First Post - A New Year, a New Blog

japan is broken and no one is fixing it...

I am not anti-Japan. This blog is not anti-Japan. Japan is a good place. Or rather, Japan could be a good place if it got its act together. So while I believe my tagline, and this blog will mostly be about how Japan is broken, I'd like to start by writing about some things I think do work in Japan, and even work very well.

mass-transit

Take the mass-transit system for example - subways, trains and bullet trains. In the Tokyo area alone, millions of people are transported each day. And amazingly, 99% of the trains run on schedule. This doesn't mean 1-5 minutes late, as being on time would mean in London, but exactly on time.

And this is not just a single company. The train and subway system in greater Tokyo is divided among over 20 different railway companies. These companies are not just transit companies - they own land around their stations, on which they generally build supermarkets, department stores, even office buildings, creating living, useful community centres that would be the envy of many cities in other countries - and both making money and increasing useage of their lines along the way.

These companies also cooperate with each other, and are at the forefront of introducing new technology. Case in point - cashless electronic payment cards (Pasmo, Suica) can now be used to pay for transit, allowing seemless travel among different companies' lines, as well as allowing customers to pay for drinks, food or goods in vending machines, bakeries and stores around Japan.

japanese culture

Something else that works is Japanese culture. Japan has managed to both keep its traditional culture, while creating new, vibrant and modern movements that have made Japanese culture one of the strong global cultures. For example, 18th century Japanese comic illustrations have evolved into the manga book industry - worth several billion$ a year in Japan and several hundred million$ in the US. This in turn has led to Japanese anime movies, a global-spanning video game indutry with such icons as Final Fantasy, children cartoon figures such as Hello Kitty, and even youth fashion trends, with Harajuku as its epicentre.

Another example is sushi. Eaten in Japan for over a 1,000 years, it has been modernized, adapted and can now be found in any major city around the world, from San Francisco to Paris, from Berlin to Cape Town. Meanwhile, other Japanese foods are following the trail that sushi blazed, and words like teppanyaki, teriyaki and yakitori are now familiar to many as well.

Finally, some elements of Japanese business culture (or more accurately Toyota's business culture), or industrial culture, have also spread around the world. Just-in-time, now abbreviated JIT, is a standard way of minimizing inventory costs in factories. The Japanese focus on quality and kaizen (or continuous improvement) is also a now a central focus, not just in production lines, but in companies everywhere.

so why the blog?

Unfortunately, the people running the train lines and Toyota do not run Japan. I am not sure why this is. Perhaps they are content with making their companies work well? Perhaps the public doesn't recognise the need for good leadership? erhaps the problems are not recognised by the population?

Or perhaps many people in Japan do realise things are broken, but for one reason or another they either do not wish to discuss them, or take action to resolve them.

Indeed when asked why something is done a certain way in Japan, the first reaction is often surprise at the question being asked at all. The answer is usually because that is how things are done.

I leave you with that to dwell on until my next post.