This book describes how American and Japanese management ideologies meet, collide, and contend in the process of competitive cooperation during a joint venture in Japan. In a detailed case study, Hamada describes the very real problems when Japanese and American managers run a business operation, and analyzes them from a comparative, relativistic, and historical perspective. The author presents a novel and effective way of viewing organizational dynamics, seeing the 'unfinished' cultural process between different sub-groups who create and recreate the symbolic meanings of corporate phenomena. Her succinct analysis of Japanese and American behavioral modes makes both practical and theoretical contributions to the field of international management. Highlighting the interdependence between corporate culture and broader societal culture, Hamada looks closely at interactions between American and Japanese businessmen, analyzes their cultural differences, and proposes that these differences can be viewed not just as a source of continuing conflict but of dynamic cooperation.

This Element is an excerpt from Ubiquitous Computing for Business: Find New Markets, Create Better Businesses, and Reach Customers Around The World 24-7-365 (9780137064434) by Bo Begole. Available in print and digital formats. How a leading commercial printer is finding and delivering powerful new value through rich electronic media. Printing is a form of manufacturing, and with manufacturing being supplanted by electronic methods, Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) found it prudent to shift its position in the value chain. However, DNP’s business was largely based on printing content owned by publishing houses. Some new value needed to be found that didn’t compete with DNP’s customers and complemented DNP’s print competencies.

"Knowing Japan and the Japanese better," Louis Frédéric states in the introduction to this encyclopedia, "is one of the necessities of modern life." The Japanese have a profound knowledge of every aspect and detail of Western societies. Unfortunately, we in the West cannot say the same about our knowledge of Japan. We tend to see Japan through a veil of exoticism, as a land of ancient customs and exquisite arts; or we view it as a powerful contributor to the global economy, the source of cutting-edge electronics and innovative management techniques. To go beyond these clichés, we must begin to see how apparently contradictory aspects of modern Japanese culture spring from the country's evolution through more than two millennia of history. This richly detailed yet concise encyclopedia is a guide to the full range of Japanese history and civilization, from the dawn of its prehistory to today, providing clear and accessible information on society and institutions, commerce and industry, sciences, sports, and politics, with particular emphasis on religion, material culture, and the arts. The volume is enhanced by maps and illustrations, along with a detailed chronology of more than 2,000 years of Japanese history and a comprehensive bibliography. Cross-references and an index help the reader trace themes from one article to the next. Japan Encyclopedia will be an indispensable one-volume reference for students, scholars, travelers, journalists, and anyone who wishes to learn more about the past and present of this great world civilization.

Spanning the earliest attempts to brew beer to the recent popularity of local craft brews, Brewed in Japan presents the first English-language exploration of beer's steady rise to become the "beverage of the masses." Alexander underscores the highly receptive nature of Japanese consumers, who adopted and domesticated beer in just a few generations, despite its entirely foreign origins. He also sheds light on the various social, cultural, and financial influences that combined to make beer Japan's leading alcoholic beverage by the 1960s. Japan's beer market is now among the most complex on earth, and it continues to evolve. Visit the author's website at www.brewedinjapan.com.

In A Medicated Empire, Timothy M. Yang explores the history of Japan's pharmaceutical industry in the early twentieth century through a close account of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals, one of East Asia's most influential drug companies from the late 1910s through the early 1950s. Focusing on Hoshi's connections to Japan's emerging nation-state and empire, and on the ways in which it embraced an ideology of modern medicine as a humanitarian endeavor for greater social good, Yang shows how the industry promoted a hygienic, middle-class culture that was part of Japan's national development and imperial expansion. Yang makes clear that the company's fortunes had less to do with scientific breakthroughs and medical innovations than with Japan's web of social, political, and economic relations. He lays bare Hoshi's business strategies and its connections with politicians and bureaucrats, and he describes how public health authorities dismissed many of its products as placebos at best and poisons at worst. Hoshi, like other pharmaceutical companies of the time, depended on resources and markets opened up, often violently, through colonization. Combining global histories of business, medicine, and imperialism, A Medicated Empire shows how the development of the pharmaceutical industry simultaneously supported and subverted regimes of public health at home and abroad.

This volume explores Japan's industrialization from the perspective of "indigenous development", focusing on what may be identified as "traditional" or "indigenous" factors. Japanese industrialization has often been described as the process of transferring or importing technology and organization from Western countries. Recent research has, however, shown that economic development had already begun in pre-modern period (Tokugawa-era) in Japan. This economic development not onlyprepared Japan for the transfer from the West, but also formed the basis of the particular industrialization process which paralleled transplanted industrialization in modern Japan. The aim of the volume is to demonstrate this aspect of industrialization through the detailed studies of so-called"indigenous" industries.This collection of papers looks at the industries originating in the Tokugawa-era, such as weaving, silk-reeling and pottery, as well as the newly developed small workshops engaged in manufacturing machinery, soap, brash, buttons, etc. Small businesses in the tertiary sector, transportation and commerce, are also observed. Available for the first time in English, these papers shed new light on the role of "indigenous development" and our understanding of the dualistic character of Japan'seconomic development.

Politically the 1910s and 1920s were dark days for Japan: economic instability, frequent political assassinations, and increasing violent military interventions at home and overseas affected many. This book explores the literature of the period, showing how it contributed to this overall mood. It focuses on the Tatsukawa Library, an unusual collection of military chronicles based on traditions of popular storytelling found in the yose — a network of small theatrical venues that provided the masses living and working in Japan’s major cities with affordable entertainment. Capitalising on local advances in Western-style printing, the series facilitated a ‘new wave’ of literature that appealed especially to young, marginalised, economically-insecure urban youths. This book discusses how the narrative content of the Tatsukawa Library, which focuses on historical samurai struggling valiantly against adverse circumstances, helped inspire a generation with admiration for violence. This work also examines how this outlook fitted with the Japanese state’s reintroduction of imperial propaganda.