Ged Carroll

Category: japan |日本 | 일본

Yōkoso – welcome to the Japan category of this blog. This blog was inspired by my love of Japanese culture and their consumer trends. I was introduced to chambara films thanks to being a fan of Sergio Leone’s dollars trilogy. A Fistful of Dollars was heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.

Getting to watch Akira and Ghost In The Shell for the first time were seminal moments in my life. I was fortunate to have lived in Liverpool when the 051 was an arthouse cinema and later on going to the BFI in London on a regular basis.

Today this is where I share anything that relates to Japan, business issues, the Japanese people or culture. Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Lawson launched a new brand collaboration with Nissan to sell a special edition Nissan Skyline GT-R. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as Japan.

There is a lot of Japan-related content here. Japanese culture was one of odd the original inspirations for this blog hence my reference to chambara films in the blog name.

I don’t tend to comment on local politics because I don’t understand it that well, but I am interested when it intersects with business. An example of this would be legal issues affecting the media sector for instance.

If there are any Japanese related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • Alibaba Tencent and Huawei + more

    Alibaba Tencent and Huawei will take on the west’s technology players and win, predicts Sorrell – Mumbrella Asia – Alibaba Tencent and Huawei may also end up being Galapagos type businesses, or being seen a  threat by the Party because of their power. It would also be Huawei at least is a WPP client….

    Ideas

    The Equality of Opportunity Project  – This introductory course, taught by Raj Chetty, shows how “big data” can be used to understand and solve some of the most important social and economic problems of our time

    Luxury

    Rich Kid Buys Girl 8-Foot Tall Costco Teddy Bear, Gets Rejected | What’s on Weibo – interesting skepticism on viral moments or memes

    Free and Easy’s American Dream – Ralph Lauren magazine – great bit of media analysis on cult Japanese style magazine Free and Easy

    Security

    Source: Deloitte Breach Affected All Company Email, Admin Accounts — Krebs on Security – just wow

    China Blocks WhatsApp, Broadening Online Censorship – NYTimes.com – the wrong question being asked. Instead why did it last so long? Expect WeChat usage to pick up in Hong Kong etc for cross border communications

    Software

    macOS 10.13 High Sierra: The Ars Technica review | Ars Technica – great in-depth review

    Technology

    Will Imagination Deals Deliver MIPS to China? | EE Times – interesting discussions on the Tallwood VC / Canyon Bridge deal and possible implications for the MIPS eco-system. Interesting that China sees more potential and security in MIPS than ARM….

    Digital Evangelist: Imagination Technologies sale to Canyon Bridge – I rather expect that the Hertfordshire based business is likely to suffer the fate of Vertu and end up bankrupt and sold for scrap in less than two years because of mismanagement and the new owner having very little understanding as to just what they own and control  Imagination Technologies agrees £550m sale to Canyon Bridge | FT – the MIPS business goes to Tailwood VC (paywall)

  • Machine learning sublime influence

    Scott Galloway talks about the way brands are using AI (machine learning) and the examples are very much in the background.  Welcome to the sublime world of machine learning where the impact on the customer experience won’t be apparent. In many respects this is similar to how fuzzy logic became invisible as it was introduced in the late 1980s.

    The Japanese were particularly adept at putting an obscure form of mathematics to use. They made lifts that adapted to the traffic flows of people going in and out of a building and microwaves which knew how long to defrost whatever you put into it. Fuzzy logic compensated for blur in video camera movement in a similar manner to way smartphone manufacturers now use neural networks on images.

    The Japanese promoted fuzzy logic inside products to the home market, but generally backed off from promoting it abroad. The features just were and consumers accepted them over time. In a quote that is now eerily reminiscent of our time a spokesperson for the American Electronics Association’s Tokyo office said to the Washington Post

    “Some of the fuzzy concepts may be valid in the U.S.,”

    “The idea of better energy efficiency, or more precise heating and cooling, can be successful in the American market,”

    “But I don’t think most Americans want a vacuum cleaner that talks to you and says, ‘Hey, I sense that my dust bag will be full before we finish this room.’ “

    This was also the case with the use technology companies made of Bayes Theory. This was used by the likes of Autonomy and Microsoft Research.

    A second technique was rules, put simply IF then THAT. This kind of technology has been used to drive automated trading models and credit card approvals for decades. Pegasystems are one of the leaders in developing rules based processing. Rules based systems could even be built in an Excel macro and would still count as a form of machine learning. 

    Finally machine learning needs to think about a number of things with regards the models being used:

    • The importance of accuracy in the use case
    • The level of precision required and ways to indicate that precision means
    • The cost of generation versus other methods, this is very important in terms of computing power and energy consumption 

    More information
    The Future of Electronics Looks Fuzzy | Washington Post (December 23, 1990)

  • Narita airport + more news

    Narita Airport dumping squat toilets in restroom reform：The Asahi Shimbun – OMG makes Heathrow seem even more barbaric by comparison. Both Haneda airport and Narita airport are a pleasure to fly into. More Japan related content here

    Media

    Some thoughts on #SMWLDN – Matt Muir nails the ephemera that passes for thought leadership in social circles

    Technology

    There’s Blood In The Water In Silicon Valley | Buzzfeed – Tech is manifestly unready for this new era. They’ve been playing small-ball politics of regulation, and coasting on incredibly high approval ratings. But there are signs they feel the winds changing. You can usually detect a political figure’s problems from their overcompensation, and Zuckerberg’s Midwestern tour had all the hallmarks of a classic reaction to a specific political polling question: “Does he care about people like me?” The move was widely misinterpreted as some kind of beginning to Zuckerberg’s political career. But Zuckerberg is Facebook, and his image is his company’s. His mission was to fix the company’s image, and I’m just not sure this one is fixable.

    You can see the shape of how this plays out in a recent exchange between Mark Halperin and Rep. Adam Schiff, in which Halperin asked of Facebook: “Did they put profits ahead of patriotism in their conduct during the campaign?”

    Wall Street Journal Reports on SoftBank Offer for Uber….Yet No Other Press Outlet is Picking the Story Up | naked capitalism – at a lower than expected market value

    Web of no web

    As Amazon Pushes Forward With Robots, Workers Find New Roles – NYTimes.com – great example of what Kevin Kelly talked about in his book The Inevitable that we only preserve jobs by working with rather than against robots

    The Smart Watch Market is Headed for a Boom | Park Associates – not so sure about the rationale on this, I often forget to wear my smart watch for the same reasons that they give for fitness bands

  • iPhone X launch + more things

    iPhone X launch

    In terms of the news agenda, the iPhone X launch dominated the news. I wrote about it here and here.  This image from the Chinese internet summed everything about the iPhone X launch up for me.

    Chinese reaction to iPhone X

    We’re in a place of innovation stuckness at the moment – we’re celebrating incremental improvements in user experiences on smartphones as transformational, they aren’t. This is a category challenge, not a vendor-specific one. Even infrastructure and component vendor Qualcomm is struggling to envision ways to move things on.

    I have been mostly listening to this playlist from this years Love International Festival

    And FIP Radio

    Japanese group meforyouforme combining traditional Japanese culture and dance with modern tap dancing FTW


    Hong Kong stars Donnie Yen and Andy Lau go back to the 1970s with Chasing the Dragon – a thriller based on real characters involved in drug smuggling and organised crime in the turbulent go-go economic boom of Hong Kong – Lee Rock (Lui Lok) was a corrupt policeman nicknamed 500 million dollar Inspector, who avoided corruption charges by moving to Canada and then Hong Kong. Crippled (or Limpy) Ho was a triad called Ng Sek-ho who rivalled the 14K triad group.  It is against the backdrop of the post-1967 riots economic boom which saw Hong Kong blow up in manufacturing and financial services. This brought rich pickings in corruption which led to the formation of the ICAC – the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

  • Global head of PR on Japan + more

    Booking.com’s global PR head on Japan, data, and the fallacy of awards | PR Week – For Cafferty, no outside party can understand a business as well as the people who work in it. Indeed, she sees the key attribute of an in-house PR person as knowing every facet, from “fun stuff” like brand and product to tax laws. She sees the value of PR agencies as being strong media contacts and local understanding, and less about strategy or creativity – a very traditional view of PR as media relations and a disconcerting read for agencies given the lack of receptiveness to higher value service aspects. Booking.com’s global PR head on Japan was not exactly insightful comments either. More Japan related content here.

    McSuicide? Twitter hoax affects McDonald’s Hong Kong | PR Week – probably because Twitter doesn’t have traction in Hong Kong

    What Brands Are Actually Behind Trader Joe’s Snacks? – Eater – it reminds me student jobs that I had in factories making breakfast cereals, frozen cakes and frozen meals respectively – we would change brand boxes on the line but the product remained the same

    iOS 10 Quietly Deprecated A Crucial API For VoIP and Communication Apps – Slashdot – what’s not apparent is why Apple is deciding to depreciate this API, especially given the amount of phone use that happens on wi-fi rather than cellular networks

    Ships fooled in GPS spoofing attack suggest Russian cyberweapon | New Scientist – what would have seemed like a straight-up Bond villain pot, now seems to be the new normal. GPS spoofing has also been done by the North Koreans and China. They key question is how the GPS network achieves ‘cut through’ whilst being jammed. There is only so much transmitting power that can be put on satellites. It would also mean that ‘old’ skills like astral navigation and map reading are still tremendously important.