Competitiveness of Japanese Container Ports Reconsidered

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, I want to make it clear the source of competitiveness of Japanese main container ports. Second, I will specify the course of suitable container port policy in Japan. In general, there are three sources of competitiveness of container ports, that is, industrial agglomeration and volume of cargoes as the result of it, supply chain networks, especially, networks of shipping lines and stevedoring system in container port. Now, Japanese main container ports have lost the first source of competitiveness of container ports, namely, volume of cargoes and networks of shipping lines of these ports are weakening. The result clearly show that Japanese main container ports can not depend to increase container cargoes throughput on only efficient stevedoring system in port as the third source of competitiveness of container port. Therefore, Japanese government should, at first, support to strengthen supply chain networks as short-term policy and secondly promote to reagglomerate or regenerate the cluster of manufacturing industry as long-term policy

Reality and Problem of Business Logistics Activities in the Japan Sea

本稿の目的は日本海物流の現状と課題を整理することと、これらの課題に対する政策のあるべき方向を提示することにある。ここで日本海とは日本海に面している北海道、西東北、北陸、山陰、北部九州・山口地域とする。ただし統計数字の取り方から便宜的に西東北は青森、秋田、山形の各県、山陰は鳥取、島根の両県、北部九州・山口は山口、福岡、佐賀の各県とする