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Because there are benefits to this way of doing things, and not all of Japan is like this. As the link points out being incredibly careful with practices, and

Because there are benefits to this way of doing things, and not all of Japan is like this. As the link points out being incredibly careful with practices, and really ensuring the quality of a product is exactly the right thing in many situations. When building, say, cars. Huge amounts of training, careful procedures, and lots of time with senior engineers to help is often very useful. Further while a lot of the sales stuff seems completely ridiculous, there is benefit in having very personal interactions and understanding. Again, look at the link to see why. Japanese corporations are actually very innovative in a lot of ways, and often build extraordinarily impressive products, if often ones that are hampered by terrible design. Secondly, not all of Japan is like this. Japanese productivity is pretty weirdly bifurcated: For office work, Japan is terrible (well below the USA, Europe), for manufacturing Japan is world-class. Japanese companies build things really really well, with very few workers, quickly. They just can;t organize paperwork in any reasonable way. Here's a link to a nice brief summary of this stuff by an economist in the US whose worked on Japan before: http://neojaponisme.com/2014/01/15/japanese-economic-mythbusting/#comment-68715 http://neojaponisme.com/2014/01/15/japanese-economic-mythbus...

vram22 12y ago
>for manufacturing Japan is world-class. Japanese companies build things really really well, with very few workers, quickly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way I bought and read that book some years ago. Found it pretty interesting. There is a lot of detail and statistics in it, but the overall theme is of Kaizen (roughly, continuous improvement), along with muda, mura, muri (all three terms explained in the links below): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muda_(Japanese_term) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muda_(Japanese_term) "In 2004, Dr. Jeffrey Liker, a University of Michigan professor of industrial engineering, published The Toyota Way. In his book Liker calls the Toyota Way "a system designed to provide the tools for people to continually improve their work." Also, see Muji :) http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/05/muji-simplicity-is-deceptively-complex.html http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/05/muji-simplicity-is-decepti... http://www.muji.com/ http://www.muji.com/ http://www.muji.us/about-muji/ http://www.muji.us/about-muji/
- vram22 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen#History Ironically, American experts introduced many of those concepts to Japan.
  - aomurphy 12y ago
    One of the most interesting things about Japanese business, is how much was built by New Dealers who came over in the occupation. Americans rebuilt the giant conglomerates, we reinforced the idea of life time employment (salarymen were very consciously modeled on American professionals of the 1950s and 1960s, then made Japanese), we insisted on tight government-corporation intervention in the economy to encourage growth and stability. People often try to make it sound like this ancient relic of Japanese culture, and it's really not. It's a weird fusion of Japanese thought and new Dealer technocratism, left to develop on it's own for decades.
    - m_mueller 12y ago
      Interesting premise. Is there anything to read up on New Deal influence in Japan?
      - aomurphy 12y ago
        The book where I read most of this from is Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John Dower. It's a big book, and covers a lot about occupation, not just economics, but I found it engrossing and quite readable. It's a little out of date now, being 14 years old, but nothing really noticeable.
    - vram22 12y ago
      Didn't know those details about the New Dealers, interesting. I guess that sort of fusion tends to happen in many such scenarios. I know there's some of it in India, in a different field of work.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
hollerith 12y ago
That link is fantastic.

vram22 12y ago

>for manufacturing Japan is world-class. Japanese companies build things really really well, with very few workers, quickly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way I bought and read that book some years ago. Found it pretty interesting. There is a lot of detail and statistics in it, but the overall theme is of Kaizen (roughly, continuous improvement), along with muda, mura, muri (all three terms explained in the links below): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muda_(Japanese_term) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muda_(Japanese_term) "In 2004, Dr. Jeffrey Liker, a University of Michigan professor of industrial engineering, published The Toyota Way. In his book Liker calls the Toyota Way "a system designed to provide the tools for people to continually improve their work." Also, see Muji :) http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/05/muji-simplicity-is-deceptively-complex.html http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/05/muji-simplicity-is-decepti... http://www.muji.com/ http://www.muji.com/ http://www.muji.us/about-muji/ http://www.muji.us/about-muji/

vram22 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen#History Ironically, American experts introduced many of those concepts to Japan.
- aomurphy 12y ago
  One of the most interesting things about Japanese business, is how much was built by New Dealers who came over in the occupation. Americans rebuilt the giant conglomerates, we reinforced the idea of life time employment (salarymen were very consciously modeled on American professionals of the 1950s and 1960s, then made Japanese), we insisted on tight government-corporation intervention in the economy to encourage growth and stability. People often try to make it sound like this ancient relic of Japanese culture, and it's really not. It's a weird fusion of Japanese thought and new Dealer technocratism, left to develop on it's own for decades.
  - m_mueller 12y ago
    Interesting premise. Is there anything to read up on New Deal influence in Japan?
    - aomurphy 12y ago
      The book where I read most of this from is Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John Dower. It's a big book, and covers a lot about occupation, not just economics, but I found it engrossing and quite readable. It's a little out of date now, being 14 years old, but nothing really noticeable.
  - vram22 12y ago
    Didn't know those details about the New Dealers, interesting. I guess that sort of fusion tends to happen in many such scenarios. I know there's some of it in India, in a different field of work.
seanmcdirmid 12y ago

hollerith 12y ago

That link is fantastic.