Pressure on military research bound to increase in Japan

JAPAN'S former ministry of international trade and industry was known as Mighty Miti in the days when it forged an industrial policy for an emerging "Japan Inc". Miti is no more and its successor, Meti (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), is less mighty but the concept of promoting Japan as a techno-industrial superpower lives on.

A kind of Super-Miti has emerged (in a rather low profile way) in the shape of the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program, or SIP for short. Not quite as grabby a title as Miti but SIP's ambitions for the world's third largest economy are more muscular than Miti's were.

SIP is "spearheaded" by a body with the equally cumbersome title (in English) of the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation or CSTI, which is situated within the Cabinet Office and is headed, ex-officio, by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plus a slew of other government ministers. SIP has in its sights an ambitious programme for developing Japan - 10 sectors of industrial and technological excellence which go well beyond the industries, such as carmaking and consumer electronics, that characterised much of the nation's post-war economic development.