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Shibuya’s Butlers Cafe makes CNN

Financial markets are closed today, so here’s the latest mass-media fluff piece to be done on Japan:

CNN is reporting on the “Butlers Cafe” staffed with western men in Shibuya with the sub-headline, “Japan’s women go ga-ga over a cafe filled with Western servers.” ¹

The two customers definitely could have played along and seemed a bit happier to be there.

¹ The headline itself is actually, “White man cafe in Tokyo.”

Butlers Cafe website

News Corp moving into Japan’s online advertising market

According to Tuesday’s Nikkei, News Corp has plans to enter Japan’s lucrative online advertising market. Back in April 2007, we reported that Dentsu claimed Japan’s online advertising market would experience “growth into a 750 billion yen plus market by 2011.”

Was Dentsu lowballing those numbers? In 2007, the online advertising market in Japan totaled about 600 billion yen. This was about a 24% increase over 2006. Dentsu’s report projected the market at 453.4 billion yen in 2007, with a jump over 600 billion yen happening in 2009.

News Corp’s operations will differ significantly from those of Google or Yahoo primarily in that they will not involve search-based ads. Rather, News Corp is looking to set up networks of sites that target similar demographics, and sell ads on behalf of webmasters who happen not to have a sales force at their disposal.

News Corp is looking to draw 10 billion yen annually in ad revenue from Japan within five years time.

Bloomberg’s William Pesek on Japan’s (lack of) English ability, and why it hurts competition

Bloomberg’s William Pesek has penned an excellent opinion piece on why Japan needs to focus on better English education for its workforce at this point in history. As he points out, without English ability across the spectrum, Japan will simply never be able to achieve its stated goal of being Asia’s leading financial hub. So long as dinosaurs as former Education Minister Ibuki Bunmei (himself fluent in English) continue to portray English proficiency as something to be feared, Japan simply will not be able to gain a competitive foothold.

Read it.

Yomiuri on reforms to finance laws

An opinion/analysis piece in today’s Yomirui started like this:

Financial institutions in Japan have lost a great deal of international competitiveness during their struggle to resolve a host of problems arising from the collapse of the bubble economy, including their massive nonperforming loans. They have also suffered a significant decline in their standing in the global financial market. Swift measures should be taken to revive their international competitiveness.

This is certainly true, though the paper has seemingly been writing editorials that open with this paragraph for some years now. The next, paragraph, however, seems somehow relevant yet entirely disconnected to what was laid out in the opening:

The government has submitted to the Diet a bill aimed at revising the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law. A central pillar of the bill is to reform the current system so as to expand the list of financial products traded in the market, while also increasing the number of market players and attracting more funds from domestic and foreign investors.

This would be a positive step, though one is forced to wonder what it has to do with reforming a corporate culture that allows nonperforming loans to build nearly to the breaking point. The Nikkei recently published an article concerning the sale of about 100 billion yen worth of bad loans to the Goodwill Group that Mizuho has now sold to Morgan Stanley and the Cerberus Group (the good news is that Goodwill Chairman Masahiro “Juliana Tokyo” Origuchi is expected to resign).

At any rate, the Yomiuri article gets better as it goes on to describe what’s included in the reform bill: Read more

Greg Lane’s 2008 Predictions in Japan Inc: The Olympics in China

The new edition of Japan Inc magazine is out, and it contains a nifty set of five predictions by contributor Greg Lane. The one I find the most intriguing concerns China and the Olympics. Here’s Greg’s take:

Don’t expect a wave of ‘Cool China’ in the same way that the ‘02 Football World Cup triggered a wave of interest in all things South Korean. China will however loom ever larger in the Japanese consciousness as the world’s media turns its glare on the slick, shiny showcase taking place in Beijing throughout August. Despite the Games happening in Japan’s backyard and large numbers of enthusiastic supporters making the short trip over, don’t expect too much of the Japanese Olympians. Dismal results in recent athletics and judo world championships as well as fired-up Chinese athletes mean that Japan could take home its lowest medal haul since the paltry three golds won at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

I completely agree on the first part. There will be nothing at all like a “Cool China” wave. No 中流　(churyuu), if you will. There’s bound to be at least one athlete blaming poor performance on bad food. This time, though, they might not even be lying.

I expect to see the media provide a weird Jekyll/Hyde type of coverage on the games in China: When Dr Jekyll gets the camera, food will be featured. There will be close-up shots and oishiis galore. B-list talents will eat Peking Duck, and proclaim it scrumptious. Someone from SMAP will suddenly be an expert on Chinese cuisine, though he’ll probably be missing the ramen back home. Dr Jekyll will also have a few features on ‘cute’ Chinese athletes, and the tall guy who tends to dominate the 110m hurdles (sorry, if an athlete’s not on the Red Sox or Patriots, I have a hard time remembering their names).

Other than that, I expect to hear Mr Hyde in the background, grumbling about pollution, traffic, rudeness, people spitting in the streets, people peeing in the streets, people pooping in (or near) the streets, getting ripped off, double hotel charges, etc, etc. There’s bound to be a negative undercurrent in some media coverage of the games. Then again, one can easily argue that there legitimately should be.

Anyway, go read Greg’s full article.

Disclaimer: This author is also in the same issue.

W. David Marx on the meaning of trends in the Japanese marketplace

Anyone at all interested in marketing and Japan should already be aware of the Clast blog, which W. David Marx writes for the Diamond Agency. A piece published on December 12 concerning trends and trend identification in the Japanese marketplace is a must-read.

One point Marx makes concerning the recent phenomenon of keitaishousetsu, or novels meant to be displayed on mobile phones, is that the trend “says more about the constancy of promotional power in Japan than the innovation in content creation.”

I think this is spot on; if these novels were actually good, we’d be seeing them at the bookstores in paperback as well. The trend here has been promoted, and promoted in the right demographic. The medium and the story are not innovative in the least, just as the change to color film from black and white did not mean that writers wrote better or worse scripts for movies.

At any rate, the article is waiting to be read…

2008 Tokyo Michelin Guide sold out already

This year’s easy Christmas gift is gone from the shelves, at least for now.

It seems that Michelin understands the pattern well: get ready to roll your product out in Japan, have the PR people place (or provoke) a few quotes in the media about how foreigners ‘don’t understand’ or ‘can’t understand’ some aspect of Japan to pique interest, and then hit the shelves with an under supply of product.

The 2008 Michelin Tokyo Guide has already sold out. It only took two days. The Krispy Kreme model, which still has people standing in line outside of a doughnut shop (now 2), seems to have been adjusted and put into play well here. The second printing should sell out like hotcakes as well.

The Nikkei also tells us that Hiramatsu, a restaurant group that had five of its restaurants awarded one star by the guide, is rushing to open more locations. Company President Hirotoshi Hiramatsu told the Nikkei, “Like Moody’s ratings for industry, these stars are a sign of excellence and directly influence the restaurant business.” No mention of quality management strategies during expansion is made in the article, probably for a good reason.

A quick look at Michelin’s Japanese website shows a nice first page, followed by some fairly rough looking design. I also couldn’t get the ‘concept movie’ to load.

If you’re interested in seeing which restaurants in Tokyo were ranked, there’s a list online at the Michelin site. That one shouldn’t sell out.

Odd headline/story from the Daily Mail

This is just confusing. I’m not sure if it’s symptomatic of the UK press, or if it makes any sense at all to anyone: One million tax forms ‘unopened’ as inspectors are taught Japanese gobbledegook

There is Hope: Housewife Doesn’t Buy Into “Cool Biz,” “Eco Bags” or the Govenment Line

I’m putting a quote here out of context, but it fits in with something I’m working on concerning appearances, marketing, empty gestures, and the urge to attach the word ‘eco’ to anything just to make people spend money on it. Just need to save it somewhere that’s searchable…

The quote is from a recent Japan Times article on garbage, so it fits right in with the marketing, though perhaps that tends to get recycled more…

Recycling has seen good progress in Japan over the past 20 years, so what kind of signal does it send to suddenly tell people to dump their plastic in the fire? And what does it say to other local governments, like the one in Yokohama, where residents now must separate their garbage into 15 different categories? The problem, as one housewife editorialized in the Asahi, is that the national government doesn’t want to take the initiative and implement policies that unify the country’s environmental and waste countermeasures. “It’s all talk,” she writes, and gestures like “cool biz” and urging people to use “eco bags” to cart their groceries home instead of plastic bags are more symbolic than practical. What’s needed is a concerted effort on the part of government and industry, but makeshift solutions are the norm.

The Hero of Bull Dog Sauce Company? President Shoko Ikeda

I cannot make this up. This morning, the following piece greeted me from the Nikkei. The article is an attempt to describe how Bull Dog President Shoko Ideka was the main factor in the firm’s being able to resist the takeover attempt by Steel Partners. Some selections:

The strong, level-headed leadership demonstrated by Bull-Dog Sauce Co. President Shoko Ikeda was a key factor in the firm’s successful rejection of a hostile takeover attempt by Steel Partners…

Ever since Steel Partners launched a tender offer for Bull-Dog stock on May 18, the battle has been a prolonged psychological war and test of will for Ikeda and the company’s employees — who often had to work late into the night. Ikeda, 63, was there with them every step of the way, sometimes 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…

“She is not only a quick decision maker, but also demands more of herself than of others,” said an executive at a major food company…

One person close to Ikeda says her patience and ability to remain cool in difficult situations may come from her childhood in Yamagata Prefecture, where the winters are severe and students are often forced to wait outside in the cold for trains delayed by heavy snow.

Basically, she was lucky the courts ruled on her side, she’s some kind of supermom/CEO hybrid, and she developed her patience by waiting outside in the snow. Can’t wait for the book!

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