From: tvp@gibdo.engr.washington.edu ()
Subject: Re: Japan-USA
Organization: clearer than blir
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 07:54:09 GMT

In article <3364@pacificrand.org> edhall@rand.org (Ed Hall) writes:
>In article <1992Apr10.224819.22120@gibdo.engr.washington.edu> tvp@gibdo.engr.washington.edu writes:
>>> . . . .
>>I agree that this [Japanese investment] is not the reason for our recession.
>>But the knee-jerk response that Britain is the largest foreign investor in
>>the US ceased to be true in 1990 when Japan surpassed them with several
>>mega-deals. It became a common refrain when Japanese pointed out in
>>1989 that they were the #2 or #3 foreign investor, and then everyone
>>picked up on this defense and has repeated it ever since. Show me the
>>numbers for 1991 showing Britain as #1 and then I'll believe it.
>
>At first I wasn't going to respond to flamebait terms like "knee-jerk",
>but since the rest of your post is quite reasonable, I'll let it pass.

I have a habit of doing that; don't get confused I'm not baiting you.
The Great Britain reasoning is just one of those conditioned responses
I've come to expect. I'm not talking about anyone in particular but I
wish people would stop and think to themselves: "Hey, I've been saying
this for years, but maybe it's not true anymore."

>>These factors are all valid but gloss over some other things. Japanese
>>are definitely "take-no-prisoners" businessmen. I don't fault them for
>>it but if you're going to play hard ball (very hard in their case)
>>don't complain about the reputation it gets you.
>
>I don't think "hardball" is necessarily an accurate description of the
>Japanese business style, if by that you mean "winning at any cost."

By hardball I mean not letting emotion (like sympathy for your
competitors) strongly affect your decisions.

>We're certainly their equal if one wants to put things in those terms.

Yes we are their equals but with the roles of the respective gov't.s
being vastly different we've kind of tied ourselves in knots. Now
if we could undue some of those knots...

>Their advantage is having a government and an entrenched bureaucracy
>which will dance to their tune.  We might have that here in time (some
>say we do already), but there it is the thousands of minor bureaucrats
>directed by a government addicted to money politics which form their
>most formidible trade barrier.  (This is not to disparage Japanese public
>servants, who are mostly honest and hard-working, but rather their
>political bosses.)
>
>[deleted]
>
>I'm not trying to apologize for the trangressions of Japanese business.
>They exist, and they aren't that rare, either.  Nonetheless, the
>Japanese generally are honest and straight-dealing.

Hmmm. I can't express myself well about this. In a way the Japanese
people on a personal level are extremely good about keeping promises,
not telling blatant lies, etc. On an institutional scale though it
seems *truth* can be very subjective. It's very common to think you've
been granted something in a negotiation only to find, for example,
that buying $20M more auto parts was a "goal not a promise" as with
the recent Bush trip to Japan. I don't buy the argument that these are
all just cultural misunderstandings. It falls under the category of
"hardball" in my book. Again, I don't really fault them for it because
we leave them the opening more often than not and they just walk
through it. Nothing I wouldn't do.

>Accusations of
>dishonesty and avarice--regularly made by politicians in the U.S. such
>as Sen. D'mato of New York (and duly reported in Japan)--don't apply to
>Japanese business any more (or less) than they do to American business.

No more or less. Yes, I agree with that. Sometimes different tactics
are used, but that *is* the cultural component.

>		-Ed Hall
>		edhall@rand.org

-- Tad Perry   Internet:    tvp@gibdo.engr.washington.edu
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