We Were Burning Japanese Entrepreneurs And The Forging Of The Electronic Age

by Johnstone, Bob

• ISBN13: 9780465091188
• ISBN10: 0465091180
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-09-24
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

Are the Japanese faceless clones who march in lockstep to the drums beaten by big business and the bureaucrats of MITI, Japan's miracle-working ministry of international trade and industry? Can Japanese workers, and by extrapolation their entire society, be characterized by deference to authority, devotion to group solidarity, and management by consensus? InWe Were Burning,investigative journalist Bob Johnstone demolishes this misleading stereotype by introducing us to a new and very different kind of Japanese worker-a dynamic, iconoclastic, risk-taking entrepreneur.Johnstone has tracked down Japan's invisible entrepreneurs and persuaded them to tell their stories. He presents here a wealth of new material, including interviews with key players past and present, which lifts the veil that has hitherto obscured the entrepreneurial nature of Japanese companies like Canon, Casio, Seiko, Sharp, and Yamaha.Japanese entrepreneurs, working in the consumer electronics industry during the 1960s and 70s, took unheralded American inventions such as microchip cameras, liquid crystal displays, semiconductor lasers, and sound chips to create products that have become indispensable, including digital calculators and watches, synthesizers, camcorders, and compact disc players. Johnstone follows a dozen micro-electronic technologies from the U.S. labs where they originated to their eventual appearance in the form of Japanese products, shedding new light on the transnational nature of twentieth-century innovation, and on why technologies take root and flourish in some places and not in others.At this time of Asian financial crisis and the bursting of Japan's bubble economy, many are tempted to dismiss Japan's future as an economic power.We Were Burningserves as a timely warning that to write off Japanand its invisible entrepreneurswould be a big mistake.

Author Biography

Bob Johnstone is a freelance journalist who has written about science and technology for fifteen years. He has served as Japan correspondent for New Scientist, technology correspondent for Far Eastern Economic Review, and has been a contributing editor and writer for Wired. He was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991 and was the recipient of an Abe Foundation Program grant.

Table of Contents

Author's Note	p. x
Preface: People, Not Policy	p. xi
Introduction a Nation of Transistor Salesmen?	p. 1
Calculators & Watches	p. 21
Doctor Rocket Goes to Disneyland	p. 23
Blind Men Don't Fear Snakes	p. 61
The Race is Not to the Swift	p. 88
The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum	p. 118
Under-The-Table Research	p. 145
Camcorders & Synthesizers	p. 173
The Man Who Loved Gossip	p. 175
The Sound of One Chip Clapping	p. 212
Cd Plyers & Pyintes; Cairs & Lights	p. 249
Many Hands Make Light Work	p. 251
Doctor Nishizawa, I Presume?	p. 289
The End of Edison	p. 324
Nails That Stuck Up	p. 348
Timeline	p. 361
People	p. 369
Sources	p. 373
Glossary	p. 377
Acknowledgments	p. 381
Notes	p. 385
Index	p. 404
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