From: fester@etorofu.island.COM ()
Subject: Re: Try it again - RE: Please give me your opinions...
Originator: fester@etorofu
Organization: Island Graphics, Marin County, California
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 19:42:32 GMT

In regard to the recent discussions about this article, I WILL give my
point by point opinions on it. I have only the "1/2" part of the article,
so if someone would email me, or repost 2/2, I'll get to that. As the 
article is extremely long, I will not comment on the whole thing at once.
One thing to get out of the way immediately: most of the valid points in
this article were presented first and better, as well as thoroughly 
documented, in Karel van Wolferen's _The Enigma of Japanese Power_. I find
the lack of attribution of the original author of this post to be guilty of
intellectual dishonesty by virtue of taking passages out of that book without
giving that author credit.

To begin:

>       D O E S   A M E R I C A   S A Y   Y E S   T O   J A P A N ?

>    (A M E R I C A   W A   N I H O N   N I   "H A I"   T O   I U K A)

>     There are many misconceptions about Japan and its miraculous success
>in the post-war era. ". While staying in Japan in mid 1992, I tried to
>look at Japan's seemingly miraculous success with the hope to understand
>it so that maybe we could apply some of their plan in our own country.
>"What makes Japan so good?", "How did they get from third world country to
>richest in the world so quickly?" are common questions asked in America.
>Today, I will try to answer with examples, at least partially, these
>questions. 

I would submit that anyone wishing to pass oneself off as an expert should
have something more than a couple month visit to Japan as a starting point
for such a comprehensive article. Not in and of itself a damning condemnation,
but a point for serious consideration.

>     Going to Japan, I expected to see a very efficient country from which
>America could learn in order to regain her former prosperity. During my
>trip, the reality began to sink in that what is really happening was quite
>different from expectations and in some ways quite disturbing. The
>Japanese have a very different approach to doing business than we do. This
>paper will elaborate, justify and try to show what is happening and why it
>is important that this be understood here in America. Following this
>article on Japan, is a piece about the US national debt, which has
>relevance to this discussion.

People are often quite surprised at the reality vs the image of Japan. In 
many cases, I believe they overcompensate. Ie, a person will have an image
of the Japanese as supermen in blue-suits, and when it becomes obvious that
Japan is not a superman nation, quite often these same people will immediately
switch to a conspiracy theory. Just my 2.6 yen worth.

>     I must thank my fiance, Mutsumi (a native Tokyo-ite herself) for her
>help in writing/editing this paper and her guidance as I toured and tried
>to understand her country. All names have been changed or omitted to
>protect anonymity as we do not wish to reveal anyone involved with or
>mentioned in this paper for fear of them being labelled deviants in a
>country that is not so tolerant of internal dissent. 

You are not going to understand a nation given a one or two month tour, even
with a "native" guide. Ever tried to explain America to a foreigner?

>     Don't be afraid to question what you read here as I am confident that
>if you research the points yourself (hopefully by going to Japan to see
>for yourself or reading materials on the topic), you will find the points
>made in this paper to be truthful. 

I have read materials, and have lived in Japan, and I find quite a bit of
misrepresentation in the article.

>THE "JAPAN PROBLEM":

>     Some claims echoed in America which are commonly dismissed as "Japan
>Bashing" statements, surprisingly turn out to be true upon investigation.
>The following statements may seem brash right now, but their meanings will
>become clearer in the explanations and examples that follow. 

Fine.

>     It seems that Japan is in some kind of economic war against us. Their
>objective is for them to win and for us to lose. Through the use of
>cartels, price fixing, government-corporate 'anti-foreigner' tactics as
>well as adversarial trade and predation strategies, Japan is destroying
>much of America's strategic industries, standard of living and military
>strength. These actions are also destroying the jobs of ordinary American
>people. 

Japan does not seem to be doing all this, and certainly not in any sort of
planned way. and it should be noted that the person who first coined the
term 'adversarial trade' (Peter Drucker, 1982, Wall Street Journal), certainly
does not believe this.

>     Those who study these types of topics know that economic wars can be
>even more devastating to a country's long term future than conventional
>wars. Japan is organized to fight, uses a tactical strategy and has a
>fundamental plan. America's economic strategy is in disarray and there is
>no plan. As a result, America is losing the economic war by default. 

True, America has no strategy. God only hope that if we develop one, it is
better than some of our other strategies (war on drugs, war on illiteracy, 
war on poverty).

>     The greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world from one
>ountry in the world to an other is happening right now, from the United
>States, to Japan. This is no accident and is in a large part responsible
>for our economic problems in America today. Many new graduates and
> students today realize the consequences of this much more than their
> parents. People entering the workforce today are likely to have a standard
> of living considerably lower than that of their parents. Members of the
> current generation are unlikely to be able to afford a home like the one
> hey grew up in. They are much more likely to have trouble finding a good
> job upon graduation than their parents ever did and will need two sizable
> incomes to support their family. Their parents may lose their jobs, and
> not be able to find other 'good' ones as they don't exist in America
> anymore. These problems may not seem relevant to the 'Japan issue', but in
> fact they are. 

In large part, the lower standard of living is due to the increasing urban-
ization of America. Land values are actually and relatively higher than they
used to be, due to greater numbers of people in smaller, limited space. Not
unique to America, by any means, and Japan, though economically far better
than 20 years ago, is also coming to grips with this sort of problem.

> IN THE BEGINNING, THE TV CARTEL:

>      A very famous example of Japanese national government and corporate
> coordination to take over a foreign industry is that of the Japanese TV
> cartel, first set up in the 1960's. This is how Japan took the free-world
> TV industry away from the United States. PBS Frontline did an excellent
> ocumentary on this ("Coming From Japan"). 

>      In the 1960's, the Matsushita Industrial Electric Company, Sanyo,
> Toshiba and others formed a TV cartel in Japan. They got US TV technology
> from the giants in the industry (Zenith, RCA Quasar) in the following way.
> The Japanese government prohibited US made TVs from being sold in Japan.
> Instead, they insisted that the technology be licensed to Japanese
> manufacturing companies rather than importing (still often the case today
> in Japan). The US companies thinking they could still make money this way,
> agreed to these terms which enabled the Japanese companies to acquire the
> technology on how to build TVs.

It might also be noted that American and European companies did not put the
newer technologies into their products until it became PAINFULLY obvious 
that they were more efficient. No argument that the companies in Japan are
exclusionary.

>      The above Japanese companies, with tacit approval from the Japanese
> government, set up a cartel to inflate TV prices in Japan in order to turn
> around and use the money to sell below cost TVs in America. This was to
> drive US makers out of the American and world markets. US TV makers went
> bankrupt or left the industry as they could no longer fund research to
> continue making improved and high quality TVs. They could not compete with
> the artificially low Japanese TV prices in America and were forbidden to
> nter the Japanese market to take advantage of the high prices there.
> Hence, the US makers could not make money. Furthermore, secret deals
> illegal under US trade law were set up by Japanese TV makers and US
> retailers such as Sears and Woolworths to sell the TVs under store brand
> names. As a result, once famous brands such as Sylvania, Quasar, Admiral,
> Philco and RCA have vanished or are foreign/Japanese owned. Zenith is the
> only remaining US TV maker today. No US companies make VCRs. 

I do not understand the comment about VCRs. This is a different technology
from a different time. My best friend's father-in-law works for the (American)
company that invented the technology for it. I was originally developed for 
the NFL, who requested a way to slo-mo and stop action their game films on
TV! The Japanese simply saw the consumer potential in this, and no other
US company cared to develop it.

>      The transcript of this PBS program is available via FTP at Internet
> site: monu6.cc.monash.edu.au in pub/nihongo, or at the address listed in
> the appendix of this article. It is very thoughtfully written and is an
> excellent case study of what is explained in this paper.

>      In the 1980's the Japanese applied this same strategy to the machine
> tools industry and now completely dominate that industry (a point well
> made at a machine tool exhibition I visited in Tokyo). Before that was
> motorcycles and computer memory chips (the US tried to retaliate but
> failed as our companies couldn't organize with each other during the now
> famous 'dram shortages' a few years back). It will be happening again with
> major and smaller kitchen/washing appliances during the 1990s. It has
> already happened with liquid crystal computer displays where the Japanese
> today have 100% market share (these were actually invented in the USA).

Actually, the Germans and Americans are doing very well in the machine tools
industry. And I believe there are still some LCCDs made in the US.

> DISPELLING SOME STATISTICS:

>      Several misleading claims are made in the media about how the trade
> situation today with Japan is fine. These will now be dispelled. One claim
> states that Japan is opening its market because it has increased imports
> by 9% in 1986-87 and 18% in 1988. This is a half truth because Japanese
> exports during the same period increased by much more than that. In other
> words, the trade gap got bigger, not smaller between Japan and its trading
> partners.

Agreed that the gap is now larger.

>      An other false claim, most often made by Japanese trade
> representatives, states that it is naturally expected that Japan has a
> trade surplus with America. This is because if every Japanese bought $100
> of goods from America, and every American bought $100 worth of goods from
> Japan, an imbalance would occur in Japan's favor as there are twice as
> many Americans as Japanese in the world. 

>      This is a mathematical fallacy. To see more clearly this picture,
> imagine a world with 2 countries, one with 100 citizens, and an other with
> 1 citizen, you. Each person has $200 to their name. Every year you buy
> $100 of goods from the other country, and each of their citizens buy $100
> of goods from your country. If you work out this example, you will see
> that in a little over 2 years, you will have accumulated all of the money
> in the world and the other country will be penniless. This is the current
> state of affairs between Japan and its trading partners. Although things
> are actually occurring more slowly, this is the trend.

These last two paragraphs contrdict each other. In the first paragraph, he
claims that it is a false claim that the imbalance should be in favor of the
smaller nation. In the second paragraph, he gives an example that SHOWS 
EXACTLY THAT TO BE THE CASE! Now, I agree that the false claim (by the
Japanese) is gibberish, but the refuting example, on top of being absolutely
irrelevant (eg, the total amount of money by each country is fixed at the
beginning, and no new money comes in), is absolutely WRONG! An example, IMHO, 
of extraordinarily sloppy pseudo-intellectual nonsense. 

Mike
-- 
Disclaimer - I'm only doing what the little voices tell me to do. 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan