Despite being the conqueror of our country in WW2, and news of atrocities vs our people, as a business person I admired the achievement of Japan. It was the No 2 biggest economy in the world after USA.
So I bought and read over and over books by Konosokue Mastsuhita, Akio Morita, books on the Toyota Way. Studied their quality circle, the voice of quality, Kaizen, 5s and many more.
However I was disappointed to see news of business failures despite these vaunted very sound business practices: Toshiba, Olympus, Sharp and many more. Perhaps because of too much competition from Korea and China, they were not able to adopt well. And more importantly the collapse of the bubble in 1990.
When Lagarde (head of IMF) spoke about world finances, she mentioned that her number 1 problem was Japan.
And this was exacerbated by the 2011 Tsunami and Fukushima meltdown
We plan to visit Japan soon and see how clean and how beautiful and advanced it is.
It is the sincerest wish of this post that she recapture her glorious past and progress.
