Why I am long Japan: exhibit A

I have a longer post about this kicking around in the MFT cutting room, but one key consideration is that Japan has a culture of creating incredible things regardless of the incentives offered (or not offered) to do so. This video (forwarded by our frequent commenter Peter) is a good example.

In twenty years, this generation will control the country by default. Watch out.

9 thoughts on “Why I am long Japan: exhibit A”

  1. “creating incredible things regardless of the incentives offered”

    Like the anime and manga industries!

  2. Have you noticed all the recent press about Japanese companies hiring more foreign graduate trainees? Rakuten, Lawson, Fast Retailing (Uniqlo) and Panasonic are getting most of the coverage. Panasonic apparently plans to recruit at least 1,100 foreigners in 2011 out of their total graduate intake of 1,390.

    I have my own reservations about how well these programmes will run but some do maintain we shouldn’t be looking at how talented young Japanese are for a guide to how successful Japanese businesses will be in the next 10 years, let alone the next 20.

  3. “In twenty years, this generation will control the country by default.”

    Which country?

  4. Hearing about Panasonic’s plans to devote considerable resources to understanding the extent and nature of demand for home appliances in the Chinese countryside and building (relatively inexpensive) products aimed at that market was encouraging. Now hearing that they are going to hire the foreign employees to buttress such a plan is even more encouraging.

    I think, however, that these talented young Japanese making crazy Youtube clips will be carrying Japanese domestic popular culture, which is all we should expect.

  5. By “foreign” you basically mean “Chinese.” I have personally run into many Chinese people who have taken on prominent positions at well-known Japanese companies, often straight out of a Japanese university, to assist said companies’ spread into the Chinese market.

    As far as I can tell, other nationalities aren’t doing quite as well, except in a few isolated and bizarre environments like Nomura.

  6. “As far as I can tell, other nationalities aren’t doing quite as well”

    I hear Indians are doing okay. Given the size of the Indian and Chinese markets and those growth rates, I don’t think that concentrating in those areas is a bad thing at all. For countries like the US, Germany, etc. the talent is best recruited by the local branches of Nintoyosonysonic, no?

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