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Japan Construction
The mainstay of infrastructure development is the
construction
industry, which employed 9.4 percent of the labor force in
1990 and
contributed some 8.5 percent of GDP. After the two oil
crises in
the 1970s, construction investment turned sluggish, and
the share
of construction investment in GNP decreased gradually. In
1987,
however, business expanded through investor confidence,
continued
increase in corporate earnings, improvement of personal
income, and
rapid rise in land prices. The share of construction
investment in
GNP rose sharply, especially for more sophisticated and
higher
value-added private housing and private nonhousing
structures (see
table 19, Appendix).
Construction starts in FY 1990 covered a total area of
about
283 million square meters, with about 134 square meters
exclusively
for housing. Total construction costs were estimated in
excess of
¥49 billion.
Although demand for new private housing is expected to
grow in
the 1990s, even greater growth is expected for new urban
office
buildings. A number of large projects are underway,
suggesting that
the construction industry would experience continued
growth
throughout the 1990s. These include projects for Tokyo's
waterfront
and other urban redevelopment, highway construction, and
new or
expanded airports.
Japan's construction technology, which includes
advanced
earthquake-resistant designs, is among the most developed
in the
world
(see Visual Arts
, ch. 3). Major firms compete to
improve
quality control over all phases of design, management, and
execution. Research and development focuses especially on
energyrelated facilities, such as nuclear power plants and
liquid natural
gas (LNG) storage tanks. The largest firms are also
improving their
underwater construction methods.
Data as of January 1994
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