Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [153]
So what happened to Nakamura? Not only was he not rewarded or promoted (he earned $100 each for his five hundred patents in the 1990s) but when he decided to leave Nichia, no Japanese company even made him an offer. He attributes this to the fact that he graduated from a minor university and worked at a small firm in the provinces. In February 2000, he therefore took a job as a researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He says, «No bonus, no big position. This is a Japanese company. So I go to the U.S.A.»
Another example of how hard it is for independent-minded inventors or entrepreneurs to get ahead in Japan is Okabe Nobuya, who runs a company that makes science-fiction effects for movies and television. He invented a program that allows games makers to vary the background scenery on the screen, but he could not interest Japanese manufacturers. «Japan is like the army with everyone in senior-junior relationships,» he says. «But it's not manly to stick around complaining, so I'm finding my own solution.» He took his program to a convention in San Diego and soon had multiple orders. Okabe has since moved most of his company to Hollywood.
Meanwhile, JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization) has set up a fund called Tiger's Gate 2000 to nurture young Internet entrepreneurs in Japan. However, the condition of JETRO's support is that the young tigers move to the United States and learn how to do business there. Okabe sells software in the United States because he cannot find buyers at home; JETRO actually requires that young Internet start-ups leave the country! Such are Japan's up-and-coming entrepreneurs: their success depends on the degree to which they avoid Japan. This is true even for Son Masayoshi, whose high-tech acquisitions were garnered largely in the United States, not Japan. The source of Son's leveraged money has been Japan, but the growth areas of his business are abroad.
It isn't only individuals who are fleeing Japan but businesses as well. The most celebrated example is Honda Motors, which in the 1980s quietly transferred its base of operations from Japan to the United States, which now accounts for more than half of Honda's production and sales. Honda expects exports from Japan to continue to fall in the coming years and is betting the company's survival on cutting loose from Japan.
Hundreds, even thousands of companies are slowly but surely moving their base of operations abroad. This is why Sony was willing to take massive losses in Hollywood (more than $2.5 billion) when it purchased Columbia Pictures: there would be no purpose in buying or developing Japanese movie studios, since the Japanese movie industry has almost completely collapsed. Sony's only way forward was to expand in the United States.
Today's refugees also include top athletes. Nomo Hideo, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers (and later several other teams), epitomizes this new type of Japanese refugee. Nomo was a very successful pitcher for the Kintetsu Buffaloes, but Japan's rigid baseball world limited his prospects. Among other things, he disliked the «endurance exercises» that are a feature of Japanese sports. Endurance exercises, such as hashirikomi (deep running) or nagekomi (deep throwing) basically involve running or throwing until you drop. It's an approach to sports training that has obviously developed from the military-style emphasis on gambare (endurance) taught in the schools, and it is common in most Japanese athletic programs, though it has little to do with developing muscle strength or athletic skill.
When in the spring of 1995 Nomo quit the Buffaloes and in the summer of that year joined the Dodgers, there was a cry of outrage from the Japanese press. The newspapers labeled him an «ingrate» and accused him of loving money, not sports. In short order, Nomo went on to become a sensation in the United States, winning the National League Rookie of the Year Award and being dubbed «the Tornado» by the media. When