Japan’s Savvy at High Tech Creates Influx : Foreign Firms Move to Tokyo to Tap Expertise

Concern that the Japanese are racing ahead in high technology is luring a small but growing number of foreign firms to set up their own research and development facilities in Japan.

“There are a number of fields in which the Japanese are world competitors and every year they are getting stronger and stronger in their weaker fields,” said Howell Hammond, director of research and development at Kodak Japan KK.

“It’s hard to have access to that technology unless you are here doing technological work,” he said.

Foreign companies coming to Tokyo have shrugged off the notion that Japan is a nation of copiers. Instead they seek to tap Japanese expertise in key high technology areas.

Nihon Digital Equipment Corp., a subsidiary of the American Digital Electronics Corp., opened a research center in Japan in 1982. It wants to use Japanese know-how in semiconductors and memory storage devices as well as develop Japanese-language computer software.

“Japan is very advanced in these areas, and it is company policy to carry out research in the country which is most advanced,” a company spokeswoman said.

Kodak plans to open a new laboratory in October for research on chips and information hardware and software, Hammond said.

Similarly, Dow Corning Japan Ltd. hopes to avail itself of Japanese skills for basic research on silicon materials for future use in electronics, bio-industries and fine ceramics, a company research official said.

To do so, it will start building a research facility west of Tokyo next year for completion by fall, 1989, he said.

Many of the companies keen to do research in Japan are chemical and pharmaceutical firms, lured by the promising efforts of their Japanese rivals in such areas as biotechnology.

West Germany’s Bayer group, already researching agricultural chemicals in Japan, is looking at locations for a pharmaceuticals research laboratory, Bayer Japan Ltd. President Theodor Heinrichsohn told reporters recently.

“The Japanese have a 2,000-year history in biochemicals,” he said. “The expertise of the Japanese is very high. We’d be stupid not to use these abilities.”

Companies also hope to gain a window through which to keep track of research by Japanese firms and universities. “We want to get information firsthand,” said the Nihon DEC official.

Foreign firms are also betting that the move can help them develop products geared to the market in Japan while nurturing close ties with Japanese customers.

DuPont Japan Ltd.’s Technical Center, DuPont’s largest research laboratory outside the United States, was set up in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, to be near electronics makers who will be prime customers for the products it develops, the firm said.

The same is true for pharmaceutical companies trying to raise their share of the Japanese drug market, the second largest in the world after the United States, industry analysts said.

Some firms also see research as a way to demonstrate corporate commitment to the Japanese market and brush up their global image.

“When companies are becoming more international, they have to be seen to be more international,” said Bayer’s Heinrichsohn.