Licencers and Licensees

Abstract

By 1900 the Japanese were poised to enter a third, and possibly final, phase of technical transfer.¹ They planned to negotiate manufacturing licences which would enable them to make up in Japan intricate, and valuable, engines and machinery rather than importing them ready-made from Britain or elsewhere. This process constitutes a third phase of technical transfer coming hard on the heels of earlier borrowing. During phase one foreign experts lived and worked in Japan teaching their Japanese students and demonstrating Western technical skills. In phase two the focus shifted back to the West where Japanese students sought to further their education in the classroom or on the shop-floor. In this cycle, one, two and three are likely to be consecutive although there can be overlap, but stage three is necessarily sequential to one and two. That the Japanese were able to undertake a programme of purchasing technology reflects their own determination to buy as well as the willingness of Western firms — at this time mostly British — to sell.