News.com reports on the recent appointment of American Tim Schaaff to the new role of senior vice president of software development, where he will head the company’s various Japanese divisions in an attempt to overcome duplication of effort and incompatibilities. Schaaff was formerly head of Apple’s QuickTime engineering team.
News on Livedoor having become a daily occurrence as of late, a couple more items of interest came out today. First another editorial, coming from a site about science and technology news of all places, opines about Livedoor and the possible damage recent events may bring to the rise in entrepreneurial spirits among Japanese college students.
And in the news, Fuji TV, target of a hostile takeover attempt, is now looking into buying Livedoor itself, in an ironic twist of fate. Kyodo News has the story.
A special for Asahi Shimbun attempts to explain how the Japanese car industry managed to advance so rapidly, catapulting past the United States to become the largest car producer. According to this commentator, two elements are at work here:
First is the effectiveness of Japan’s “development, production and dealing systems.” The second element is the nature of Japanese people, which I think is suited for manufacturing cars.
Factoring heavily into the “nature of Japanese people” element are Japan’s seniority-based management and lifetime employment. Despite the problems seen in other industries’ productivity due to these traditional systems, could they be a natural fit for car manufacturing? Or is something else really at work here?
First steps are taken toward the privatization to begin October 2007. Via Crisscross News.
For those who aren’t yet sick of all the Livedoor news, the International Herald Tribune has an analysis of the situation. As per usual, they go beyond the day-to-day events to look at the clash of between Livedoor president Horie’s approach and that of Japan’s business establishment.
Update: Daily Yomiuri has another interesting piece focusing on Horie’s influence on students. His success seems to have inspired some to pursue their enterpreneurial dreams, a drive that Japan’s business environment has not traditionally encouraged.
Update 2: For anyone who just can’t get enough of this stuff, here’s a Newsweek piece with a similar approach to the International Herald Tribune article.
According to a J@pan Inc newsletter, Japanese companies flooded the World Trade Center in Boston to recruit students this October. The newsletter notes that due to economic recovery and Japan’s declining birth rate, as well as increased globalization, firms have been driven overseas to find new talent.
If there’s any doubt that the Japanese are overworked, this gallery should do the trick.
First Happoshu, legally falling outside the beer category due to low malt content, was introduced to dodge beer taxes. Taxes were increased on Happoshu, and its exploding popularity quickly tapered off. Brewers fought back with “third beer,” made with no malt content at all. This, too, followed suit with explosive sales growth, but once again it looks like the government will put an end to the party with tax reforms. Brewers are attempting to fight the proposal, but if this goes through it seems they won’t have any other loophole for pseudo-beer on the cheap. Just-drinks.com has the story.
The Financial Times, Asahi and Mainichi all report on the planned resumption of US beef imports on Monday, following a Thursday report concluding that US beef is generally as safe as Japanese beef. The deputy chairman of the panel behind the report has criticized media and political misuse of the findings, however, stating that the report does not recommend resumption of imports.
The headline reads like this: Japan productivity lowest in G-7. This means it trails behind the United States (highest in productivity of the seven), as well as Britain, Germany, Italy, France and Canada, the other G-7 members.
This is nothing new, but I must admit it was news to me. Actually, it hit me like a ton of bricks. After all, the Japanese work environment is known for the extreme demands it places on its workers, long work hours and short vacations being the norm. Furthermore, the Japanese have gained a reputation for discipline and industriousness, something that does not go unnoticed by most foreign visitors. In short, they seem to be working longer and harder than the statistically more productive citizens of other industrialized nations. What’s going on here?
I investigate further, and find that the BBC has touched on this problem, in an article from October of 2004. But Time Magazine really nailed it in a fascinating article published a couple of years prior, a must-read for anyone even mildly interested in Japanese economic affairs.
I won’t attempt a thorough analysis of the situation as I’d just be recycling the whole Times article, but a few points summarize the situation well:
Shielded from competition by a tangle of government subsidies, tariffs and protectionist policies, the nation’s domestic manufacturers and services have hardly changed—let alone improved—for decades.
According to that report by McKinsey, Japanese export industries like automobiles, electronics and computer hardware are, indeed, 20% more productive than the worldwide benchmark. But here’s the problem: these industries, once you stop to count them, are quite few in number. Together, they make up only 10% of Japan’s workforce and 10% of its GDP.
Of the remaining 90%, retailing just might be the sickest of the bunch. Large-scale stores are rare in Japan… mom-and-pops are the rule not the exception, making up 55% of the retail labor force. They are, in other words, still the way the nation sells things. And they are woefully unproductive, generating only 19% of the output of the average U.S. store.
This really puts Koizumi’s push for various structural forms in perspective. I do not know how much they are going to strike at the root of the problem, in the face of status-quo lobbying. But if we start seeing some substantial reforms to do away with the protectionism Japan has relied on so far, the economy might start showing some real signs of vitality.
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