Small firms in Japan face a growing need for self-reliance, a need to shed or trim their status as permanent subcontractors for large companies. This is especially true of small manufacturers. With domestic production moving increasingly to low-cost overseas locations, they have no choice but to develop their own products and markets.

This year's government report on small companies describes them as the "standard bearer of economic structural reform." It expects them, rightly, to play a leading role in breaking the old customs and practices that are stifling innovation in much of the nation's industrial sector.

A nation's industry consists of both large and small companies. But big business represents, numerically, only the tip of the corporate pyramid, which is supported by a vast number of small companies. The presence of enterprising and vigorous small firms is an essential tonic for the rigid economic structure dominated by big business.