Japan's rising man-made Sun

The paper reviews the development of the Japanese programme of fusion research, from the beginning in the 1950's to present day Heliotrons. Japan has a two-pronged programme of fusion research -the large JT-60 tokamak, and other approaches to fusion carried out by the universities. The chief aim of the JT-60 is to achieve 'break-even', i.e. when the fusion reactions within the plasma produce as much energy as it takes to create and heat the plasma. Differences between the JT-60, and the American TFTR and European JET tokamaks are described, as well as the international co-operation in fusion research. Fusion research studies at the Japanese universities, concerning the Heliotron, stellarators, inertial confinement and the 'high field' superconducting tokamak, are briefly discussed. (UK)