Can you name a Japanese company with a US educated CEO? One with a CEO and a Chairman who both have MBAs from different, well respected US Universities? What if I told you that the company has sales of 1.3 trillion yen and probably made either your toilet or your bath?

Still can’t place the name? Don’t worry – most people can’t. They’ve changed their name so many times over the past few years that even Japanese wouldn’t recognize their brand name. Their official name is JS Group (住生活) although their operating company is known as Lixil and they used to be called Tostem-Inax. Clearly they have no understanding of the importance of an easy to remember company name but boy do they have an interesting set of people sitting behind the steering wheel. Read more about them in our quick overview.

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Thinking of starting up your own company in Japan? Why not, Japan is the home of the small enterprise. The tax system is set up to promote large tax holidays for owners of small businesses and there doesn’t seem to be much of an expectation from the tax office that you even need to break a profit. I was surprised at how simple it was to start up a company when I inked the papers at the local government offices last year here in Japan.

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Over the weekend it has emerged that Nozoe Kuniaki (野副州旦), the financially savvy president of Fujitsu, who “resigned due to health reasons” back in Sep ‘09 was actually blackmailed into resigning. How can the CEO of a 1.2 trillion yen company (13 billion USD!) can get blackmailed and forced to quit at the whim of one or two old cronies on his board? Read about the bizarre story behind this recent development, and how it reinforces the stone-age corporate governance at play even today in Japan.

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Online shopping has been firmly established in Japan thanks to the likes of early adopters such as Yahoo Japan and Rakuten. The market is growing, and recently, more and more quality English language sites are taking advantage of the climate, offering quality Japanese products (on English language websites), and shipping globally – something which more traditional Japanese retailers still have not cottoned on to.

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If you haven’t already heard, news broke a week or two that a small firm based in Kawasaki, Teramento (テラメント) Corporation falsely reported to have acquired a 51% stake in six large (giant) Japanese companies: Sony Corporation; Toyota Motor Corporation; Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corporation (NTT); Fuji Television Network Inc.; Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.; and, [...]

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Who is Japan’s little known rice growin’ financial hotshot? The UK has it’s first bank run in 150 years. Citibank fired it’s CEO. The whole financial world is reeling from the financial mess called subprime (see here for our easy to understand footnote on subprime). Even GM (last I checked they made cars and not [...]

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On October 5, 2007, two drug stores announced their intent to merge. CFS and Ain Pharmaciez. Never heard of either? Interestingly they are both within the top 10 drug store chains in Japan and if the merger is successful their combined sales will be about 250 billion JPY and rocket them into #2 in the industry

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The famous Tonkatsu Sauce maker “Bulldog”, facing a potential takeover by the foreign investment firm Steel Partners, was saved last week in a disturbing effort by the Japanese courts to prevent foreign money and ownership permeating into an important aspect of the Japanese cultural dinner table.

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Ever since reading a recent article on stippy.com about the under-representation of female CEOs in Japan, I’ve been racking my brains to find one. My first thoughts were of Tomoyo Nonaka of Sanyo Electric or Fumiko Hayashi of Daiei, but as Chairwomen, they both strike me more as figure heads than actual active, managing CEOs. [...]

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There remains this enormous and wicked sociocultural myth. It is this: Hard work is all there is. Work hard and the world respects you. Work hard and you can have anything you want. Work really extra super hard and do nothing else but work and ignore your family and spend 14 hours a day at [...]

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