2019.9.27

ガラパゴスジャパン、英語でGo説明してみましょう！

私は昨日の日本語をこんな英語にしています！

Galapagos island Japan, Pros and Cons?

This has been said that Japan looks like the Galapagos island; everything has been completed in one island and the society looks enjoying self-development without any interaction with the rest of the world. I would like to highlight this hypothesis, interpret through my own experience, and analyze the future direction to be taken.

Q: What Mr. Inamori* referred the peculiarity of Japanese society?

A: No venture-friendly culture, he mentioned. Through his speech about prerequisites of venture business he did around 2000, he demonstrated the episode about Fairchild, who supported the semi-conductor business and contributed a lot to develop the Silicon Valley. In his episode, around that time, the dawn of semi-conductor industry, Kyocera had developed a lot of great technologies to be applied to semiconductor. However, there was almost no company who showed interests to those technologies. Mr. Inamori said most of Japanese big names did not pay any attention to the starting-up small domestic company, even though its technology looked very innovative and had a lot of potential to grow.

Q: What did Mr. Inamori do after realizing Japanese big names would not be their customers?

A: He determined to go to the US, visited Fairchild and demonstrated his technologies. They were very much impressed with Kyocera’s technologies and decided to use them. By this episode, Mr. Inamori wanted to highlight the fundamental culture which welcomes venture business is quite important to encourage new industry growth.

Q: Do you agree with Mr. Inamori’s idea, Japanese society is less friendly to venture business?

A: Yes I do. Around 2000 to 2010, I spent time in overseas countries to get MBA and came back to Japan. However, there was almost no Japanese company who was interested in my skills. Although they raised a propaganda” to be global”, actually, especially for the real estate industry where I was, most of the companies had no idea on what to do, and where to go. Additionally, in Japan, the established seniority system has been dominating and no company wanted to challenge that system.

Q: Thus around that time, 1990 to 2010, how did those skilled people survive in Japan?

A: Non-Japanese companies had given them opportunities. Around that time, global investors looked at the piled-up Japanese real estate stocks, depressed values and historically low interest rates. They wanted to have resources who understand well the market and can efficiently report to their non-Japanese  managements.

Q: So, did you work for those non-Japanese companies?

A: Yes I did. Not only myself but many qualified businessperson in my field worked for non-Japanese companies. They provided those Japanese with good positions where they can deliver their skills and expertise, valued their performance and implemented the reward system. This exactly worked and both non-Japanese investors and skilled Japanese had been very happy.

Q: What do you think about this phenomenon?

A: This is the weaknesses of Japan compared to the US. Personally, I feel the US is willing to have talented resources and have them feel comfortable in staying in the US, as long as those talents commit themselves to work for the US growth. On the other hand, Japan has been less powerful to retain skilled resources to contribute to Japan’s growth.

Q: How do you associate this phenomenon with the idea of Galapagos?

A: Basically, such attitudes have helped Japan to be isolated as a Galapagos. Japan looks like cutting the connection with the rest of the world and sticks with our own growth by looking only at the domestic market. This is simply because our mindset: no need to have global/ international resources, no need to challenge, less interested exploring markets outside Japan.

Q: Do you think this is strength or weakness of Japan?

A: This phenomenon can be seen as both: positive and negative. As for the negative aspect, of course Japan has spontaneously chosen the way where we have to be isolated and we have to take care of ourselves. We have done the strategies not simply seeking outside but growing domestic market and occupying it by ourselves. This can be seen as a positive effect: we had no choice but enriching domestic market by ourselves for us to survive for long term.

Q: What is the lesson learned from this?

A: For the future, modified Galapagos would be launched as a new business model, I think. For instance, Japanese philosophy, Asian spirits have been well appreciated on the global basis. On the other hand, business elements have been transferred into the real estate value, like the new business model of “Wework.” I think this is the global trend and the real estate could generate much higher value by integrating more into the business cash flows. In that stage, how we can add value on it? I think bringing our original value come from Japanese culture and mentality would be the one sought by the world. This kind of idea has inspired me a lot.