Control engineering in Japan: Past and present
Today, Japan is the most highly industrialized country outside the Western world. Moreover, the Japanese industries are noted for the quality of its products and for its efficiency in production. On the other hand, the Japanese have to admit that very few revolutionary ideas in science and technology originated in Japan; we are very much interested in this phenomena ourselves, since we strongly feel the necessity to break away from this situation. Today’s industrial development in Japan stems from our effort to catch up with the advanced technology in the Western countries. This effort has been the motto of our higher education since the government established the Imperial College of Engineering after the Meiji Restoration. We have had many varieties of advanced technologies from outside Japan, which we followed up. But, now, we are in a position where we have to think for ourselves about what to do and about how to proceed further. Unfortunately,  the  long-lasting education of the kind we have had has made us worship imported ideas rather than domestic original ones. Research activities in control engineering have not been exceptional. Recently, however, some leaders have become keenly aware of an inevitable change in our attitude and methodology for research in order to produce pioneering and creative theory and application. In the theoretical field, it is still a potential; in application, however, a movement has arisen to apply control theory to practical  industrial problems. Since relatively many graduates in Japan are trained in modern control theory these days, the majority are mainly interested in the utilization of modem theory, but reexamination or reconstruction of the classical theory or amalgamation of both theories has brought us some successful applications. We do hope that these activities will become one of Japan’s productive contributions to control engineering hereafter.