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It's Official: Japan IS Changing
Cool toys, not pliant 20-something "office ladies," oil the corporate machine
By PETER McKILLOP
September 17, 1999
Web posted at 2 a.m. Hong Kong time, 2 p.m. EDT
I've been in Japan for almost seven years now, and inevitably people ask: "Is Japan changing?"
To be honest, I don't have a clue. Calibrating change in a 2,000-year-old culture is not an exercise I recommend for the fainthearted. In order to have an answer to this annoying question, however, let me categorically say that two pieces of technology have changed absolutely the Japan I knew when I arrived.
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The first is the office computer. Seven years ago, whenever I visited a Japanese company, I was always amused by the dusty desktop sitting unused in the corner. In 1993, I asked a Japanese manager whether he expected computers to dominate his workspace the way they did in corporate America.
"Absolutely not," he assured me. "Men--not computers--will run this company." Protected by lifetime employment, he seemed impervious to the looming economic disaster that would befall Japan. When not reading the Nikkei, he passed the day by keeping a wary eye on his minions, smoking profusely and devouring a steady stream of green tea served by pliant 20-something "office ladies" (OLs) dressed in crisp blue uniforms.
"Japan will never need computers," he said. "Face-to-face contact is just too important in Japanese culture."
If you believe that, you also believe in lifetime employment. Go to any significant Japanese corporation today and here's what you'll find: a state-of-the-art flat-screen computer on each desk, a ban on smoking and a section manager--if he has not been bullied into retirement--furiously trying to look busy by pounding out e-mails on his computer.
As for the OLs, they disappeared a few years ago. The first victims of Japan's silent corporate restructuring, they have been replaced by a new generation of more career-oriented women who can barely hide their contempt for their "oji-san," their middle-aged male bosses. They would no sooner be caught wearing a uniform than serving him tea.
The second change is the cell phone. In 1993, cell phones in Japan cost $1,000 to lease, not own, thanks to Japanese telecom giant NTT. Cell phones would have remained a luxury were it not for the heroic efforts of Motorola, the American electronics manufacturer.
In a brilliant lobbying effort, the company teamed up with the U.S. government to force Japan to deregulate its cell-phone market. New competition caused prices to plunge, and cell phone use in Japan exploded.
Today, Japanese cell phones are without a doubt the coolest in the world. Packing the latest CDMA digital technology, they are smaller than a cigarette pack and offer literally hundreds of functions, dozens of ring melodies, high-speed Internet access, even video imagery. Everyone is happy--except Motorola. Flush from victory, the company's confident marketers thought they could coerce Japanese consumers to buy their clunky, U.S.-designed analog models. Most Japanese took one look at the ungainly phone and laughed all the way to the nearest DoCoMo phone store ... run by NTT.
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