Welcome to the new Japan!

I remember Tokyo as a city without skyscrapers, but with lots of neon, the Akihabara district was full of technology department stores and Ginza housed plenty of Western fashion brands. The trains ran fast - the shinkansen was a must - and on time with a punctuality that the British found hard to compete with.

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I also remembered that almost nothing was translated into English, the Japanese had difficulty understanding it and the restaurants were full of fish and vegetables.
Needless to say, the temples and nature were breathtakingly beautiful.

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Thirty-five years on, how would Japan be?

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As soon as I landed in Tokyo, I could see that the trains were still on time and running with unparalleled efficiency. Without even getting off the ground, I soon realized that the difficulty in understanding the subway and train network had been solved by Apple maps and the translations from the Japanese alphabet into English, had also been overcome by Google translator. Both are American born products.

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On reaching the surface, a certain surprise was in store. Tokyo's landscape had changed to resemble Shanghai or New York. The buildings had grown in height (although none of them approached the height of the record holders), but complexes had been built around the subway stations at the interchanges and entire neighborhoods had been built integrating shops, hotels, restaurants, schools, etc.

The city breathed economic power. Ginza was home to fantastic flagship stores of all the most popular brands in the East and West. But Akihabara, once the site of the electronics emporium, had been replaced by the manga and anime emporium. Electronics? nothing!

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At university I had the opportunity to ask my fellow professors why, 35 years ago, the electronics products I wanted were Japanese and today almost none of them are. Televisions? LG or Samsung! Cars? Kia or BYD. Which Japanese brands inhabited consumers' imaginations and were aspirational?

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With the usual subtlety and politeness that characterizes the Japanese, they replied that this finding explained the decline of the Japanese economy from second to fourth place as the world's largest economy.

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The huge buildings and real estate developments were therefore the result of wealth accumulated at the end of the 20th century, but the Japanese economy is now struggling to compete in the world with products that are appealing to consumers.

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Why is this?

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A reflection on the disappearance of Japanese brands as leaders has a lot to do with the enormous capacity of the Japanese to perfect "what exists", but with a lesser capacity to "create new things".

Japanese engineering is exceptional at optimizing products and processes, but society in general is far more inefficient at innovating.

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Trying to reflect on this lower capacity, I believe that two reasons lie behind this characteristic:

 

- the conservatism of Japanese culture, in which tradition is privileged over innovation;

 

- the exacerbated respect for hierarchy in organizations, where the younger generations see themselves as subordinate to the opinion of the generations in power.

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I've also seen the emergence of start-ups and many young Japanese people making the decision not to join large organizations and to embark on risky initiatives, in a very similar way to what we've experienced and still experience in the West. But Japan is probably 20 years behind in this process.

Given the capacity for work, persistence and rigor that characterizes Japanese culture, I have the impression that they will be able to catch up a in a few years. But I also must conclude that much of the business culture will be changing and that a new generation will soon be in power, more modern and competitive than the one that managed the accumulated wealth of the economic miracle at the end of the 20th century.

On the streets of Tokyo, the younger generations are experiencing a more Western climate, less hostage to tradition and conservative social rules, and this effect will have most likely an impact on Japanese culture, economy, and society.

Welcome to the new Japan, but we still must wait a little bit…