From Demonstration to Supply Architecture: TCE, Governmentality, and the Political Economy of Japan's Deep-Sea Rare Earths

Japan’s deep-sea rare-earth program near Minamitori-shima is often framed as “new mining.” This paper reframes it as supply architecture: a staged, state-led uncertainty-reduction sequence that buys information, engineering learning, and legitimacy infrastructure before private coordination can scale. Using Transaction Cost Economics and Foucauldian governmentality, it explains why hierarchy dominates early and why hybrids (PPPs, long-term offtakes, JV midstream capacity) become necessary as feasibility becomes contractible. It also provides transparent scenario arithmetic: budget benchmarking, target-to-throughput conversions (including a 150% domestic-demand target), and bounded macro footprint estimates with domestic-content sensitivity.