"Made in Japan" was once the mark of an inferior knockoff; now only
an incurable chauvinist would draw that inference. How that change
came about is one of the great stories of modern industry.
Johnstone, who covered Japanese technology for New Scientist and
Wired, begins by debunking the myth that Japan's Ministry of
International Trade and Industry (MITI) orchestrated that country's
rise to dominance in electronics. In fact, MITI's bureaucratic
foot-dragging kept Sony from becoming the first company to market a
transistor radio (in 1954). Instead, it was a succession of
brilliant entrepreneurs, most of whom are unknown in the West, who
drove the Japanese electronics industry to its position of
preeminence. They were helped, ironically, by the post-WWII
disarmament pacts, which meant that their best and brightest
engineers were concentrating on consumer products, not military
projects. At the same time, the fledgling transistor technology was
one in which Japan could compete on an equal footing with bigger,
more developed nations - especially after antitrust legislation
forced AT&T and other American companies to license their
patents to Japanese manufacturers. A generation of visionaries
arose. Among them were Morita Akio, one of the co-founders of Sony;
Sasaki Tadashi, whose passion for miniaturization led to the first
hand-held calculators; Yamazaki Yoshio, who helped perfect Seiko's
liquid crystal display watch; and Kuwano Yukinori, whose unofficial
research into amorphous materials made possible the solar-powered
calculator. Johnstone gives chapter-length profiles of these and
other scientists and entrepreneurs, bringing these largely unknown
figures to life. Many of them at first had trouble overcoming the
pressures for conformity and subordination to authority so central
to Japanese culture. But their example has paved the way for
others, and Johnstone confidently predicts that their successes are
only the beginning of a long legacy. Johnstone has a sharp eye for
drama and a knack for making technical details understandable; this
book is a welcome addition and corrective to the Western-dominated
histories of recent technology. (Kirkus Reviews)
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? In "We 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 todismiss Japan's future
as an economic power. "We Were Burning" serves as a timely warning
that to write off Japan--and its invisible entrepreneurs--would be
a big mistake.
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