Japan Inc. articles from April 2004

Japan Inc. archives from April 2004

Forget; New Year's Eve: in Japan, the new year launches now. For schoolchildren, university students, freshly minted salarymen and office ladies--and even street-beating hacks and laptop addicts like us--April means change.(Editor)
April 1, 2004... CHANGE IS USUALLY DIFFICULT... or disastrous. But we're stoked about this one. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The issue of JI you hold in your hands debuts a new look, a new vibrancy and a ripe audacity that is already driving us forward into...

Unfair trade.(Buzz)
April 1, 2004... MICROSOFT'S Japanese headquarters were raided in a Fair Trade Commission (FTC) probe into coercive practices. The FTC swooped down on nearly a dozen large electronics makers in its search for evidence. The US software giant is under scrutiny...

Shinsei sensation.(Buzz)
April 1, 2004... A sensational debut for the stock of Shinsei Bank created quite a stir on the Tokyo stock market. Huge demand for the shares in Japan's "newest" bank pushed the issue up by more than 60 percent in the course of just a few hours' trading. US...

A fearful cheer.(Buzz)
April 1, 2004... AFTER 257 HEARINGS, three changes of defense team, 160 witnesses and nearly nine years in court, Shoko Asahara was found guilty of several counts of murder, including the gassing deaths on the Tokyo subway in 1995. As everyone fully expected,...

Still the one.(Buzz)
April 1, 2004... FETED by the Tokyo American Club (TAC), Fuji Xerox chairman Yotaro Kobayashi says that "thinking and acting for ourselves" are critical for Japanese corporations. Kobayashi received the club's "Distinguished Achievement Award," bestowed...

Compassionate pugilist.(Buzz)
April 1, 2004... EX-BOXER Eiji Yoshikawa has been getting a lot of press lately, though not for his exploits in the ring. Three years ago, the compassionate pugilist put together the "Peace Makers," Japan's first-ever neighborhood watchdog group to take a bite...

Aiwa HP-SN51.(G-Spot)
April 1, 2004... Aiwa has just announced a bunch of new headphones. The funkiest of them has to be the one that is designed, according to the company (Sony), to look like a "virtual neckband." The HP-SN51 has sound output of 105dB/mW, a frequency response range...

iRiver iMP-550.(G-Spot)
April 1, 2004... iRiver have just made available a Beta firmware upgrade for any gadgetholics smart enough to have bought one of the company's iMP-550 portable audio players (which is the world's slimmest, at 13.7mm). Already capable of playing MP3 and WMA, and...

JR Tsubame Mouse.(G-Spot)
April 1, 2004... JR Kyushu has decided to release a computer mouse in the shape of the JR Kyushu Tsubame 800 series Shinkansen. For just over 4,000 of your Japanese yen, the "Tsubame Mouse" is yours, sporting the company's vanguard 800 series Shinkansen logo....

Matsushita DMW-WT1.(G-Spot)
April 1, 2004... The DMW-WT 1 is a wireless transmission adapter for the Lumix FX5 and FX1 line of digital still cameras. Sit the camera on top of the adapter, fiddle with a few screws and... presto! Allied with an SD-slot mobile phone, such as the PHS...

Sony NW-MS77DR.(G-Spot)
April 1, 2004... We're going to make this one quick. But these gorgeously designed players from Sony are always difficult to ignore. The MS77DR replaces the MS70D, released about a year ago now, and the biggest difference, according to Sony, is that this one...

Sony PEG-TH55.(G-Spot)
April 1, 2004... Sony has announced a new Clie with built-in wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11b) and a camera as standard. The PEG-TH55 has a 320X480-dot TFT display and runs Palm OS 5.21 via the company's 123MHz "Handheld Engine" CPU, but the best part is that it has...

Who killed Koki Ishii? The murder of Japan's top corruption-busting politician raises questions no one dares answer.(Upfront)
April 1, 2004... KOKI Ishii lived in a house full of women: his Russian mother-in-law, his wife Natalia and his daughter Tatiana. They were quick to sense his moods. So on the night of Oct. 24, 2002, they knew that the 61-year-old politician was worried sick....

Letting creative lead: advertising after the bubble; Alejandro Lopez spices up Beacon's bacon.(Upfront)
April 1, 2004... A couple of years ago, when advertising agency Beacon Communications eliminated its creative department, the copywriters and art directors made a forceful presentation to Alejandro Lopez, their creative director and leader. The idea of...

Honda president Takeo Fukui: a JI exclusive.(Voice)
April 1, 2004... THE Nikkei has just named you the No. 1 company in Japan for corporate excellence. How do you feel? ********** THERE ARE VARIOUS evaluations about how companies are run. Of course it is a great honor, but it is a judgment that refers...

Will the slum remain the same? A visit to San'ya, home to Japan's underclass, where community values are on the auction block.(InDepth)
April 1, 2004... "IF San'ya were gone," Jin Kigoshi says of the Tokyo neighborhood around his workshop, "and if these beaten down, good-hearted people were to lose their place to run to, sooner or later they'd destroy Japan." ********** KIGOSHI IS A...

Signs of a real recovery? Our money master provides an overview of the likelihoods.(InvestorInsight)
April 1, 2004... IN 2003, Japan managed to recover and surprise critics despite continued deflation. This has led some to insist that there was no liquidity trap in Japan, and that despite the zero-interest-rate policy, monetary policy made an important...

Refusing to wake: our Kansai columnist is the token foreigner on an "international" Kansai committee. Uh-oh.(Kansai)
April 1, 2004... LAST year, I was strong-armed into sitting on a prefectural governmental committee on intanashonarizeishon, one of the most frequently misused gairaigo (foreign language terms) in the Japanese language. In English, it refers almost...

Spring's school daze.(Look!)
April 1, 2004... IN JAPAN, APRIL MARKS the beginning of things. For the nation's youngsters and their parents, this means the start of the school year, which generally runs until the following February. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] During the boom years of...

The brand is dead, long live the brand: with so much of what we buy now made in the same developing countries by workers on the same wages, do brands really matter anymore?(Advertisement)
April 1, 2004... AT an automotive conference in Tokyo last year, Rolf Eckrodt, president and CEO of Mitsubishi Motors said, "excuse my language, but I think there's too much talk about brand bullsh-t these days." ********** ON THE OTHER SIDE of the...

Anime attacks: as Disney dithers, Toei takes on the world.(Feature)(Cover Story)
April 1, 2004... IF you haven't heard of Mr. Muscleman, Digimon Tamers, or Cutey Honey, listen up. They are the first attack wave in a new Japanese army of occupation, and their target is children around the globe. ********** COLORFUL AND CUTE THEY MAY...

Color blinded: a user's guide to racism in Japan.(Feature)
April 1, 2004... RACIAL profiling is old news in Japan, which makes us wonder: how will a country that so desperately needs immigrant labor adapt to a sudden influx of foreign faces? ********** I TEND TO AVOID cycling past the police-box around the...

True lies: filthy--and filthy rich: Japan, the US and the M-Fund.(Feature)
April 1, 2004... IT sounds like the plot of an overwrought political thriller, the sort of thing Oliver Stone might cook up if he cast his conspiratorial gaze toward Japan. But the story of the M-Fund (named after US Major General William Marquat, the fund's...

I want my thin TV!(BlowFish)
April 1, 2004... WHAT'S UP, DOC? Your blood pressure, you say? When it comes to medical malpractice suits, Japanese are not known to be as litigious as Americans. Nonetheless a medical mishap ombudsman conducted a survey of those who had initiated legal action...