Japan Inc. articles from January 2004

Japan Inc. archives from January 2004

From the editors.
January 1, 2004... At the turn of each new calendar year we are bombarded with media pronouncements on the supposed significance of the old one. We'd rather face forward. In this issue we trek through Europe and Asia in our cover story, Digital Dragons,...

To the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... Dear Mr. Kelts, Regarding your feature story on the imprisonment of Nick Baker ("And Justice for All... " J@pan Inc, November 2003): Who said that Japanese criminal proceedings were "democratic?" Perhaps only those who have never...

Ashikaga implodes.(The Pulse 1)
January 1, 2004... EVEN THE BIGGEST OPTIMIST had to admit that it was all going a little too well to be credible. The Japanese banking system, though allegedly on the mend, is still the kind of patient that can suffer a sudden relapse and put the entire industry...

ATR innovates.(The Pulse 1)
January 1, 2004... WISH YOUR MOBILE PHONE could also translate Japanese to English? The Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR) in Nara continues to crank out new innovations. The research center recently went through some alterations resulting from...

Ratoc Systems' REX-Link1.(The Pulse 2)
January 1, 2004... [right arrow] Japan's clearly gone a bit wireless-mad recently. The REX-Link1 is a 2.4GHz digital wireless USB audio transmitter, working with almost all the new Windows operating systems and newer Macs. It transmits across a space of up to 10...

Hitachi 770G20TVP2.(The Pulse 2)
January 1, 2004... [right arrow] There has been a whole host of PCs with Microsoft's spanky new Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 announced recently for Japan. I've put the URLs for some of them at the end of this piece but will focus on the one from Hitachi...

IO data Z'Qun.(The Pulse 2)
January 1, 2004... [right arrow] The bizarrely named "Z'Qun" is a USB-IrDA adapter in USB key form. For those of you who don't speak Geek, in English that means it's a little widget that will allow owners to zap, as if by magic, the photos they take on their...

Sony PCVA-HVP20.(The Pulse 2)
January 1, 2004... The charmingly monikered PCVA-HVP20 is a very sleek-looking portable video player with a 20GB internal hard drive. To get the most out of it, Sony says, you'll need a Vaio laptop (also, coincidentally, made by Sony) running Windows ME, XP or...

Sony DSC-T1.(The Pulse 2)
January 1, 2004... [right arrow] It's the smallest 5-megapixel digital still camera in the world, ladies and gents, at an extraordinary 17.3mm thick. And it's from Sony, which does this sort of thing really, really well. The T1 has a 2.5-inch viewfinder LCD...

No longer sure about Sony: how Japan's global electronics giant fell asleep at the wheel.(Upfront)
January 1, 2004... THE DAYS WHEN THE Sony brand was known worldwide as a sure thing are gone, and the company's recent fall from grace (its run of sub-par results and subsequent restructuring schemes) has been far from spectacular. Everything about Sony--its...

Selling safety gets serious: security giant Secom soars on a mix of media hype and menace.(Upfront)
January 1, 2004... YOU DON'T HAVE TO observe Japan for very long to realize how powerful its media can be. Newspapers, TV and magazines play a central role in societies worldwide: They inform, influence and dictate a dramatic proportion of the way we see the...

The Bloom is off the boom, and the Yen also rises: our analyst sees the market dipping as currencies play power games.(Upfront)
January 1, 2004... JAPAN'S THIRD QUARTER GDP came in at an annualized 2.2 percent. While that's better than the 1.5 percent foreseen by some consensus surveys, it was still noticeably slower than the surprising 3.5 percent of the previous quarter. Growth is still...

In search of Shikoku's youth: our intrepid columnist treks from bridges to bullfights.(Upfront)
January 1, 2004... "HEY, GAIJIN-SAN, WHAT ARE you doing here in Matsuyama?" asked a high school girl seated beside me in a humble ramen shop. She wasn't being obnoxious. Her tone was friendly, curious. I explained that I was researching a book, an answer she...

Breaking up is hard to do: how to divorce your Japanese distributor and live to tell about it.
January 1, 2004... Legal expertise on the ins and outs of getting into Japan-and out of a bad relationship IT'S A SAD BUT familiar story: A foreign company decides to enter the potentially lucrative but notoriously difficult Japanese market. Seeking to speed...

Digital dragons: the analog West meets the binary East.
January 1, 2004... A journey through the history of West and East, digital and analog divides IS THERE SOMETHING INHERENTLY "digital" about Japan and its hypermodern culture? This thought initially struck me in the 80s, when I first visited Tokyo and soaked...

Getting an education in Tokyo; from kindergarten to college, the opportunities for an English-language education in Tokyo have never been better. But how do you make the right choice?(International Education)
January 1, 2004... WE SURVEYED TEN LOCAL international schools and learned that while today's plethora of English-language schools in Japan aren't cheap, quality is absolutely world class. You can now combine an education received in Japan with study at many...

The Docomo Mojo: Wireless data services technologies, business models and global markets.(Feature)
January 1, 2004... Authors Chetan Sharma and Yasuhisa Nakamura deconstruct DoCoMo's dramatic success--and reveal why Europe and the US are failing the grade WITH THE ADVENT OF wireless data applications and services, the old value chain has been disturbed by...

Going mobile.(Blowfish)
January 1, 2004... SAY IT WITH PIXELS. With a memory as short as mine, you have to repeat things to make sure they properly sink in. So while I've said it before, I'll say it again: Mobile phones with cameras mounted on them are going to change the world. They...