Those interested in Japan should take a good look at this story by Reuters, titled Special Report: The masterminds of the Olympus coverup. I’ll paste two key paragraphs here due to cultural importance, because this really shows all the worst parts of Japan’s corporate culture, but should not be presumed to be fully indicative of normality. We don’t know that.

Woodford, a 51-year-old Briton and newly minted president of Olympus, requested a lunch meeting with Chairman Kikukawa and Vice President Mori in August to ask them about those allegations. The meeting was “good humored,” Woodford recalled in a recent interview, until he produced a copy of the Facta article, and “the mood changed markedly.”

Kikukawa told him he had decided Woodford should not be told about the allegations because Woodford was “too busy” dealing with other matters. “You’re the president,” Woodford says Kikukawa told him. “I told people not to tell you.”

The chairman decided the president simply wasn’t on a need-to-know basis. Not like his neck was on the line if the authorities found out, or anything. Just be the potted flower for all to see and none to suspect.

Yeah, that’s not suspicious, not at all… – J

Come on, Hina! There's still hope!

Some Unrequested Advice

日本語版は英語の後

(Japanese version below English)

So, I was speaking to my Japanese culture interested friends about J-Comi. I had asked for an update if the site went up, and apparently it did. Also, it apparently has some issues that a quick explanation made obvious.

First, the site is using an affiliate purchase business model. That is, creators aren’t paid for clicks; they’re paid for purchases made through the clicks (and through the clicks only). This is a more difficult model and is making even testing the idea out a bit difficult, as Twitter posts shown on the site itself are suggesting.

Second, the site relies on a model of PDF downloads rather than on-site hosting. I really, really hate to mention this, but to use one example, the now shut down copyright violating site Onemanga.com had a business model more in tune with the public: making manga readable completely on-site, through a browser, through page by page clicking (or arrow keys). Other sites that I will not name still survive, and put ads for things like free-to-play MMO’s without unduly angering the reader.

Third, as these PDF’s are concerned, let me give my blunt opinion: low-quality PDF downloads are absolutely worthless for reading Japanese. They do have value in the strict sense of viewing the pictures but… people, this is not working. Low quality scans are often adequate for reading ENGLISH, but are completely inadequate for the human eye to properly read kana and kanji.

Now, the site does feature high quality PDF downloads, and these are just fine to read on my 1650×1050 resolution monitor without squinting or annoyance. I plan to catch up on Love Hina manga and intend to support Ken Akamatsu’s effort however I can.

While I’m not sure this is a problem, a site like this can only work if creators sign up. I know Ken said that creators could submit content easily by zip file, but I’m not sure if the sign-up process is smooth. Anyway, if that’s a problem, it needs solving.

Finally, patience is required. Don’t give up, Ken!!

So, in terms of solutions, here’s what my interested friends and I would suggest:

Go to a pay-per-click ad model. It’s better.

Implement on-site viewing.

Make it easy for creators to create accounts.

Don’t give up!!

That’s my advice.

日本語版、手短いに

（下手な日本語を許して下さい。－J)

アフィリエイトのモデルは厳しいね？Pay-per-clickは遥かに優秀な手段と思います。

元翻訳者として、悪いが、軽量版PDFは読む価値がない。英語の場合、出来るかもしれないが、かなと漢字の場合、読めないよ、普通な人にとって。日本語版の価値はゼロです。それに、米国版の画質低下を回避するべきです。

ちなみに、高解像度PDFは全く問題なし。私も喜んで読みます。

真の問題は、サイトの必ず必要物がサイト内見る機能です。でないと、pay-per-clickモデルが出来ないよ。コンテンツを盗む人までサイト内見る機能とアドを混じる。そして、金を稼ぎます。プロのサイト、それぐらいを出来ないなら。。。未来がないかも。

是非、私はJ-Comiを全力でサポートします。武運を祈るぞ！

ちなみに、翻訳者が必要ならば、連絡して下さいね？（汗）

では、頑張って下さい。外人のファンも応援します。諦めないで！（＾＾）

Let’s Get Serious Here.

This is about the first of a series of articles in the New York Time; this article is titled Japan Goes From Dynamic to Disheartened. Essentially, the New York Times (hereafter: NYT) is making Japan out to be the poster child of the evils of deflation.

A Very American Context

There is a context to this.

Right now, and I mean, as I write these words, the U.S. Federal Reserve is talking up the possibility of bringing controlled inflation to the United States. Unsurprisingly, all this talk is making the U.S. dollar decline significantly on international markets, which accomplishes half the U.S.’ goal without firing a shot. The lower the dollar, the better it is for exporters… and the more a general surge in commodity prices continues, with the price of Cotton hitting a 140 year high (that is, since 1870, at the start of Reconstruction and in the midst of the Meiji Restoration!!).

To not bore you to tears, inflation as a solution to economic problems is something that has been pushed for years as the last line of defense against the Japanese disease, as people would have you accept it. This is a subject of serious academic inquiry by minds such as Paul Krugman and Ben Bernacke (the latter being the current Federal Reserve head).

If you read up independently on this, the key word is liquidity trap, which is something Krugman pushed for years as being when the economy becomes resistant to pouring money on it at the Fed level like a Type 2 Diabetic becomes resistant to sugar absorption, resulting in a surplus of the sugar in the bloodstream. (I have Type 2 diabetes, but it is under tight control with medication and was always a mild case, for which I am highly fortunate. – J Sensei)

So the point is, inflation as a cure for our ills…. because you don’t want to end up like Japan over there, do you, youngster?

Laying It On A Bit Thick

I linked to the NYT above so, you can go read that for yourself. Here, I’ll focus on the issues raised.

First of all… let me put this simply. A thousand yen buys a LOT more today than it did 10 or 15 years ago. Akihabara, the mecca of Japanese electronics, has seen incredible turnover in the technology available for consumers at the same prices as the previous generations.

So, let’s not talk about this as if price is the only concern here.

Second, if you hadn’t noticed, the U.S. government has been chewing out Japan for supposedly doing beggar-thy-neighbor policies driving down its own currency. This is, uh… silly. I wrote about this over at Learn Out Live (which uses the same host as my humble blog here), in Don’t Start A Currency War You Can’t Finish, and since then the Obama administration has essentially… backed down meekly. For now. The gist is, the U.S. is a giant culprit in devaluing its own currency, but does so using means outside of actual currency market manipulation, so its devaluation is cool, but that of others, is not.

Look, Japan is seeing a massive rise in the value of the yen and has intervened only to try to hold the line to get some damned currency stability. Even that was enough to make the U.S. explode at it and cry charges of beggar-thy-neighbor.

So wanting some stability is trying to screw over your trading partners. Uh, okay? Point being, it undermines the advantages China and the U.S. seek to obtain from devaluing their currencies. Remember, if the U.S. dollar is going down, and China is keeping a constant ratio to the U.S. dollar artificially, that means the Chinese currency is going down, too.

Well, the point being is this:

The NYT’s Accusing Finger

The NYT’s basic message is simple: because you idiots won’t inflate the economy, coerce your people into spending more money like they did during the 1980’s, and shake people out of their problems, you suck. Not only do you suck, but you are stinking up the entire world, and the last thing we want as Americans is to end up like you.

Cheerful, isn’t it.

Let’s go over a few short topics.

Japan’s 1980’s bubble had valuations that were UTTERLY INSANE.

We’re talking like the sum value of real estate in Tokyo, on paper, being worth more than all real estate in the continental U.S., put together. I think that’s one statistic I heard, but I can’t be bothered to look it up over ten years later.

Lead paragraph:

Like many members of Japan’s middle class, Masato Y. enjoyed a level of affluence two decades ago that was the envy of the world. Masato, a small-business owner, bought a $500,000 condominium, vacationed in Hawaii and drove a late-model Mercedes.

You don’t think an entire nation spending like this was beyond its means? Japan is still, in the end, an island country that has to import huge amounts of foodstuffs to keep a first world level diet going. Delicacies like ootoro (the fattiest tuna belly meat) don’t come cheap. How do you think they get tuna meat raw from catch in the Atlantic ocean and get it fresh to Japan? By flying it chilled, of course. You think that’s cheap?

So yes, Japan’s economic valuations were the result of a shared economic delusion that eventually hit reality. The bubble could not sustain itself, and it burst.

People responding to that are baka? Seriously?

People think spending money (blindly) is stupid. (It is.)

No, they’re not idiots at all.

Take not taking out a multi-decade mortgage on the premise that young Japanese people today don’t have the job stability of their parents’ generation. Guess what? They don’t.

The discussion should end at that fact, but the NYT seeks to make a moral issue out of it more or less: lack of spending and lack of price inflation is equated with the national character, shown as a disease that essentially gives the entire country of Japan a smaller endowment, in the male sense. I could get more explicit, but I don’t need to, do I?

They’re Cowards For Scaling Back National Ambitions?? Really??

Since when?

Japan’s modern economic miracle started where, the 60’s? Heavily subsidized by American policies, mind you. At any rate, they were rebuilding from being bombed into submission in WWII. Of course they would have an economic boom. The funny part is, the boom brought Japan more prosperity than before… largely because the U.S. wasn’t closed to it. That’s a luxury the U.S. would never have provided without WWII and military occupation; it’d have felt quite unsafe otherwise.

But since when? Japan has a long history. I study it, so I have some sense of it. What period of Japanese history are we basing this loss of national character on? The Meiji Restoration? The Edo Period? The Warring States Period (Sengoku Jidai)? When?

Japan, lest it be forgotten (by journalists anyway), has a long tradition of economic conservatism, a long history of economic doldrums spanning centuries and even well over a millennium (and that’s just recorded history), where most of the people were dirt poor and had no concept of microwave ovens or plasma TV’s, let alone every girl on the street walking with brand name European designer handbags and high heels.

To paint recognizing a lack of money to keep up that level of blind, insane spending forever as

“It’s like Japanese have even lost the desire to look good,” said Akiko Oka, 63, who works part time in a small apparel shop, a job she has held since her own clothing store went bankrupt in 2002.

is just annoying to read. Really it is.

If people want to look good on a budget, don’t sneer, please. It’s disgusting.

Living Standards Are More Than Street Prices.

It’s stupid that I even have to write this but, Japanese living standards are dependent on what their yen buy, not on HOW MANY yen are used to buy it.

Seriously. I don’t think the NYT writers know that.

Lay Off The Attacks On People’s Manhood Please

So we have more of the herbivore men mocking, saying that Japanese males have lost their animal spirits.

…Uh?

OK, so let me get this straight. They’re not offered lifetime employment. They don’t have a realistic shot at a house the size their parents had. They’re expected to slave at work for very long hours, land a girl and become baby factories for… visibly less than what their parents had, and they’re expected to grin and bear it and happily do it because well, that’s what Real Men do.

People ask why Japan’s birthrate is low. Uh, have you looked at the economy there? It costs to raise a kid. It’s a massive commitment. They’re not inner city gangsters who have ten kids with six different women and skip out on all of them (or spend time behind bars). They’re trying to be (gasp!) responsible adults, and that means not leaping into commitments they can’t keep.

Also, well, the women have reason to say, is that all you have? At some level, people just have to deal with the fact that there’s less shiny objects to gather the attention of females with.

Less, but hardly none.

The Bottom Line: Japan’s Still OK

The real bottom line here has to be pounded home.

Japan didn’t collapse. It persevered. It’s still here.

(Granted that annoys some, but whatever.)

A lot of people might suspect that… Japan ought to have collapsed, it’d be good in the longer terms. We should just have a mass blowing up of economic society and start over. Something like that. Funny that the Japanese themselves don’t think so.

Now look, it’s easy to understand one way inflation would have helped certain people: by digging them out of debts that were way over their heads once the bubble burst. That’s why it was a bubble.

Let me put it a different way. At their most basic, prices are mathematical representations of reality. Inflating prices with no relation to underlying reality is nothing more than denial of reality.

So for not denying reality, as the Federal Reserve plans to push in America – which some people sanely point out would be ruinous – Japan is condemned as having lost its national manhood.

You know, the U.S. didn’t like Japan when it did have the swagger. Remember the movie Rising Sun? I’ve seen it three times. I was fascinated by Japan in spite of the whole, well, you know, Evil Japanese Bogeyman vibe. (Simple reason why: It beat stupid Canadian language politics. – J Sensei) A lot of Japanese people seemed sort of relieved to not be so threatening to the U.S. that it threatened a trade war to trash their existing living standards.

By the way, Japan has largely maintained its living standards, in reality if not on paper. Ironically, the higher the yen soars, the better off importers are (though I won’t say consumers, that would mean lower prices get passed on; right, keep dreaming). Sure, it sucks for exporters, and the government doesn’t want to see Toyota and Sony coming in with sucky profit figures, but their problems run deeper than the value of the yen.

Indeed, Japan would be well served by forgetting about these manhood issues and just focusing on solving real problems in the real world and ignoring the harpies at the New York Times.

Buyer Beware – Inflation Has No Trade-In Policy

You can’t give inflation back to the store for a refund.

I will say one thing about Japan: so far as I can tell, through serious study and observation of the facts, what got Japan to the state where it is today – that is, no swagger but still kicking – is that it stopped a lot of evasion and political back-scratching and took restructuring of the banks’ balance sheets seriously. Real, long-term problems that could have been made to disappear with mass inflation, at the cost of the life savings of two generations of Japanese people (or is it three? who’s counting?), were instead acknowledged and painfully dealt with.

In so doing, society has been stable. Not great, not fantastic, certainly not dynamic in the size and length of Japan’s… economic numbers, but let me tell you something…

It could have been much, much worse.

Serious Business Thus Concluded

Hey, I want to get back to culture and anime blogging as much as anyone. I just feel a lot better getting back to that once I put in context how I feel about these other issues.

Essentially, I feel that Japan has hope. It’s not a matter of quick fixes or instant gratification. It is the longer, less traveled path, the search for a greater and more fulfilling personal experience rather than a brute force approach through life. It is appreciating what we have and searching for what we desire. It is doing so in a way that will not break us, but will enrich us and make us wiser over the long haul.

That’s why I blog about Japan. That’s why I learned the Japanese language over years of study (over a decade in fact).

Because deep down, I think that Japan is worth it.

(Even if the New York Times thinks Japan is boring and shouldn’t be bothered with except to make it a poster child of decline while lavishing awe upon China…)

Trust Matters.

You cannot do business in Japan to any serious degree without getting people to trust you. Here are five simple steps – I won’t call them easy – that you can follow to make your task less difficult.

Step #1: Listen

Japanese people, as a broad rule, do not force their opinions down your throat. This is part of the culture.

Japanese people, as a broad rule, very badly want you to hear, and listen to, their opinions. This, too, is part of the culture.

You are not obligated to agree with them, but they really, really would appreciate you listening to their concerns. It makes them feel better. It makes them sense that you are respecting their beliefs as individuals, not just as part of the company hierarchy. It makes them feel whole, if you will.

So do it.

Step #2: Inquire

One of the most wonderful way to make a person feel like you’re actually listening, is to ask follow-up questions to probe deeper into a subject. Better still, this could get you information you could not have received initially.

It is important to be patient and unravel things step by step. People who do not wear their hearts on their sleeves do not want to, as they say in English, spill their guts without some gentle prodding. Indeed, it should be gentle prodding; don’t be rude or mean. Curiosity and acting reasonable gets you a long way.

Step #3: Sharing Opinions

As long as you show you’re willing and able to listen, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with advancing your own opinion. Don’t think your opinion will be taken as fact. On the other hand, sharing opinions shows different sides of yourself to the other person; in other words, you become a more memorable and vivid individual. This is how networks are formed.

In Japanese business culture, networks are very important because personal trust is so important. Dealing with a stranger is always a touch and go thing with a lot of formality. If you can share opinions with a Japanese businessperson, and vice versa, you’re already well on your way to establishing trust.

Step #4: Be A Complete Person

Now, this shouldn’t be done out of order; breaking the ice requires building trust in itself. However, once initial phases are complete, try to avoid the trap of treating “business” as the only part of business. In other words, the immediate business at hand is just a starting point. From the Japanese point of view, people make a business really work. It’s all right to show that you have a life, too.

Mileage may vary but, what if you keep track of professional baseball? Do you pay attention to Japanese teams or just the American major leagues? Do you know about (insert Japanese player playing in Major League Baseball here)? Who do you think will win this year’s World Series?

In a case like this, there is no “right” answer, nor should you invent one and fake it. In Japan, sincerity is considered a great virtue. Be true to yourself and have a little fun with questions that are intended to be a little fun. If you’re at this stage, it’s a good thing, not a waste of time.

Step #5: Remember The Value Of Interpreters

All of these steps can be done in English to some degree, but unless you are truly linguistically and culturally fluent in Japanese, you will benefit from the availability of an interpreter. This is more than likely a Japanese native speaker who speaks better English than most. This individual will understand all the nuances of Japanese and will try to put these nuances into English for your benefit as well as possible.

Some nuance must be lost, if we’re talking strict translation, but a good interpreter focuses on what the Japanese speaker means, not on grammatic structure. In other words, you can get some information about the subtext.

It’s still not a perfect process, so patience and flexibility are virtues.

Here’s the real reason interpreters are great: Japanese natives with less than a full command of English will trust interpreters to convey the deeper message to you better than they can themselves. In other words, the interpreter is probably getting far more of the nuance than you are. Even if you don’t speak one word of Japanese, and the interpreter can only convey half of this deeper nuance to you, you’re still a long ways ahead of where you were by just relying on a non-native English speaker’s use of English.

Keep in mind that language classes focus on polite speech. This is also true for English natives who are being taught Japanese. Anything outside of the narrow confines of polite speech must be learned beyond the textbooks. The resulting English is an imperfect tool for conveying the true opinion of a Japanese native, but an interpreter can guide you to at least get much closer.

Consideration and respect

All of these steps are meant to convey consideration and respect for your Japanese business partners. I strongly advise you to sincerely do so, not just fake it. Broadly speaking, consideration and respect are things that Japanese people really want from you – and if they get it, they will provide you with much more trust in return.

This opens the other party up to your message as a promoter of your own business. This has a direct bearing on your success.

It’s a difficult habit to resist. We want to put the best spin on our company’s talents and resources and present everything in as positive a light as possible. We want to make a good first impression. We want the other side to fall in love at first sight and sign a deal ASAP. Then, we go home, celebrate, pop the champagne, and look forward to the next challenge.

Back up.

It’s not about what we want to say. It’s about what the other side, the Japanese business culture side, wants to hear.

Facts Vs. Opinions

In Japanese society, people never really gave up on the idea of objective facts. In other words, in spite of Western philosophy having made heavy inroads in establishing that “there are no objective facts” – which in practice tends to mean, you have no objective facts that you can use to counter my amazing logic – Japan simply doesn’t, well, care.

In Japan, there is a vast gulf between your opinion (iken, 意見), what you think you know, and an objective fact (jijitsu, 事実). In the first case, “iken” is formed with “i,” representing idea, and “ken,” representing view. In other word, an idea from your perspective. In the second case, “jijitsu” is formed “ji,” representing an intangible thing, and “jitsu,” representing fruit.

In Japan, a “fact” is the fruit of an intangible thing. By their fruits will you know them; similarly, by their facts will you know them.

Now, a Japanese businessman will very politely listen to your opinion. He will nod his head. He will appear attentive. He will make every effort to demonstrate that your opinion is important.

Yet, your opinion is not what he wants to hear.

He wants to hear facts.

The Substance Behind The Politeness

Japan’s strict educational system serves to accomplish two things:

1. Prepare people for a hierarchal corporate world
2. Instill a rigorous appreciation of facts and technicalities

Very often, what will make or break a business proposal is not the spin, not the gloss, but the facts underlying the presentation. It will be the express, explicit job of the note-takers and studiers of your presentation to rigorously analyze your presentation, both “objectively” (to identify jijitsu, facts) and from their own company’s standpoint (tachiba, 立場, lit. stand + ground, the ground on which you stand).

Killing With Kindness

There is a strategy used by Japanese companies that goes like this: respond very favorably, nod your head, look like you’re considering something, and wait until the other side understands this isn’t going anywhere and gives up.

Still, you have to understand that this isn’t meant as deception so much as putting you down gently. When a rejection must be done, they believe that doing it politely is an obligation, not an option. As much as Western culture wants to a) get informal, b) get to the point quickly, in Japan, that is showing disrespect to the other party and making yourself look like an ass. Japanese businessmen do not make themselves look like asses lightly.

An additional problem is that the put-downs tend to be more direct, that is, polite but firm with the subtext clearly understandable, when in Japanese.

This is for a couple of rather valid reasons.

First, even if a Japanese person can speak the words of English fluently, they will lack the confidence to send a lot of subtle subtext with the English language, a well-founded concern, and given this, will favor towards polite language rather than risk coming off as rude.

Second, English has less nuance and complexity than Japanese does. (I speak from a great deal of translation experience: yes, Japanese has more complexity and is capable of greater nuance, which comes across well in Japanese but even with the best intentioned translators and interpreters, must necessarily lose nuance when transformed into English.) So, there’s that.

Totally besides this, there’s probably the concern that Westerners don’t like rejection and don’t take it very well. This, too, is well founded.

What You Can Do: Building Trust

Trust is all-important in Japanese business.

Besides being important in general, put simply, Japanese business relies on being able to fulfill obligations a long time in advance, on being reliable, on being trustworthy, and on not pulling a fast one for a quick buck.

It is important to note that this didn’t happen yesterday. This is a product of many centuries of Japanese business culture, dating back to the merchant caste during the Edo period. It was not a “samurai businessman” invention; it was common sense over hundreds of years by “commoner” merchants who could very easily lose everything if things went bad.

A hundred years ago, the United Kingdom would have been considered much the same. In modern America, bankruptcy is common enough and isn’t really held against people. Not so in Japan. Not so at all. (And not so in the U.K. of 100 years ago; you’d be barred from holding political office for life.)

So, it’s all about trust.

Do you want an honest answer, not a polite one? Do you want to find out what the other side’s really thinking? Do you want extra details that won’t be revealed at first blush?

The answer is to get the other side to trust you.

Have Some Fist In Your Glove

The best way to accomplish this is to have real, solid substance behind your gloss.

Be prepared to back up anything you say with something from the real world. Not everything can have an objective fact behind it, but the more, the merrier.

Demonstrate that you are taking the first step towards trust by being honest. That doesn’t mean broadcasting your weaknesses; it means being pragmatic about the challenges that must be faced to get the job done, and showing you are prepared to overcome setbacks.

Don’t just be willing; be able.

This will show that you are reliable, and that you are worthy of being trusted.

All else flows from this.