Dayton Daily News

Japan bets on aerospace to regain manufactur­ing might

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Kato Manufactur­ing, GIFU, JAPAN — based in the blue-collar enclave of Gifu Prefecture, in central Japan, is a microcosm of the country’s industrial evolution.

Thefamily-runmetalsh­op,which was started 128 years ago, originally made simple farming tools for what was then a largely agrarian society. When Japan morphed into a manufactur­ing giant, churning out automobile­s and electronic­s for the world, Kato supplied the metallic equivalent of skeletons: sculpted frames and housings that gave products their shape.

Now, as Japan aggressive­ly tries to regain some of its manufactur­ing might in the face of competitio­n from lower-cost countries like China, Kato is producing parts for airplanes. The company recently installedn­ewmetalwor­kingmachin­ery and hired a half-dozen workers to accommodat­e orders from domestic aircraft makers.

“Airplanes, rockets — they’re a symbol for manufactur­ing,” said Keiji Kato, the company’s president and the fourth generation of the family’s leadership at the firm.

Kato Manufactur­ing is a small piece of Japan’s vast bet on aerospace, a multibilli­on-dollar government effort to replace lost manufactur­ing jobs and to lift up the country’s industrial heartland, centered in Gifu and neighborin­g prefecture­s. Sony and Panasonic have closed consumer electronic­s factories here in the past decade. While the car industry has been more resilient, officials worry that the region’s industrial base is becoming dangerousl­y narrow.

Developing aerospace is more thanjustab­idforecono­micgrowth. The most public symbol of this effort, the Mitsubishi Regional Jet, is being billed as an instrument of national pride and industrial renewal, a chance for Japan Inc. to restore some of its former glory. At a short test flight of the aircraft from an airport in Nagoya, Japan’s economy minister declared “the start of a new era for Japan’s aviation industry.”

But breaking into the aerospace sector will be difficult. The country last produced a passenger aircraft more than 40 years ago, at the end of the propeller era. And Japan has never produced a civilian jet plane.

The industry, which requires huge start-up costs, is dominated by a handful of establishe­d behemoths. Embraer of Brazil and Bombardier of Canada have long operated as a virtual duopoly in the midsize passenger jet market that Mitsubishi is targeting.

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