The 136th Installment
The “1940 System” and AIIT
by Hiroaki Itakura,
Professor
One of the most influential views on the Japanese management system in recent years includes the “1940 System Theory” (Noguchi, 1995; Noguchi, 1998; Sakakibara and Noguchi, 1977; Itakura, 2017). In this column, I would like to discuss the approval of the “1940 System Theory” regarding the research and education system that also affects the existence of this university itself.
1940 System Theory
The 1940 System Theory argues that many structures of the postwar Japanese economy survived through postwar reforms, which was a wartime system introduced around 1940 in order to carry out World War II as an all-out war. Japan's management system relies heavily on the fact that system-wide reforms were carried out during the war period for the planned economy to mobilize national resources and for the controlled economy to implement them (Okuno, 1993, p.275).
The wartime regime led to the formation of Japanese-style corporate governance such as employee-centered organizations, lifetime employment systems, and seniority-based wages. Furthermore, the 1940 System Theory is a concept that includes not only indirect finance but also the entire economic system such as the withholding tax system and fiscal system. In the next section, I would like to show that the 1940 System Theory is applicable to the research and education system at the Samezu Campus.
1940 System and Samezu Campus
In January 1940, as Japan's first public technical high school, Tokyo Prefectural Technical High School was approved at 237 Samezu-cho, Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo (now 1-10-40, Higashi-Oi) and opened in April 1940. It started with a three-year training period for two departments, the Electrical Engineering Department and the Mechanical Engineering Department.
On July 1, 1943, the name was changed to “Tokyo Metropolitan Technical High School” with the enforcement of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government System, and changed again on April 1, 1944 in accordance with a directive from the Ministry of Education to “Tokyo Metropolitan Vocational School” to match the naming of national schools.
As a result of the educational system reform after the war, the Tokyo Metropolitan Vocational School became the parent organization of Tokyo Metropolitan University[OR1] ’s Faculty of Engineering that was established on the Samezu Campus in 1949. Students of Tokyo Metropolitan University’s School of Engineering took liberal arts courses at the Meguro Campus for two years, while third-year, fourth-year, and graduate students studied at the Samezu Campus. The first principal of Tokyo Prefectural Technical High School was Tadashi Seike, a former teacher at Kobe Technical High School (predecessor of Kobe University[OR2] ’s Faculty of Engineering under the new system), and became the first dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Tokyo Metropolitan University. In December 1961, the school was relocated to the Fukazawa Campus due to problems such as interruptions to lectures due to broadcasts from the adjacent vehicle inspection area, and damage to the dormitory from a typhoon in 1949 because it was located along the sea. It later moved to Minami-osawa, and Tokyo Metropolitan University was established in 2005.
It was the Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology (AIIT), which opened in April 2006, that revived education and research at the graduate level at Samezu.
1940 System and AIIT
While engineering education in Japan had been emphasized since before the war with the establishment of the Imperial College of Engineering[OR3] , the predecessor of the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Engineering[OR4] , it was further strengthened under the 1940 System. This was because it was necessary to train engineers for the total war. Between 1930 and 1946, the number of technical high schools increased from 21 to 32, with 7 established in 1939 and 4 during the war, including later conversions from high commercial schools (Amano, 1986, p.108).
Due to the limitations of the times, the facilities, equipment, and human resources were not necessarily sufficient, and staff had no choice but to educate students under the difficult circumstances. However, during the postwar period of high economic growth, the engineering education established under the wartime regime contributed to industrial promotion.
The 1940 System has had a great influence on education and research in Japan today. For example, there were only 13 national high commercial schools, and some were ordered by the Ministry of Education to convert to vocational schools of industrial management during the war. Even today, although there are 15 national universities with faculties of law and 23 with faculties of economics, there are 56 with faculties of engineering. The structure in which the social sciences are suppressed and there are many faculties of engineering was born under the 1940 System.
It is said that “if” is forbidden in the study of history, but “if World War II did not occur and there had been no 1940 System or measures to expand technical high schools,” Tokyo Metropolitan University probably would not have had a faculty of engineering, nor would AIIT exist.
The argument of the 1940 System Theory is that the modern management system of Japan is not fixed and immutable against the background of Japan's unique culture, but can be changed. Research and education must also respond to changes in the industrial structure. In Japan, business administration is thought of as one of the humanities, but at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States and elsewhere, collaboration between research in business administration and research in engineering is carried out as a matter of course.
AIIT is responding to changes in the industrial structure by taking advantage of the ample number of teachers in the faculty of engineering since the establishment of the 1940 System. Because the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology tends to adopt homogeneous expansion measures and side-by-side policies based on existing schools, research and education systems in advanced fields that require cooperation between engineering and management, such as finance and e-commerce, tend to lag behind. There is a growing need for collaboration between the engineering and management fields, as modeled by AIIT.
(Note) Samezu High School (affiliated with Tokyo Metropolitan University from 1949 to 1957) under the new system was established in Samezu, and Tokyo Metropolitan Technical High School (now Tokyo Metropolitan College of Industrial Technology[OR5] ) under the new system was established in 1962. The names of vocational schools under the old and new systems tend to be confused, but it should be noted that they are different.