Synopsis
Are the Japanese faceless clones who march in lockstep to the drums beaten by big business and the bureaucrats of MITI, Japan's miracle-working ministry of international trade and industry? Can Japanese workers, and by extrapolation their entire society, be characterized by deference to authority, devotion to group solidarity, and management by consensus? In We Were Burning, investigative journalist Bob Johnstone demolishes this misleading stereotype by introducing us to a new and very different kind of Japanese worker-a dynamic, iconoclastic, risk-taking entrepreneur.Johnstone has tracked down Japan's invisible entrepreneurs and persuaded them to tell their stories. He presents here a wealth of new material, including interviews with key players past and present, which lifts the veil that has hitherto obscured the entrepreneurial nature of Japanese companies like Canon, Casio, Seiko, Sharp, and Yamaha.Japanese entrepreneurs, working in the consumer electronics industry during the 1960s and 70s, took unheralded American inventions such as microchip cameras, liquid crystal displays, semiconductor lasers, and sound chips to create products that have become indispensable, including digital calculators and watches, synthesizers, camcorders, and compact disc players. Johnstone follows a dozen micro-electronic technologies from the U.S. labs where they originated to their eventual appearance in the form of Japanese products, shedding new light on the transnational nature of twentieth-century innovation, and on why technologies take root and flourish in some places and not in others.At this time of Asian financial crisis and the bursting of Japan's bubble economy, many are tempted to dismiss Japan's future as an economic power. We Were Burning serves as a timely warning that to write off Japan—and its invisible entrepreneurs—would be a big mistake.
Reviews
The commercialization of semiconductor technologies, largely dominated by Japan, brought us such marvels as hand calculators, quartz watches, liquid crystal displays and TVs, camcorders and synthesizers, improved solar cells and lasers, light-emitting diodes, CD players and printers. Journalist Johnstone, who has written for Wired, is clearly well versed in the history of electronic technology and takes us device-by-device "from invention through commercial application." The narrative encompasses the evolution of dynamic firms such as Sony, Canon, Casio, Seiko and Sharp, and key research contributions of scientists from Bell Labs, RCA and other U.S. companies. Johnstone explains how brave, motivated visionaries in mid-level Japanese companies consistently managed to capitalize on discoveries of U.S. research that rivals were unable to bring to market. He flatly contradicts a prevalent view that Japanese industry owes its technological success to monolithic government-sponsored consortia that took perhaps undue advantage of the West. Rather, Johnstone identifies vital individuals and pivotal company policies, weaving material from about a hundred interviews into an account seasoned with biographical sketches and remarks from the oral histories that capture the flavors of research environments and entrepreneurial management. Comprehensive, smartly written and accessible to the lay reader, this book provides a definitive?virtually encyclopedic?account of how the Japanese consumer electronic industry won the world.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
It is a bit hard to remember now the profound concern that many Americans felt during the 1980s about what appeared to be a Japanese juggernaut that was sweeping all before it in the consumer electronics industry and that was threatening to drive American firms out of the electronics market. Today the predominant view in the U.S. is, as Johnstone puts it: "Japanese-style capitalism, so fashionable in the late 1980s, has been found wanting. The American way has triumphed." That complacency is misplaced, Johnstone says. "Sooner or later, Japan will bounce back." He credits the success of the Japanese to a number of entrepreneurs who drove such firms as Sharp, Sony and Yamaha to their triumphs; and he describes ably the technology that they developed for making television sets, camcorders, watches, calculators and the many other products that pour forth from the nation's electronics industry. Japan still has such people, he says. "The point of this book," he writes, "has been to demonstrate that, though unseen and undervalued, there are entrepreneurs in Japan and that such individuals have played a key and hitherto unrecognized role in Japan's rise to prominence as an economic power. Until very recently, however, such creative forces have been stifled by ineffective government policy. Now the time has come to release their talents."
``Made in Japan'' was once the mark of an inferior knockoff; now only an incurable chauvinist would draw that inference. How that change came about is one of the great stories of modern industry. Johnstone, who covered Japanese technology for New Scientist and Wired, begins by debunking the myth that Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) orchestrated that country's rise to dominance in electronics. In fact, MITI's bureaucratic foot-dragging kept Sony from becoming the first company to market a transistor radio (in 1954). Instead, it was a succession of brilliant entrepreneurs, most of whom are unknown in the West, who drove the Japanese electronics industry to its position of preeminence. They were helped, ironically, by the post-WWII disarmament pacts, which meant that their best and brightest engineers were concentrating on consumer products, not military projects. At the same time, the fledgling transistor technology was one in which Japan could compete on an equal footing with bigger, more developed nationsespecially after antitrust legislation forced AT&T and other American companies to license their patents to Japanese manufacturers. A generation of visionaries arose. Among them were Morita Akio, one of the co-founders of Sony; Sasaki Tadashi, whose passion for miniaturization led to the first hand-held calculators; Yamazaki Yoshio, who helped perfect Seiko's liquid crystal display watch; and Kuwano Yukinori, whose unofficial research into amorphous materials made possible the solar-powered calculator. Johnstone gives chapter-length profiles of these and other scientists and entrepreneurs, bringing these largely unknown figures to life. Many of them at first had trouble overcoming the pressures for conformity and subordination to authority so central to Japanese culture. But their example has paved the way for others, and Johnstone confidently predicts that their successes are only the beginning of a long legacy. Johnstone has a sharp eye for drama and a knack for making technical details understandable; this book is a welcome addition and corrective to the Western-dominated histories of recent technology. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
A freelance journalist who spent 15 years in Japan, Johnstone provides an insightful, historic account of Japan's consumer electronics industry. He details case studies of several independent Japanese entrepreneurs, mostly from the 1970s and 1980s, who were directly responsible for what many call the electronics revolution. Based largely on Johnstone's personal interviews, this well-written book successfully shows that entrepreneurial innovation and personal ambition do get results in Japan, instead of just the groupism and team emphasis typically associated with Japanese management and often cited as key reasons for Japan's economic success. The book traces the development of the transistor and the microchip from watches and calculators through camcorders and synthesizers and finally to CD players, printers, and cars. Indirectly, Johnstone illuminates the differences between U.S. and Japanese company culture. Recommended for all business readers.?Joseph W. Leonard, Miami Univ., Oxford, OH
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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