Industrial Development Case Studies of Japan and China
Senior 3 · Geography
Industrial Development Case Studies of Japan and China
Lesson 3 of 5
30 min
Let's begin
In 1956 doctors in Minamata, a fishing town in southern Japan, identified a strange illness. Patients trembled, lost feeling in their hands and could not walk or speak clearly; cats in the town had been seen "dancing" and falling into the sea. The cause was methylmercury in the waste water of a chemical factory owned by the Chisso company, which had poisoned the fish that local families ate every day. Minamata disease became a warning to the world about industrial pollution. Japan's industry made it rich, but it also brought serious problems. How has Japan weighed one against the other?
Definition
Industrialisation: the growth of manufacturing industry in a country, so that it becomes a larger part of the economy. Pollution: harmful substances or energy released into the air, water or land. Bioaccumulation: the build-up of a poison in living things, increasing at each step up a food chain.
| Problem | Solution |
|---|---|
| Pollution: Minamata disease (mercury), itai-itai disease (cadmium in rice fields, Toyama), Yokkaichi asthma (sulphur dioxide from refineries) | Strict anti-pollution laws from 1967 and an Environment Agency in 1971; waste treatment, filters, compensation for victims; the 2013 Minamata Convention on Mercury, named after the town |
| Earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons: the earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011 destroyed coastal towns, caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and halted car production for weeks | Earthquake-resistant buildings, tsunami walls and warning systems, spreading suppliers so one disaster cannot stop production |
| Few raw materials and fuels, so dependence on imports whose prices rise and fall | Long-term supply contracts, many suppliers, recycling, energy saving and renewable energy |
| Shortage of flat land and crowded, costly cities | Land reclamation, multi-storey factories, moving some industry to less crowded regions |
| Ageing, shrinking population: nearly 30% of people were aged 65 or over in 2024 (Statistics Bureau of Japan), so there are fewer workers | Robots and automation, more women and older people in work, foreign workers (a new skilled-worker visa from 2019) |
| High costs and competition from China, South Korea and other countries | Move to high-value products; build factories abroad near markets and cheap labour |
| Trade frictions with partners who object to Japan's large exports | Produce inside those markets (for example Japanese car plants in the USA and Europe) |
Worked example
Worked example 1: bioaccumulation. Suppose the mercury concentration rises about ten times at each step of a food chain: water → plankton → small fish → large fish. If the water holds 1 unit, how much does a large fish hold? (Illustrative factor.)
Plankton: 1 × 10 = 10. Small fish: 10 × 10 = 100. Large fish: 100 × 10 = 1,000 units, a thousand times the level in the water. That is why people who ate fish every day were poisoned even though the sea water looked clean.
Worked example
Worked example 2: an ageing workforce. A town has 100,000 people, of whom 29% are aged 65 or over and 12% are children under 15. How many people are of working age (15–64)? (Illustrative town based on Japan's 2024 age structure.)
65 and over: 29,000. Under 15: 12,000. Working age: 100,000 − 29,000 − 12,000 = 59,000, so 59 workers for every 41 dependants. As this ratio falls, factories turn to robots and foreign workers.
Warning
Describe the problem, then the solution that matches it. "Japan built robots" answers the labour shortage, not pollution. Keep each problem paired with its own solution.
SciShow: the 'dancing cat' disaster of Japan, Minamata explained. As you watch, follow the mercury through each link of Figure 1.
Practice
Sources and credits
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
