Japan has developed what might be called a three-tier technology policy consisting of the national Tsukuba Science City, a set of nineteen technopolises dispersed over strategic locations along the entire archipelago, and a still more dispersed set of ‘research cores’ serving primarily as incubators for small and medium-size high-technology firms. The objective is to overcome the limitations of earlier phases of centralized policy and make the transition from external imitation to indigenous creative innovation on as broad a basis as possible. Data on the number of high-technology enterprises established per sector in technopolises, and on acreage occupied, are presented. Conditions for the international transfer of experiences in this field are then discussed.