The Noda Cabinet on June 5 endorsed a fiscal 2011 white book for promoting Japan's core manufacturing technologies. The report, jointly compiled by the trade and industry ministry, the labor and welfare ministry, and the education ministry, expresses a sense of crisis over the fact that market shares for Japanese manufacturing companies operating abroad are rapidly falling despite their reputedly high technological levels.

The white book calls on firms making consumer products to seriously consider for whom they are making products. It will become important for them to correctly find out the needs of consumers and to send optimum products to markets.

If they think that because they are making products that are technologically advanced, consumers will buy them anyway, it is a sign of self-defeating complacence.