What Is Missing? : Japan's sense of mission is gone, or is at best blurred, even 'fake,' says the foreigner who saved Nissan.(Carlos Ghosn)(Interview)

Carlos Ghosn wasn't welcome in Japan. When Renault bought a $5 billion stake in Nissan four years ago, it sent Ghosn to run the struggling carmaker--and to become the first foreign head of a major Japanese company. Japanese media greeted him as an invader with no clue about Japanese ways, destined to fail. Ghosn slashed jobs and cut costs, and succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. Nissan has had two years of record profits since Ghosn arrived, and has seen its stock quadruple in value even as the Tokyo market has dropped 60 percent. Now, the Brazilian-born car executive has become something of a national guru, much in demand on the Japanese lecture circuit. He spoke to George Wehrfritz of NEWSWEEK. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Japan's economy is even worse off now than when you arrived in 1999. Did you expect it to get this bad?

Ghosn: Little by little, I've come to think that what's remarkable about Japan is that there is so much potential--I can see it inside and outside Nissan--but so little is delivered. Japan is always extremely strong when there's a mission. The glorious years have always been driven by a strong, clear vision. It would be fair to say that this vision doesn't exist today-- or if it exists, it is blurred. Or fake. People talk about problems, about bad loans and things. What is missing is a clear vision that would mobilize all the qualities Japanese people can show in periods of challenge.

What goals would be realistic?

Why are people saying Japan has a problem? First, Japan did not grow as much as people were expecting. Second, the creation of value and wealth were on very strong up trend until the 1990s. How can Japan resume wealth creation? And how can Japan grow again? Let me give you an example in the automobile market. At its peak, 6 million cars were sold [in Japan] per year. Today we're barely at 4 million. One objective may be to say: "How can we return to the peak years?" Coming back to the best performance Japan has reached would represent a big jump forward.

Why don't more companies put their own houses in order? Nissan is certainly a model.

There is a lot of coverage of Nissan. From the beginning we anticipated this. I had a sense that we needed to be extremely transparent because we would be introducing a lot of change, and for change to work people need to know why and how we're making these changes. Because ...