The shipbuilding industry in Japan claims the world's number one shipbuilding record for over 40 years since 1956, and on a completion basis in 1995. Japan boasts 560 ships, or a total of 9.03 million gross tons, which covers 44.4% of worldwide shipbuilding. (Figure 1).
There are approximately 1,250 shipyards in Japan (of which 36 have facilities to build ships over 5,000 gross tons), (Figure 2), and the number of work force in the shipbuilding industry is 83,000 (of which approximately 32,000 are subcontractors).
The twice oil crises and the changes in the seaborne trades structure after the crises reduced newbuilding demand, and drove the world shipbuilding industry into a severe depression. In order to correct the structural supply-demand imbalance and to normalize the market, Japanese shipbuilders had promoted optimization of newbuilding capacity and industrial restructuring.
The effects of these restructuring measures and other complementary actions, together with the coincident improvement of the shipping market, have brought improvements in the managerial positions of Japanese shipbuilding companies so that they have emerged from the depression lasting for well over a decade.
figure 1. Changes in Worldwide Shipbuilding Quantities of New ships
