The Tomigaia Blog

Interesting Article on KM in Japan

As many people are saying these days, Japan is either on the brink of a recovery (selective or general) or it is on the brink of disaster. Being a fan of optimism, I always look for signs of a Japan recovery. I recently read this article called "Knowledge Communities in Japan: A Case Study" published in "Knowledge Board: The European KM Community" by Hideo Yamazaki, ph.D. of NRI. It gave me some hope for the future of Japan.

. Mr. Yamazaki gives examples of companies that successfully used KM to improve their performance and agility. I had assumed that tradtional Japanese companies like Q.P. Mayonnaise and Sumitomo Life would not be interested in or ready to use these ideas yet. I was wrong.

The idea that IT departments and young workers were leading whole companies into KM is a very hopeful sign. The individualists will make a difference in Japan, despite all the efforts of the "salaryman". This is a ray of hope for me.

Let's hope that this trend continues, and that Japanese companies shift from being "stagnating information swamps" to "flowing rivers of information".

Digital "Manbiki": An unintended consequence?

I am constantly fascinated by situations where there are unintended consequences of a technology being adopted by the general public. Another one has come to my attention: Digital "Manbiki", a kind of copyright abuse that appears to have recently become common in parts of Japan. (In this report from Sept. 5th, 2003, it was reported that 37% of people surveyed knew about the concept of Digital Manbiki. 13% of the respondents thought that there was nothing wrong with doing it.)

"Manbiki" is a colloquial word for "shoplifting", and it goes like this: a person with a new, high resolution digital camera cell phone enters a book store. They find a guide book that they like. They browse the guide book, and find information about a hot spring that they would like to go to some day. They whip out their phone, and before the shopkeeper even knows what has happened, they have taken a picture of that page. At some later date the person can print this picture and use it to call or drive to the hot spring.

With cell phone cameras becoming ubiquitous, Japanese society seems to be absorbing many of these unexpected ramifications of a mobile multimedia communications enabled populace. There are going to be many other problems down the road: invasions of privacy, camera predators, and others. After looking at the thread about Digital Manbiki on Slashdot Japan, I think that the debate about all these issues will be a lively one.

Civil Disobedience or Selfishness?

I recently got an e-mail from my friend Greg pointing out another dangerous change in Japanese society. 40% of eligible working adults are refusing to pay their pension bills (farmers and the self-employed are sent pension contribution bills, whereas employees of corporations have their contributions witheld from their paycheck). I read an Op-Ed piece in the Asahi Shi.bun, and the proposal that the editor put forward was to reform the Japanese pension to work like the Swedish pension system. This may resolve some issues, but it will not fix the basic problems with the Japanese economy that are causing people to lose faith in government.

I think some young people are intentionally refusing to pay because they disagree with the way the goverment is operating, and they find it a simple way to protest. The majority are just looking for a way to help make ends meet in the short term.

Japan needs deep reform soon.

Book-Off, Selling the Ripped-Off

There has been a lot of talk in the press recently about the changes taking place in the fabric of Japanese society. I was recently talking to a friend who lives in Japan, and he told me that there has been a recent development there that shows how much things have changed in the last few years. It seems that young Japanese males have discovered a new way of making pocket money. First they go to a bookstore and shoplift a couple of expensive books. Then they take them to a used bookshop called Bookoff, which will buy them for a percentage of the list price, no questions asked. Some bookstores are losing up to $1 million a month in inventory due to this trade (see this article, in Japanese). I'm sure that the bookstores, who began to improve their security systems, , will work with Bookoff to prevent stolen merchandise from being fenced in its shops, but there are definitely some conclusions that we can make about the changes in Japanese culture from this story.

Young people in Japan think very differently about morality and ethics then their parents do. This generation gap will cause enormous conflict over the next few years in Japan. Of course, Japanese youth will begin to take advantage of weak and inefficient systems, but they will also rebel against attitudes of conformity toward work and other pillars of Japanese society. I hope that the parts of Japanese culture that I love will not be destroyed but I worry that this abrupt shift in values will do just that.

A Venture Success Story from Japan? Yes?

I have been wondering if there have been any ventures that are growing right now in Japan, and have been sad to see little news of this type in the media I read. Then I read a story in a newsletter I get monthly called the Japan Entrepreneur Report by Tim Clark of the Sunbridge Venture Habitat. (I also heartily recommend Tim Clark's Japan Internet Report!)

Once you read the lead story on Freshness Burger and Book Off!, you get the impression that all you have do to succeed in business in Japan today is to promote "health, naturalness, environmental consciousness, de-standardization, personalization, individualization, and priority on high-touch over high-tech" at the workplace. And don't forget "aggressive outsourcing", "working for the benefit of others", "a clear, easy-to-understand pricing policy" and lack of legacy systems.

As someone who worked as a manager in Japan for a couple of years, I think that there is some truth to this idea, but it seems too narrowly applicable to me. Some of this applies only to retail services, some to all service industries.

Perhaps as Japan goes through the eye of the needle, and many moribund companies finally go bankrupt, there will be more openings for ventures to try new ideas. There is more than just fast food and books to go after, but the barriers to entry in other areas of the service sector must be signifigantly larger, since they have prevented other entrepreneurs from breaking into them so far.

I agree with Tim that service sector is the only sector in Japan that will show growth during this recession, but I am not sure if there are a list of ad-hoc rules that will work for all parts of the service sector.

Nuclear Power Blues

As many of you may know, there has been a series of scandals in Japan last
year relating to the nuclear power industry. There was a case of reactor core shroud corrosion that was covered up by TEPCO for four years, then the METI ordered a year-long shutdown of a Fukushima reactor when it was found out that Hitachi had injected air into a containment vessel to make it appear as if the leakage rate was lower than it really was. (For a list of scandals, please see the Green Action Archives.)

There are also many lawsuits taking place in Japan right now that relate to Nuclear Power. For example more than a thousand plaintiffs filed a suit seeking the closure of the Hamaoka nuclear power plant because of the risk of national exposure to radiation if a large earthquake hit the Kanto-Shizuoka region.

In California, home of the power crisis of 2001, the Mercury News announced that Tokyo may face severe blackouts this summer.

This all seems to me to be a sign that there are some systemic problems with the way that utilities and government agencies are operating. It has caused a big rift to develop between Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures (where all the power plants are). It has shaken the public's trust in Nuclear Power. I think that these scandals may be part of the jolt that Japan needs to see that the status quo is bankrupt, and that changes need to take place soon.

I just hope that rolling blackouts will not be final blow that send the Tokyo economy down the tubes for another 10 years!!!