprise that probably paid approximately $12-14 million to the Soviet Union for this launch.

Overall, though Japan is a late entrant in this field as per the global standards but has made significant contributions in the space arena. This chapter takes a closer look at the various facets of Japanese space programme inclusive of its purpose, structure, technology, international cooperation, military aspects, economics and commerce.