Until only a few years ago, Japan prided itself on leading the world in the field of manufacturing. Industry as a whole is usually classified into four sectors: agriculture-forestry-fishery, mining, manufacturing, and services. (The mining industry is virtually nonexistent in resource-poor Japan, and coal is costly to mine.)

Japan is not competitive internationally in the agriculture-forestry-fishery sector either, as it imports a large portion of its food requirements, other than rice, and its food self-sufficiency ratio is quite low at around 40 percent.

Nor does the country have a competitive edge in the services sectors such as finance, information, communications, medicine, legal services and education. It would require extraordinary efforts to make Japan's services industry competitive on a global scale. It has dropped behind China, South Korea, Singapore and India in the process of economic globalization.