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Mainichi interview with Bill Emmott: How to view the Koizumi legacy?

Former Economist editor Bill Emmott recently sat down for an interview with the Mainichi Shimbun, and his comments on the Koizumi administration are very good:

I think that it’s right to criticize some part of Koizumi’s reforms for causing this increasing income gap, because the Labor Law reform that his government introduced is directly responsible for this widening gap between rich and poor by creating the conditions under which 30 percent of the labor force are in part time or temporary employment, with much lower benefits. So I think that a new government needs to find a way to change Japan’s Labor Law and remove this incentive for cheap labor and employment and to equalize the rights for all types of workers: full time, part time, contract … there’s no justification for having different rights for different types of workers.

Absolutely!

Koizumi’s Labor Law reform was not a piece of market fundamentalism or a free market-type reform. It’s not included in the market textbook that you should establish a two-tier labor market and strip away protection from one part of the force. So I think that it’s right to criticize the Koizumi administration for that, but it’s not right to say there should be no market-based reform.

Of course, reforms to the labor laws began before Koizumi’s administration, but the income gap became much more notable under his watch. Long term, the question is how this will affect how Koizumi is viewed. Shorter term, can better reforms be put in place in order to equalize the legal status of Japan’s workforce? (I’m not 100% sure about the word ‘rights’ here, but that’s more philosophical/legal hair-splitting rather than practical/economic.)

At any rate, the full interview is here.

Interview with Tom Standage, Business Editor of The Economist

This week’s edition of The Economist has a 14 page special section on doing business in Japan. I haven’t actually seen the print version yet, but much of it is online. As an added bonus, the folks over at The Economist have posted a 16 minute interview with Tom Standage, their business editor.

Mr Standage speaks well on the inefficiencies with regards to Mergers and Acquisitions in Japan, and the role of activist investors and shareholder value in Japan. In his mind, Steel Partners went about their attempt to purchase Bull Dog in the wrong way, and stresses the need for patience and decorum when trying to achieve goals that might be taken by force in the west.

Japan Times interviews What Japan Thinks

This afternoon I was glad to see one of my favorite blogs on Japan, What Japan Thinks, featured in the Japan Times. Since the site pretty much speaks for itself, I think it’s best to just read the interview and check out the site itself. It’s good to see the Japan Times featuring some blogs, especially ones that produce real content and give insights into data concerning Japan.

JEN with this week’s Metropolis cover story on Nova

This week’s print edition of Metropolis, which is set to come out tomorrow, includes an article I wrote on November 1 concerning the Nova situation. The article is up online now at the Metropolis website, and there’s also an interview with me that was recorded on November 6 on this week’s edition of the Tokyo Metpod, in Part 2.

Nikkei Interview with Bull-Dog President Shoko Ikeda

I might mix what I’m really thinking with a tad of sarcasm on this one, so bear with me.

First, I love Bull-Dog sauce. It’s great stuff. I think the company has lots of potential to sell it overseas. It’s much better than what Kagome pumps out as an excuse for thick Worcestershire-style tonkatsu sauce. That said, I’ve always been confounded by the image of Bull-Dog president Shoko Ikeda that we’ve seen in the media. I poked fun at an article back in July that said she comforted her employees by, “offering beef-on-rice dishes, vegetable soup and other meals she cooked herself at the company’s headquarters. She carefully looked after the health of her staff, telling them they had to build up their strength and eat enough vegetables…”

Since when do CEOs cook for their workforce? The article portrayed her as some sort of super mom rather than a savvy corporate executive. I’m going to leave the question as to why the reporter did that (and it was intentional) purposely open.

To the point: An interview with Ikeda has appeared in the Nikkei today. Towards the beginning, Ikeda states:

Some people say the company became a takeover target because management was not vigilant, but that is totally wrong. Immediately after I was appointed president in 2000, we checked the list of shareholders, and even afterward I had the stock price and trading volume reported to me daily.

With regard to hostile takeovers, we considered various defenses, including a management buyout. I don’t think anyone has thought about this as much as I did.

First, the statement that ‘management was not vigilant’ is not proven wrong by the fact that Ikeda “had the stock price and trading volume reported to [her] daily.” The opposite is the case. How is a CEO not checking the share price and volume on his or her own? This reminds me of a book I once quit reading which claimed that Emily Dickinson was not a shut-in because she wrote numerous letters to the woman who lived next door. Fact is, Bull-Dog had insufficient risk management in place to deal with hostile takeovers.

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Announcement from Bloomberg

This one showed up in the email tonight. It’s very, very good. Feldman really knows his stuff on Japan.

This past Friday on Bloomberg Radio®, “Bloomberg on the Economy” host Tom Keene spoke for an hour with Robert Feldman, chief economist at Morgan Stanley Japan Securities Ltd., about the resignation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his outlook for Japan’s place in the global economy under PM Yasuo Fukuda. They went on to discuss Japanese debt and GDP ratio, the country’s aging population and its impact on the economy, and the integration of the growing Chinese presence in Japan. We thought you might find the interview of interest. Please feel free to follow the link below to listen to their conversations:

http://www.bloomberg.com/tvradio/podcast/ontheeconomy.html

Former Sony CEO Idei Making Big Moves

On the train this afternoon I was reading a Japan Times article focusing on Nobuyuki Idei, the former CEO of Sony. The piece came via Kyodo News, and the original reporter had spoken with Idei on Monday of this week. Idei had much to say concerning the current state of innovation in Japan’s technology sectors. Here are some bits:

Sadly, Japan was unable to lead the information technology industry…At present, there is no world-class brand from Japan that does Net business. There is no new Sony on the Net…By using IT more and more, I hope one day there will be a new world-class company from Japan.

We’ve lamented this situation before, as have many others. But that’s not what we’re here to dwell on. What he said next in the interview struck me: According to Idei, Japanese Internet companies have not shown enough innovation and remain “localized” because they are overly dependent on imitating US-style business models. He then asserted that he has seen more promising innovation amongst Internet firms happening in China and other parts of Asia.

In 2006, in order to provide a “value creation catalyst” for young Internet workers in Japan, Idei set up a consultancy called Quantum Leaps.

Then, when I got home tonight, this headline was waiting for me: Aiming For Japan, Baidu Names Ex-Sony CEO To Board

The first two paragraphs:

Chinese Web search leader Baidu.com Inc., which is seeking to expand into the Japanese Web search market, said Tuesday it had named ex-Sony Chief Executive Nobuyuki Idei as a company director.

Idei, one of Japan’s most famous corporate executives, is widely blamed for missteps at Sony, the world’s largest consumer electronics company, where he was forced out as leader in 2005. He is the founder and chief executive of Quantum Leaps Corp., a technology consulting practice he currently runs.

I’m not sure how I missed the story before, but I’m glad I got them in reverse order, since the Japan Times/Kyodo piece makes no mention of Idei’s new post at Baidu. Isn’t context refreshing?

Horie: “I wasn’t running Livedoor because I liked doing it. I did it just because I was good at it.”

Just a few days before his judgment on charges of financial market manipulation and fraud are to be handed down, Takafumi Horie, former CEO of Livedoor, granted an exclusive interview to the Japan Times.

My personal favorite quote from the interview:

I don’t see any meaning in corporations, so I don’t really understand why people keep asking me whether I want to establish one again. From now I’ll just do what I want.

The only question is whether or not that will be done from prison. Horie’s verdict is set to be delivered this Friday by the Tokyo District Court.

Naoki Tanaka on fiscal reform

Forbes has published an English translation of an interview done by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun with Naoki Tanaka, president of a think tank known as 21st Century Public Policy Institute. One of Tanaka’s points is that single-year budgets should be balanced by 2015, which is later than the government’s previously stated goal of 2011. When asked about the possibility of consumption taxes rising, Tanaka had this to say:

This is an issue among the lineup of choices available to voters. There are various combinations of cutting expenditures and raising taxes.

The response seems a tad disingenuous, since voters really won’t be deciding anything. It seems as though it will happen, and the diet would like to put it off until after the upper house elections in July.

Japan Considered on the Japanese Economy

For the December 15 edition of the Japan Considered Podcast, Dr. Robert Angel interviewed Dr. Edward Lincoln, who is the director of the Center for Japan-U.S. Business and Economic Studies at NYU’s Stern School of Business in New York. Dr, Lincoln, an economist by trade, provides some prescient insight into the current state of the Japanese economy. To find the episode, click the link above and scroll down to the December 15th edition (though it might be tempting to listen to the other releases on the way there…)

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