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.

  • Mel Cheren + more news

    Mel Cheren

    Apiento had posted a documentary on Mel Cheren, who founded West End Records. Mel Cheren was much more than the head of a disco label; he helped found the Paradise Garage and along with the likes of Salsoul Records was responsible for the direction that dance music has taken over the past 40 years or so. If you haven’t heard the original records, you’ve probably heard records that sampled them or used similar production techniques.

    The cultural impact of the Paradise Garage was such, that it drove the sales of West End Records artists like the Peech Boys. Mel Cheren eventually resurrected

    Consumer behaviour

    Always on, always connected – Accenture – 2012 consumer electronics usage survey

    Mediascope Europe: Digital First for Europe’s Mums | IAB UK – 48% of digital mums in Europe say how a brand communicates online is important in influencing their opinion of it

    Design

    John E. Karlin, Designer of the 20th Century Telephone, Dies at 94 – what becomes apparent from this obituary is the amount of thought that went into device design, which is usually sorely lacking in much technology hardware today

    The BraunCollection gives a permanent home to the works of the German electrical goods manufacturer and its designs over the past five decades or so.

    Economics

    German Economy Contracted at End of 2012 – NYTimes.com

    Prosecuting the Messenger: Chief Greek Statistician Threatened with Jail – SPIEGEL ONLINE – you couldn’t make this up

    Asian consumers divided on confidence – export orientated economies like Korea and Japan are afraid of contagion from Europe

    The BRICs and beyond – PWC – interesting forecasts (PDF)

    IMF sees 140m jobs shortage in ageing China as ‘Lewis Point’ hits – Telegraph – the Lewis Point is when labour is no longer a surplus but in demand and bargaining power moves away from businesses to the work force

    Finance

    UPDATE 3-S&P expects U.S. lawsuit over pre-crisis credit ratings | Reuters – interesting move, what effect will it have on the bias of the ratings agencies?

    FMCG

    Succeeding In Low-Growth Markets by The Futures Company – WPP – it it what allowed P&G to get ahead during the great depression

    Mountain Dew Kickstart: An Alternative Breakfast Beverage – Euromonitor International – not too sure how I feel about this, but given the big food charges leveled against sugary breakfast cereals this could be a lightning rod for protestors

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong TV Drama Plays Out Uneasy Ties With China

    Ideas

    Excapite: Rethinking the terms of engagement in the age of the network

    Innovation

    Reflective display funnels light – EETimes displays to show things more like the way that we sea the real world

    Global trends in consumer electronics to 2015 – Euromonitor

    Japan

    TV drama captures public angst at ‘Made in Japan’ decline ‹ Japan Today

    The Japan Story – NYTimes.com – interesting take on the Japanese economy that gives at least some home truths and food for thought

    Media

    Unruly launches social video ‘shareability’ prediction tool – Brand Republic News

    Facebook PMD Email Tells Advertisers: No Pay, No Play – Business Insider – so many interesting aspects to this beyond the revenue in terms of gaming partners priorities. In many respects similar to the Microsoft certified programme amongst IT people

    Yahoo CEO says Microsoft search deal underperforms | Reuters – acknowledges it as just changing market share; which works for Microsoft I guess. Mayer realises she needs to shore up impressions and put better monetising ad inventory in place

    AMC To Air Old Walking Dead Episodes In Black And White | WebProNews – interesting move, how about curvature in their to simulate CRT technology?

    Twitter Raises Promoted Trend Price. Again.  – Twitter raises the price of a Promoted Trend to $200,000 per day

    Music Pirates are Cheapskates, Some of Them

    Nearly Half of European Online Audience Visit Sports Sites – comScore, Inc

    Time to kill the “unique”? | Media Week Blogs – but what’s the alternative?

    HMV sells shares in G-A-Y group back to founder Jeremy Joseph | NME.COM – don’t worry Kylie will still be able to play live in London

    Web Traffic Was Down 15 Percent During Super Bowl – AllThingsD – not terribly surprising broadcast does shared collective experience better, be it news stories or sporting events

    Online

    In One Fell Swoop, Facebook Deep-Sixes the Web – AllThingsD – shows how fragile things can be

    Facebook: 76 Million Accounts Were Fake – Social Networking Watch: News on the Social Networking and Social Media Industry

    Hailo closes $30.6m Series B round from Union Square Ventures, Richard Branson, KDDI and others – The Next Web

    Retailing

    Tim Cook’s comments on Apple Stores, illustrated | asymco

    HMV to sell famous Oxford Street store | The Guardian – saddened, but HMV hasn’t been the same since selections have been driven centrally, there was no serendipity, no understanding of local cultural nuances

    BPI’s antidotes for HMV woes: 4G, tablets, connected cars, smart TVs and more

    Security

    Phone-hacking inquiry: Sun’s Fabulous and northern features editors arrested | guardian.co.uk

    Crooks Net Millions in Coordinated ATM Heists — Krebs on Security – interesting mix of hacking and smurfing being used

    Here Are the FBI’s Official Tips to Avoid Being Sexually Extorted Online – smart tips on information security in general

    US diplomat: If EU allows ‘right to be forgotten’ … it might spark TRADE WAR • The Register

    Software

    XML’s 15th Birthday – interesting reflections from Tim Bray

    The Ripple Effect of Windows 8 – interesting reflections on Windows 8. However I would also point out that Microsoft operating systems

    Nokia considers “all options” for tablet OS – Rethink Wireless – don’t read too much into this, it sounds more like messaging developed by comms people to answer the question but as a holding position. I guess that the plans aren’t sufficiently developed. Nokia has enough going on at the moment to solve. Of course things may change as you wouldn’t draft in PR until late on the product launch process

    Technology

    Microsoft sells out of Surface Pro, just like the Zune HD did in 2009 (Daniel Eran Dilger/AppleInsider) – selling out is a PR quotient now rather than a real measure

    200 Million Want A Microsoft Tablet – Business Insider – the methodology used by Forrester seemed a bit flaky but interesting take-outs

    MediaTek sets 2013 DTV design agenda – interested in multi-screen experiences features

    Telecoms

    Virgin Media bought for £15bn by Liberty Global | guardian.co.uk

    Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012–2017 – Cisco Systems

    Wireless

    EDA ‘David’ files law suits against Moto, Nokia, others – will Tela get paid?

    Teardown: Inside the Blackberry Z10 – interesting high spec device components

    Apple, Samsung mobile profit share: 103% of all industry profits | BGR – like the PC industry most other people are losing money, so the percentages run over 100 per cent

  • Black business

    The term black business is an Asian term in terms of origin and use. In the west, corporate and social responsibility has been on the minds of management teams for a while. It is also starting to get traction in Asian companies that are exposed to international markets. It doesn’t seem to trouble some Japanese companies however.

    Black business as a term, isn’t about environmental issues, though I imagine that they probably won’t rate great on that either compared t their peers. 

    Instead black business focuses purely on how they manage and treat their employees. A black business is a dismal place to work. 

    A black business is described as a company that overworks its employees, harasses them, and/or pays significantly low wages for the work provided.

    Charges against black businesses include death by overwork. While this is a Japanese buzzword, it doesn’t apply strictly to Japanese companies or their workers. Death by overwork happens in multinational companies. International advertising agencies have a reputation for it. 

    Work cultures in Chinese companies would be typical of black business attributes. These would generally fall into the kind of wolf culture seen at firms like Huawei. The 996 working style prevalent in Chinese tech firms, would be considered overworking members of staff. Chinese fashion online retail company Pin Duo Duo has seen a number of employee deaths through overwork. 

    Foxconn saw worker suicides soar due to pressure on employees and their difficulties adjusting to life on huge campuses. 

    Many Chinese construction firms working abroad routinely pay their Chinese employees six months late. This is due to the hamfisted mess that payments are made from the main contractor to sub-contractors.

    Workers rights in China are routinely suppressed by unions in concert with the employer and the local government.  

    More information

    Could Japan’s Latest Buzz Word Get You Sued? Lawyer Weighs In | Rocket News 24

  • Cleantech + more news

    Cleantech

    Insight: How cleantech tarnished Kleiner and VC star John Doerr | Reuters – when thinking about cleantech it is worth remembering that Doerr also made crazy bets on Netscape. It may have been the wrong thing to do from a finance point-of-view but the direction was right. Robert X. Cringely described technology as being like surfing, hitting and riding a wave at the right time and knowing when to get off. Doerr wasn’t the only person to hit the wave to early. Vinod Khosla also bet big too early on cleantech with his firm Khosla Ventures. Beside Cleantech, Doerr and Khosla also had a common path. Khosla was a Kleiner Perkins alum. Both had being part of the founding team at Silicon Valley royalty, Khosla at Sun Microsystems and Doerr at Intel. Cleantech has been of interest since the rise of environmental movement and hit different peaks during the OPEC oil crises. But its only with global warming that cleantech interest got serious

    Consumer behaviour

    The Future of Drugs | VICE – interesting essay on the consumer behaviour side of things

    Culture

    WeAreFSTVL’s stream on SoundCloud – keep an eye on this

    Economics

    Paul Krugman On Technology And Inequality – Business Insider – technology is likely to encourage inequality for decades

    Hong Kong’s fading love affair with its property barons signals Beijing’s growing clout – Quartz – or maybe like most economies the mix needs to be tweaked

    No longer factory of the world, China is now its banker – Quartz – interesting data about China doing outbound foreign direct investment

    Chart Focus: How to compete in emerging markets – Chinese markets as urban clusters

    Finance

    Secrets and Lies of the Bailout | Rolling Stone – interesting colour on top of what people knew with regards the 2008 banking crisis

    FMCG

    Frosties sales decline because of advertising ban on television – Mirror Online – advertising works, opportunities for below-the-line marketing not being exploited by food companies?

    Unilever’s Jon Goldstone: A great brand can’t stand for ‘cheap’ – Marketing news – Marketing magazine – interesting move away from data driven marketing

    Innovation

    The Amazings – interesting idea in terms of knowledge sharing

    Accoustic Renaissance for Audio proposal – Mono could be enjoyed side-by-side with friends, whereas stereo is only for the ‘hot-spot’, hence highly personalized. Now multi-channel can again provide a much wider listening area, therefore it can again be enjoyed with friends or families – Negishi-san’s observation on the social aspects of listening are very interesting

    Carbon Fiber: The Secret of the 2014 Corvette Stingray – interesting that the price point isn’t above the previous glass reinforced plastic (GRP) models

    Koreans create magnetic transistor that could turn every CPU into an FPGA | ExtremeTech

    Handheld See-Through-Wall Radar | The Firearm Blog – crazy sci-fi tech that’s real

    Korean boffins crack art of bendy batteries • The Register

    Japan

    Survey of Japanese Young Adults Shows Preference for Twitter, Facebook

    Luxury

    KPMG – Global reach China Luxury – interesting and more nuanced take on the Chinese market for luxury goods

    Media

    Super League clubs on brink of financial abyss, says finance expert | The Guardian – I have a personal interest in not seeing top-flight rugby league go under, but if it did, I imagine that tyre-kicking bears would also look at other sports

    Analysis: US, Australia social network usage flat, New Zealand now the world’s biggest user of social networks? | Trends in the Living Networks

    MK – FACT Magazine – love the video interviews with MK

    Obama: ‘One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates’ | Poynter. – or how the changing structure of media industry will change debates

    Lionel Barber’s email to FT staff outlining digital-first strategy | guardian.co.uk – feels very much like what the Telegraph went through ages ago

    Antigua Government Set to Launch “Pirate” Website To Punish United States | TorrentFreak

    New York Times to launch electronic corrections form | Journalism.co.uk – expect PRs to be all over this

    Greg Sandoval quits CNET over CBS editorial interference | JIMROMENESKO.COM – CBS versus Dish Networks casualty

    Online

    Just Under Deadline, Google Responds to European Antitrust Concerns – AllThingsD

    Ahead of Graph Search launch, Facebook removed the ability to opt out of search results – Quartz – you know that this is going to end badly for at least some people

    Goodbye LinkedIn answers, hello more Group spam? | Econsultancy – disappointing for B2B marketers

    Quality

    CES: Worse Products Through Software – if you only read one article about CES read this

    Retailing

    Why online book discovery is broken (and how to fix it) — paidContent – I’d argue that it was similar with non-chart music purchases as well

    Capgemini retail study commissioned by TJ Hughes (PDF) online going to be big apparently

    Security

    Errata Security: I conceal my identity the same way Aaron was indicted for – interesting how technological use clashes with the law

    The Future of Crime | VICE – interesting thoughtful article by VICE that touches a lot of current hot technologies including 3D printing and in-car computing

    Why We’re Raising the Signature Threshold for We the People | The White House – interesting given the timing with Aaron Swartz-related petition activity

    Software

    OmniGroup are going back to the Mac; after spending the past few years bringing their applications to the iPad. I particularly like OmniPlan as a piece of project management software. If there was one worthwhile thing that came out of MacWorld Expo this year, this was it

    Microsoft’s Role a Sticking Point in Dell Buyout Talks – WSJ.com – has Microsoft learned from the Nokia deal, would it have been easier if Elop had taken Nokia private to do the Lumia changeover?

    Nokia builds WP8 momentum, but will increase its costs – Rethink Wireless – careful calculus?

    Elsevier In Advanced Talks To Buy Mendeley For Around $100M To Beef Up In Social, Open Education Data | TechCrunch

    Line, The Messaging App That Took Japan By Storm, Crosses 100M Users And Enters The U.S. | TechCrunch

    Nokia Sales Down 79% in China as Symbian Dies, Lumia Slow to Grow – which is a huge drop in the world’s biggest wireless market

    Daring Fireball: The Trend Against Skeuomorphic Textures and Effects in User Interface Design – technology means that display limitations no longer need to be hidden by skeuomorphic design

    Basecamp Personal Takes Project Management Out Of The Office, Ditches Subscriptions For A One-Time Fee | TechCrunch – much more accessible

    Technology

    New Media Knowledge – Ovum finds “live-to-work” ethos is driving faster BYOD adoption in high-growth markets than mature markets

    Excess chip inventory set to hurt Q1 – signs of an electronics downturn

    NTSB: “No Obvious Anomalies” in Dreamliner Backup Battery | Frequent Business Traveler – which screws the prevailing narrative being pushed that tried to taint the Japanese battery supplier

    Robot Makers Spread Global Gospel of Automation – NYTimes.com – I guess we know what John Markoff’s next book maybe about. Interesting read through

    Surface with Windows RT: The prettiest thing you’ll never want to touch again | Reuters – one of the most brutal reviews that I have read

    UBS slashes its Microsoft Surface RT sales forecast by 50 percent- The Inquirer

    Telecoms

    TeliaSonera’s Uzbekistan scandal is a warning to telecom CEOs everywhere – Quartz – It has come out in the Nordics first, primarily because of the transparency there, but I wouldn’t be surprised it was endemic amongst the wireless groups in the EU and US

    Chinese government reportedly in talks to lift 12-year ban on gaming consoles – The Next Web

    Web of no web

    Moves takes on Fitbit and Nike+ FuelBand with a simple iPhone app for tracking your daily activity – The Next Web

    Wireless

    Why The WSJ Got The ‘iPhone Demand Is Crashing’ Story All Wrong – Forbes – the WSJ has been going for much more speculation journalism to compete on reporting with the likes of TechCrunch, I guess you could call it a blogification of the fourth estate

    In Asia’s trend-setting cities, iPhone fatigue sets in | Reuters – interesting association with Hallyu. I pass an electronics store every morning and there is always a Girls Generation concert playing on the LG televisions. Is this the decline of American culture’s power?

    HTC Mini announced as a remote for your smartphone (Cory Gunther/Android Community)

    Strong Demand for Smartphones and Heated Vendor Competition Characterize the Worldwide Mobile Phone Market at the End of 2012 – IDC press release – epic headline

    Samsung’s predicament – Chris Dixon – is the PC analogy the correct one?

    Samsung seeks to block Apple appeal for sales ban – San Jose Mercury News

  • Jamie Hewlett + more news

    Jamie Hewlett

    Jamie Hewlett was not someone that I would have associated with luxury menswear brand Dunhill. Dunhill have been creating interesting content for a number of years, that used to be accessed through an iPad application and their own site. This interview with Jamie Hewlett is brilliant. Hewlett’s talent as a comic creator developed early with him working in the studios of Bob Godfrey. Godfrey is famous to UK TV watchers for the cartoon series Rhubarb & Custard. After college Jamie Hewlett was recruited for Deadline magazine, which is where his iconic Tank Girl creation was formed and his relationship with Damon Albarn of Gorillaz.

    Jamie Hewlett submarined during the 1990s when the underground became mainstream drawing Get The Freebies. Eventually Jamie Hewlett teamed up with Albarn to provide the visual look of The Gorillaz.