Japan Inc. articles from September 2002

Japan Inc. archives from September 2002

From the Editor.(Editorial)
September 1, 2002... AFTER MY UNABOMBER-LIKE TIRADE in this spot last month about corporate governance (but I'm right, I tell ya!), I'll keep this month's letter short and sweet. Anyone who has lived here as long as I have--I lost count somewhere in the second...

Future city's wireless hotspots for kids. (The Pulse). (Mitaka City to offer LAN access to school intranets, Japan).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... JAPAN MAY BE BEHIND its international counterparts as far as digital education is concerned, but Mitaka City in western Tokyo is catching up quickly. The city says it will create wireless LAN hotspots for its children so they can access school...

KDDI to offer IP phone service. (The Pulse).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... KDDI has announced that it will launch IP phone services for corporate broadband users this coming fall, It will charge [yen]8.5 per three minutes [yen]2.8 per minute) for domestic calls and [yen]10 per minute for calls to the US. It will...

IY Bank may let cellphones do the ATM banking. (The Pulse).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... IY Bank says it is considering adopting a system that would let people do their ATM banking via their cellphones. The system would allow people with one of NTT DoCoMo's i504 handsets to use the infrared function to access the ATMs. The online...

Softbank CEO Son says government pressuring him to keep Aozora Bank shares in the family. (The Pulse). (Masayoshi Son).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... SOFTBANK'S CEO MASAYOSHI SON in July criticized the government for pressuring him on the sale of Softbank's shares in Aozora Bank (formerly Nihon Credit Trust Bank). Softbank owns about 50 percent of Aozora Bank, which it bought from the...

SESC monitors Web for trading fraud. (The Pulse). (Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission of Japan on online trading of stocks).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission of Japan is now monitoring the spread and effect of online stock rumors on the Tokyo market. The system by Fujitsu has been in effect since April and apparently keeps tabs on Web sites showing...

JAL to offer inflight Internet service. (The Pulse). (Japan Air Lines Company Ltd.).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Japan Airlines will add Boeing's new high-speed Internet connection to 10 of its planes. The service called Connexion by Boeing relies on satellites and ground-based links to provide in-air Internet connections and broadcast feeds from...

Toyota, Honda in tight race to be first with fuel-cell car. (The Pulse).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... A few weeks after Toyota announced plans to sell its fuel-cell hybrid car to businesses and research centers by the end of the year, Honda made a similar announcement. The race to develop fuel-cell vehicles is kicking into high gear. The...

3G gets real -- FOMA PDA hits the streets. (The Pulse). (NTT DoCoMo launches device with video phone).(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
September 1, 2002... NTT DoCoMo has released the SH2l01V ([yen]125,000), a PDA device with a video phone designed for FOMA. With a compact (43g) wireless handset, SH210lV users can have phone conversations even when the PDA is folded. The main unit and the handset...

DoCoMo, KPN target 1m i-mode subs in Europe by end of 2003. (The Pulse).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... NTT DoCoMo aims to increase the number of European i-mode subscribers to 1 million by the end of next year. DoCoMo will operate through associate KPN Mobile NV of the Netherlands and KPN's subsidiaries, releasing handset models with built-in...

Toshiba DynaBook P5/S24PME. (The Pulse).(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
September 1, 2002... A 2.4GHz P4 notebook with a GeForce 4 440 graphics card, the P5/S24PME ([yen]350,000) is no doubt a powerhouse of a portable PC. The whizz-bang gadgety aspect here is that the keyboard comes right out of the notebook's surround and can be used...

Audio Technica ATV-527SP. (The Pulse). (audio equipment to control TV, VCR and DVD).(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
September 1, 2002... Of course, a remote control unit shaped like a UFO with a built-in 20mW speaker and headphone capability! How did we ever live without it? Well, we'll never have to find out, now, thanks to the ATV-527SP ([yen]3,000) from Audio Technica. Good...

TDK CDMP1215 new Mojo audio player. (The Pulse). (introduced).(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
September 1, 2002... So that's where Austin Powers' Mojo got to: TDK snaffled it and stuck it inside its new MP3 CD player. The CDMP1215 ([yen]18,000) is really only an update of the CDMP1210 released last November and pretty much the extent of said update is the...

Sony Vaio PCG-GRX91G/P. (The Pulse). (notebook computer launched).(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
September 1, 2002... Described as "aimed at the high-end notebook market" (no kidding!), the [yen]450,000 PCG-GRX91G/P is a Sony Vaio notebook with a built-in DVD-RW drive. NOT CD-RW, but DVD, so now you can create your own DVDs, thanks to the drag-and-drop Simple...

Pulling Japan from its socialist roots; The largest opposition party's No. 4 man is 38, savvy and focused on just one thing: wresting power from the "socialist" party better known as the LDP. (Upfront).
September 1, 2002... JAPAN IS A COUNTRY of political stagnation. Despite the rapid socioeconomic changes the country has gone through in the postwar period, it has been ruled by one party--the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)--since 1955, except for a brief time in...

Forging a path for homeschooling: one family's example helps raise awareness of education options in a land obsessed with academic records. (Upfront).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... IN A COUNTRY WHERE public school systems dominate, educating a child at home is beyond most people's imagination. But Yoshiko Kubo, who has homeschooled her two daughters for eight years, says that home-based education has enriched their life....

Tepco's power play: The electric company's latest plans for IIJ set off sparks in the telecom industry. (Upfront).(Tokyo Electric Power Company Inc.)(Internet Initiative Japan Inc.)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... KOICHI SUZUKI, THE PRESIDENT of Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ), made one of the most dramatic moves in the history of his small telecom company just a few weeks after I finished profiling him for the July issue of J@pan Inc. In hindsight, I...

Hold that call...: is the keitai craze putting your health at risk by exposing you to untold radiation? (Upfront).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... ON the evening of May 31, thousands of passengers became stranded in a JR Yamanote Line train that had halted between Yoyogi and Harajuku stations in Tokyo when a fire broke out in a building adjacent to Yoyogi. The blaze paralyzed a major part...

Switched on; FujiFilm Axia Eyeplate: The Chewable Digital Camera.(Fuji Photo Film Company Ltd.)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... NAME FujiFilm Axia Eyeplate CATEGORY Digital Camera PRICE [yen]9,980 DURING MY CUSTOMARY FLAWLESS last-minute preparations for international travel, I left my digital camera in a friend's house in Berkeley, California. This friend...

Fishing for compliments. (RADAR SCREEN).(underground music website)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Trucked away in sleepy Kanagawa we found a strange fish indeed - a Japanese Web site dedicated to bringing the best of this island nation's underground music to the world in English. If you dig Penpals, Frog Pilot or Bonkin' Clapper, this is...

Japan's medical revolutionary: John Wocher shows the nation's hospitals just how good health care can get at Kameda Medical Center.
September 1, 2002... HERE'S HOW TO GET smack into the middle of Japan's health-care debate: Ride an express train from Tokyo Station two hours to the southern end of Chiba's Boso Peninsula, get off at the sleepy little station of Awa-Kamogawa, hop in one of the...

French fancies: The Japanese and the French are locked in a high-spending mutual embrace. (Special Advertising Section).(trade)(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... Since 1993, Japanese imports of French goods have widened in tandem with an upswing in the level of Japanese direct investment in the French marketplace. The French government's export promotion campaign, 'Le Japon c'est possible,' aimed at...

Wireless and Fries.(McDonald's local area network)(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... Are softbank's recent alliances with McDonald's japan mister donut and Starbucks to provide high speed wireless LAN access an exciting new revenue stream for the food industry or economic indigestion waiting to strike? HOT SPOTS ARE HOT...

Network democracy: an intimate discussion with one of the leaders in Japanese networking hardware. (Business Builders).(Katsu Kubota)(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... Planex Communications Inc. (PCI) is a dynamic, young company blazing trails in the Internet devices sector. Founded in 1995, it listed on Jasdaq six years later. It is now fighting it out for position and market share in a very competitive...

Gearing up or slowing down? The IT recruitment game demands top performers from all participants in today's competitive job market. (Special Advertising Section: IT Recruiting).(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... A decade-long recession and structural economic reforms don't sound like your typical career catalysts. However, the influx of Western multinational companies into Japan and massive corporate layoffs at major Japanese companies have created...

JCI Consulting K.K.: better hunters, better musicians.(executive recruiters)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Timing is everything, so the old business cliche goes, and when Markus Leach and Tim Ondo returned to Japan on September 1 of last year having just founded JCI Consulting K.K., they were filled with optimism for their new venture. The two had...

Tokyo; The high-tech slum: Stephen Mansfield takes us on a stroll through Tokyo's contrasting architectures where the new and the old rub each other up the right way.
September 1, 2002... A SINGLE LOOK AT THE architecture, the transfiguring surfaces of Tokyo, and one is immediately struck by the way, strata-like, it has evolved as a high-tech base and sounding board, while never quite managing to dispel its shambolic image....

A Yokohama neighborhood's battle to cut through red tape: an American lawyer and his neighbors fight to keep a big retail store from moving in next door (part 1 of 2). (Case Study).
September 1, 2002... FOR THE PAST SEVEN years or so, I worked in Japan as an attorney in the Tokyo office of a multinational law firm and then as Asia-Pacific counsel for a Silicon Valley software company. For much of that time I was also an adjunct lecturer in law...

To the Editor.
September 1, 2002... INSTEAD OF ALL THE recent worrying about slumping telecom, PC and other high-tech industries, why don't more entrepreneurs (and their investors) jump opportunistically on these slower times to file patent applications? Since it typically takes...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
September 1, 2002... * CRAIG MOD (The Other Side of the Coin, page 20) was inadvertently made to appear like a chimpanzee in the August issue of J@pan Inc. Though abusing interns is an age-old tradition in the publishing world, and Craig will probably be pursuing a...

The story of Japan Inc.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... The term 'Japan Incorporated' was first used in a 1936 Fortune magazine article that said: "The industrial hierarchy of Japan is so compact that you can almost think of its works as the products of a single beautifully integrated and highly...

Statistics.(information technology)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... IT Penetration: Japan Just Fair to Middling We all know Japan is a high-tech heaven, but when it comes to IT penetration, its numbers are, well, mundane. That's the word from the Japan Center for Economic Research, which found that the...

Not-so-funny money. (Blowfish).(money laundering)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... According to the National Police Agency, at least [yen]422 billion has departed Japan illegally via underground banks over the past decade. The most popular destination for the money, generated mainly by illegal sojourners and organized crime,...

Made in the people's republic. (Blowfish).(Japanese imports from China)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... How dependent on imports from China have Japan's consumers become? Aera magazine considered that question and provided this sector-by-sector breakdown. In descending order, bamboo skewers for yakitori (95% imported from China), Western-style...

Mountains out of molehills. (Blowfish).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Get out your ropes and ice hammers: The climbing season officially began from June 1 at Mt. Benten in Tokushima Prefecture. Benten-zan is the nation's lowest mound to claim the status of mountain, rising a somewhat less than majestic 6.1m above...

Potpourri. (Blowfish).(record industry's sales stats)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... The most recent sales stats from Japan's record industry show the continued dearth of million-seller single hits for the 12th straight year. Between December 2001 and May 2002, the best-selling recent singles included Hikaru Utada's Traveling,...

Nickel bag. (Blowfish).(paying a tax for a shopping bag)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... You want a shopping bag, you gotta pay a tax for it. Tokyo's Suginami Ward is mulling over the idea anyway. Amazingly 59.5 percent of Nikkei Business readers who responded to an Internet poll said they'd support the idea. It will give consumers...

By the numbers. (Blowfish).(social/ business statistics)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... 10--the point size of letters being adopted by increasing numbers of street maps, which up to now had relied on tiny six- or seven-point type. The growth in large-size print on maps is a sure sign of the aging population. * 1,206--the number of...

Layoffs for the handicapped. (Blowfish).(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... The ongoing recession is taking a toll on Japan's handicapped workers. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare the number of handicapped people laid off from their jobs in fiscal 2001 reached a record high of 4,017. This was...