Look Out Bill and Steve! Here Comes Kohei, Genri!

TOKYO – Until the late 19th century you could count the number of Japanese entrepreneurs on a few hands and feet. People just didn’t start new businesses, either because there were no new ideas or starting a new business was prohibited by the government and/or by deeply entrenched custom.

In fact, it was not until the last decades of the 20th century that entrepreneurship began to attract public attention in Japan. High school and university graduates went directly from school to work for some company—and the bigger and more famous the company the better.

The 1990-1 “Big Bang” in reverse that let much of the air out of Japan’s “bubble economy” resulted in a new mentality of individualism and personal independence among a growing number of young Japanese, changing things dramatically.

Now, hundreds of thousands of young Japanese prefer to work part-time or on a contract basis rather than as full-time regular employees, and thousands of them are doing what was unthinkable just a short while ago—they are founding their own companies.

What is even more extraordinary—for Japan—is that many of these new entrepreneurs start their businesses before they finish school. In some cases, while they are still in high school, and without bothering to go on to college.

Said one successful 20-year-old company president of a research firm that comes up with new product ideas: “Academics have no bearing on business.” He started his company with several of his buddies when they were still in high school. One of their first clients was the cosmetics giant Kanebo.

Another facet of this extraordinary phenomenon in Japan involves a growing number of young men and women who have taken an entirely new look at such traditional materials as silk, wood and hand-made paper, and are creating new products that combine modern and futuristic designs with the innate aesthetic qualities of the materials they use.

Kyoto, the imperial capital of Japan from 794 until 1868 and the center of Japan’s arts and crafts for more than a thousand years, has become a hotbed of entrepreneurship in the creation of new apparel and furniture lines. This new breed of businessmen and women has reached the point where they are now exhibiting and selling in New York, Milan and other global markets.

Young female entrepreneurs are among the leaders in this movement, working with traditional silk producers and dyeing companies to create handbags, jackets, and other apparel that are unique not only in their materials but in the artistry of their designs.

The day has obviously arrived when younger Japanese are going back to their cultural traditions as a source of creative ideas that can be turned into modern-day products—tapping into handicraft traditions that achieved the level of fine arts more than a thousand years ago.

This new breed of Japanese fashion designers, with their access to classic materials and unique Oriental design concepts, could very well eclipse the pop designers of Milan, New York and Paris in the near future.

It is surely this new breed of Japanese that holds the future of Japan in their hands. No longer chained to the past, no longer prohibited from using their imagination, and now having access to totally new frontiers of opportunity, they could take Japan to a new level.

One famous Kyoto manufacturer of incense now sells his products worldwide, achieving the sweet smell of success from a product that was once seen mostly in shrines and temples and at funerals.

Copyright © 2007 by Boye Lafayette De Mente
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Boye Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan, Korea, China and Mexico since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on these countries, including the first books ever on the Japanese way of doing business: Japanese Etiquette & Ethics in Business, first published in 1959 and still in print, and How to Do Business in Japan, published in 1961.

To see a complete list of his titles [each one linked to Amazon.com’s buy page], go to his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.