The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology is a set about in earnest to the substitute research on the rare metal.

Indium, platinum, and tungsten, etc. are ,so to speak, the strategy materials in "Japan of a high-tech founding a state" used respectively by a high technology like the material, the fuel cell, and the carbide tool etc. of the liquid crystal panel. However, it is hardly produced in Japan, and it becomes import reliance. The stable supply has not been positively promised. Moreover, it is easy to receive the influence of the national strategy of the country because it is unevenly distributed in a specific nation.

For instance, China. China has converted the policy from the export encouragement to the domestic demand priority along with economic development and the demand rapid increase in China though produces 88% of tungsten and 33% of indium.

It makes a strenuous effort in the strategies of starting substitution and the technology researches used as the substitute of existing aluminum and calcium originally abundantly also in Japan, and the developments of the technology that decreases the amount of use, etc. of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as the anxiety and the resource of this situation.

According to a no bur former article, the official debut is still set on an official site of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for the rare metal of about ten kinds. Substitution and the technology researches are started. The research etc. that effectively suffice as a substitute of indium at last month's stage the oxide of calcium and aluminum and are gotten have already been confirmed.

About the matter, it locates as an important, national strategy, and the public advertisement of about five themes is said now that it will do the cooperation of execution and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry applying the budget of two-300 million yen a theme.

Bean curd from which meat cookery is not eaten for person and pseudomeat dish (lenten fare) of the first imagination in head as becoming substitute. as used vegetable by itIn this, China is large original. It is being variously devised by Japan. Japan gropes for various "Device" from few originally countries the resource, and there is a history that has been forced at the same time. Oil existed in the great war, and the charcoal-gas producer automobile stalked in the town with no squids, and prototype etc. ki-106 of four expression fighter of the army that replaced the material from metal shortage such as aluminum with the transportation ship and the wood made of concrete and designed again existed (The fighter in the photograph is it).

The international society that cannot continue if transportation and the information means advance now, and there is no cooperation with another country. Only it subtracts and it exists in the meaning of diversification of risks when the strategy material that supports the country at the same time depends on small number of specific countries.

When the material is necessary for maintaining industry that supports not a mere adornment but the country, the research of the substitute and the development of the money-saving trick might have to be promoted by all means.