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about Asia Buzz
Letter from Japan: Times Are A-Changing
My hot tips for the Japan of the future
By PETER McKILLOP
April 20, 2000
Web posted at 3 p.m. Hong Kong time, 3 a.m. EDT
The New Year has begun in Japan. So what is in store for the country over the next decade? Here's a couple of predictions:
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1) The economy will grow a lot faster than anyone imagined as Japan restructures from a market/socialist 'sunset' economy into a for-profit, global post-industrial economy. Driving the change will be the consolidation of Japan's massive banks and the increasing influence of foreign capital and corporate 'best practices.' For every job lost, a computer or LAN network will be purchased. Consultants and financial advisories are filtering into Japanese corporate boardrooms. Their advice will liberate a vast army of underutilized Japanese workers. Remember America in the early 1990s? That is about to happen in Japan, but in a quieter, less brutal fashion.
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2) Technology, not relationships, will drive change in Japan. Foreign and Japanese companies are no longer allowing the country's lethargic utilities to control the pace of technological change. Deregulation means it is no longer possible for utilities like NTT to block the entry of aggressive new telecom companies offering services like high-speed Internet access that is 100 times faster than NTT's sleepy ISDN lines. Foreign firms like Fidelity, the financial services giant, are already laying their own fiber-optic cable networks allowing them to bypass NTT and meet customer demands.
3) Politically, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is history. The LDP, like a growing number of its members, is on life support. In the next few months before the meeting of G8 world leaders in Okinawa in July, the Japanese public will pull the plug.
4) The world's most racist nation will become less so. Sure people like Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara will continue to make racist comments like those he made recently about Koreans and Chinese. But with the population aging, and with Japanese women refusing to have babies, Japan will need all those Chinese, Koreans, Pakistanis and others to keep this economy working.
5) 'Show me the money' will become the mantra of a new generation of Japanese corporate warriors. It will no longer be enough to buy off the best and brightest in Japan with chauffeured cars, golf memberships and geisha weekends. While you won't see Japanese CEOs packing in tens of millions of dollars in bonuses, the days when corporate loyalty allowed companies to pay their best a pittance are over.
6) Women will become economic players. Serving tea may not be quite over, but Darwinian survival will force Japan Inc. to take women seriously. Japanese corporations do not stand a chance against American and European corporations unless they adopt the same kind of working environments that have allowed their foreign competitors to tap into the strength and vitality of women.
7) Japan will not be a military threat in my lifetime. Pacifism is as real in Japan as the remnants of the Hiroshima Dome. The insanity of war remains a driving force in how Japan views its role in the world.
8) Japanese culture will challenge American cultural hegemony. Give me sushi over a McDonalds hamburger any day.
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