Japan Inc. articles from June 2003

Japan Inc. archives from June 2003

From the editor.(Japan's economy)
June 1, 2003... HERE WE ARE, NEARLY halfway through the year, and things are starting to look awfully familiar. All the noisy reform talk we heard at the end of March has died down, and unless Koizumi and his cohorts are careful, 2003 is going to be another...

Finding ways to sell to DoCoMo.(mobile phone company NTT DoCoMo)
June 1, 2003... HOW DO YOU SELL to the mobile giant, NTT DoCoMo? It's a question that plagues any small player in the mobile arena in Japan, but if you're a foreign company that question mark may be followed by an exclamation point. DoCoMo can be a hard nut to...

Tokyo landlords offer six months rent free to lure office tenants.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... ... IN BRIEF: The office space glut has pushed Tokyo landlords to offer as much as a half year of free rent to lure businesses to vacant office space. Another 9 million square meters of office space is coming onto the Tokyo market this year,...

IBM Japan, HP Japan lead way in Unix server price war.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... ... IN BRIEF: The Japan arms of foreign giants IBM and Hewlett Packard slashed prices of Unix servers in late April in a move that will almost certainly going to pressure NEC, Fujitsu and other domestic server makers to follow suit. IBM Japan...

Sony promotion of Kutaragi puts games on par with electronics.(Ken Kutaragi promoted)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... ... IN BRIEF: Sony promoted games division chief Ken Kutaragi to executive deputy president this spring, putting Kutaragi one step closer to the corporate presidency and elevating the games division to equal footing with the electronics...

Bank of Kansai to buy majority stake in Kansai Sawayaka.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... ... IN BRIEF: Bank of Kansai and buyout king Wilbur Ross' Kansai Sawayaka Bank have agreed to merge, according to Japanese press reports. Bank of Kansai, which is affiliated with Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, will turn Kansai Sawayaka into a...

NTT to slash pay phones by 92,000.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... ... IN BRIEF: In 1985, there were 935,000 pay phones in Japan. By the end of this fiscal year, there will be 490,000 left. NTT East and West will get rid of 92,000 of the phones during this fiscal year as demand for the once ubiquitous machines...

Tourism industry hits the skids.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... FIRST A WEAK ECONOMY, then war, now SARS. The tourism industry is reeling from all three, and as a result, overseas travel this spring and summer is expected to be way below average. The Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA) released data...

Sony's BDZ-S77 Blu-ray recorder.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... It's a world's first, and it's set to change the DVD scene forever, folks. Please welcome the BDZ-S77 from Sony, the first ever released Blu-ray recorder! Blu-ray discs are the successor to DVD and the living proof that for every marketing...

NHJ's v@amp BA-500.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... The v@amp BA-500 records to its own internal 128MB of flash memory as well as to Smart Media cards. The player has a now-standard backlit LCD display, various music modes and the ability to display Japanese characters. It also has an FM...

The "Easy Disk Cute" EDC-32M and friends.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... If you've been interested in getting yourself one of those so-called "USB keys" for a spot of hot-swapping memory lurve, but you think the price to pay for your digital promiscuity is a little too high, then it's time to embrace the "Easy Disk...

Fuji's FinePix F700.(digital camera)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... The latest in a long line of very smart digital cameras, the FinePix F700 is the first to be operated by a host of miniature killer bees packed into its casing. At least, with Fuji calling it the "Super CCD Honeycomb IV SR," that's what it...

The new and improved PlayStation 2.(The Pulse 2: the best of J@pan Inc's newletters)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Sony may be guilty of making more revisions of its PlayStation 2 games console than the WWE has newly-crowned champions, but the SCPH-50000 is the company's first PS2 with a progressive-scan DVD player. Sony is clearly playing a spot of catch...

Natsuno and Ai Kato launch DoCoMo's 505i.
June 1, 2003... NTT DoCoMo's launch announcement and press conference for the 505i-series featured the next generation of the carrier's 2G i-mode terminals and one of Japan's cutest teenage idols. Among the six terminals (from Mitsubishi, Fujitsu, NEC,...

Here comes the egg biz: ova operations open in Japan.
June 1, 2003... THIS FEBRUARY, A SOUTH Korean ovum bank started operations in Shibuya, Tokyo, arranging for ovum donation from a third party to infertile couples. As the Japanese media promptly declared: "The egg business has landed." The Japan Society of...

Pleading poverty pays off: feigned failure lets Japan shirk the wages of war.
June 1, 2003... AT THE TIME OF the Gulf War, the American media was still portraying Japan as the unstoppable juggernaut of the global economy. When American policy-makers looked for other nations to share the burden of the war, Japan had nowhere to hide....

Fighting tech stress with style: the fabric industry tackles the invisible threats of modern life.
June 1, 2003... DESIGNER MICHIYO INABA PRESENTED an unusual line of clothes at the spring/summer 2003 Tokyo Collection show in December. Fourteen of her designs featured flashes of silver lining. The mysterious silver sheets were in suit pockets, peeking out...

Japan steers American autos into the future: wireless car navigation systems spread to the States.
June 1, 2003... IT'S NO SURPRISE THAT a country famous for its mystifying addresses has become a hotbed for car navigation. Now Japan's successes in wireless connectivity--the future of car navigation systems--have begun to reach the US market. Taking...

Who wrecked Japan's economy? Supply-side policies from the West have devastated Japan's demand-starved economy.
June 1, 2003... AS THE JAPANESE ECONOMY implodes, the question becomes not just how Tokyo's "best and brightest" managed to get it so wrong, but why they failed to realize that supply-side policies in a demand-starved economy would take Japan so far in the...

Karaoke versus keitai: karaoke's best years may be history.
June 1, 2003... FOR THE TWO DECADES after it began rather quietly in a Kobe bar in 1971, karaoke seemed almost recession-proof. As Japanese an invention as sushi and sumo, karaoke has invaded practically every corner of the planet, as much a fixture in Manila...

Oodles of noodles for the mobile masses: Japan's industrial heartland is the home of "cup ramen," the instant noodle snack that is now a worldwide phenomenon. But is this business really worthy of local pride?
June 1, 2003... MY FAVORITE STORY ABOUT Japan's premier contribution to the world of fast food, the instant noodle, concerns a 20 year-old university student in the northern city of Sendai. Away from the bosom of his family--and his doting mother's...

Whaling and Japan: Japan persists in its quest for whalers' rights, despite fierce opposition and even demonization by foreign media. Is Japan being treated fairly? This summer's International Whaling Commission meeting in Berlin promises to heat up the great whaling debate.
June 1, 2003... IN MID-MARCH, ON the Polynesian island Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific, aid officials from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) found themselves in a stew. According to local reports, delegates from the inter-governmental...

Localization & translation in Japan: firms hoping to compete in Japan have come to realize that the path to globalization is not a simple one. Fortunately, there is a growing group of companies that has the road map and know exactly what needs to be done.
June 1, 2003... IN AN INCREASINGLY globalized corporate marketplace, commitment to localization and internationalization has become fundamental to maintaining an effective worldwide presence. This is particularly the case in Japan, where local companies hoping...

Game over? Mario, Donkey Kong and Pokemon are the superstars who have shaped Nintendo's past. The question now is whether they have a place in Nintendo's future.
June 1, 2003... LAST MARCH IN TOKYO, Nintendo launched on its domestic market the brand new GameBoy Advance SP: a powerful games machine that, unlike its predecessors, has a self-illuminating screen. Japanese recession of not, the masses swooped on every store...

From the ashes: Richard Katz makes the case for Japan's revival.(Interview)
June 1, 2003... JAPAN WEARS A CLOAK of gloom these days. The headlines dutifully report the latest corporate bankruptcy, the surge in crime, more suicides, growing unemployment, dropping wages... who could possibly be betting on Japan making a comeback?...

To the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2003... FOR THE FOREIGNER LIVING in Japan it is a no-brainer that speaking Japanese can make life a lot easier. You can ask questions, engage in conversation and increase the scope of your Japanese contacts. The benefits are obvious. But it is often...

A diet of statistics.
June 1, 2003... THEY SAY YOU CAN'T drown a fish, but with the 2002/3 financial year now well and truly over, this Fugu has been up to his gills in a flood of statistics. The credit for this lovely little deluge goes to those industrious suits in...