Development and Research Trends of Economic Geography in Japan and their Implications

Economic geography has developed since late 1920′s in Japan.After the foundation of The Japan Association of Economic Geographers in 1954,economic geography has passed through three phases: start-up,growth,and transition.In the start-up phase,Location Theory and Regional Economic Geography has been the focus of economic geography studies in Japan;and in the growth phase,putting much emphasis on developing theories independently,economic geography studies in Japan mainly drowned in Regional Structure Theory and Regional Economic Theory;while in the transition phase,mainly introducing the latest European and American economic geography theories,economic geography studies in Japan concentrated on Economic Spatial System Theory.Within the context of globalization,informationalization,and humanization,there have been great changes in methodology and contents of economic geography studies in Japan as followed:(1) restructuring the theoretical framework of economic geography from Regional Structure Theory to Economic Spatial System Theory;(2) extending research scopes,including society,politics,institution,and culture as research objectives,and realizing a transformation from a narrow economic geography to a broad economic geography-social economic geography;(3) a transformation of research scale from a local to a global level;(4) a transformation from studies on the spatial process and structure of physical production and flow to studies on nonmaterial aspects;(5) a transformation from emphasis on developing theories independently to on combination with latest European and American theories and forefront studies.The transformation and development trends in economic geography in Japan have valuable implications to economic geography studies in China which are also in a transition phase.