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New products hit the domestic Japanese market with dizzying frequency. In the electronics industry alone, eight major and a dozen minor semiconductor firms are battling for a lead in the manufacture of microprocessors and so-called computers on a chip. American firms pioneered this technology in the late 1960s, but Japanese companies have already captured 30% of the world market for computer memory chips.
The rush to use the chips has propelled the nation's automakers into headlong competition to come up with new applications. When Toyota last year introduced the world's first chip-operated voice synthesizer to warn drivers of low fuel and fluid levels in their cars, Nissan Motor hustled out its competing versions within weeks.
Taken together, these five qualities have furthered a national spirit of compromise and cooperation and a willingness to endure short-term setbacks for the long-term good of the nation, company or family as a whole. Says Shiro Miyamoto, an official of the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry: "Our system is born of the traditions and history of this country, a small nation with few resources. Without our way of doing things, there would be continual conflict and nothing would ever get done."
When these Japanese characteristics are brought into the modern factory, the result is a smoothly functioning enterprise that produces quality goods. This is most clearly seen in the easy working relationship of management and labor. Japan has fewer strikes and less labor unrest than any other major industrial power. In 1978 Japan lost 1.4 million workdays because of strikes, while the U.S. lost 39 million.
To a Japanese worker, his company is not an oppressor but rather the source of his income and the expression of his place in society. Says Ryutaro Nohmura, 57, who owns a tentmaking firm in Osaka: "Employees in Japan view their company as an extension of their family life. Indeed many of them equate the importance of their company with that of their own life."
The workers trust their bosses to make the right decisions because there is a pervasive sense that both labor and management are working together. In Japanese companies, as a general rule, managers rise from within the corporate ranks, adding to the feeling of camaraderie and shared experience. Says Yoichi Takahashi, head of Hitachi's 70,000-strong labor union: "Everything depends on dialogue and trust. What is good for the company is good for the union. The workers know that their labor is what makes the company prosperous." Adds Noboru Yoshii, a senior adviser of Sony Corp.: "There is little opposition between management and workers because every manager comes up the ladder from employee. We do not call our employees workers or laborers, but associates instead. One reason everyone at Sony wears the same blue-gray jacket is that we are saying Sony is a working company, a blue-collar company all the way from the top to the bottom."
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