Tag: NTT

Will Japan’s NTT put its global base in the UK despite – or because of – Brexit?

While Panasonic and Sony have announced they are shifting their European headquarters out of the UK because of Brexit (and Japanese tax haven laws), NTT are likely to place not just their European but their global (ie excluding Japan/domestic) headquarters in London. Is this despite Brexit, or even because of?  As previously blogged, NTT Data have been hiring by the hundreds in the UK, and staying positive about Brexit with one eye on public sector contracts for Brexit related IT systems such as border security and customs.

The President of NTT until 2018, Hiroo Unoura, had said in an interview five years’ ago that the US would be a global pivot for NTT, but I suspect, rather as my former employer Fujitsu has found, that it is very hard to take on the big US IT/telecoms giants in their home territory.  Some of the acquisitions that NTT and NTT Data have made over the past decade have been US companies such as Keane and Virtela, but some of the biggest acquisitions were in the EMEA region – Everis (Spain), Dimension Data (South Africa) and Value Team (Italy).

Cleaning up an organisational mess

As I said in a previous post, the result was an organisational mess.  NTT Data was kept separate from NTT as a brand and tried to unify across all its global acquisitions whereas Dimension Data, in some ways a competitor, was directly owned by NTT.  NTT also had a separate organisation NTT Communications, to manage its global businesses.

From this summer, NTT is setting up a global holding company, and putting 5 subsidiaries including NTT Communications, NTT Security, NTT Data and Dimension Data under its umbrella. The organisation of the 4 companies excluding NTT Data will be split between domestic Japanese and global, and the global businesses will be unified.

The last time NTT changed its structure this drastically was 20 years’ ago. They have faced two challenges since then, first with the attempted global expansion of NTT DoCoMo, particularly into the US, which led to large losses, after the dotcom bubble burst. For 10 years, no further investments were made outside of Japan.

The challenge of global profitability

The second challenge is profitability. The reason they structured themselves in such a complex way in 1999 was to open up NTT (which originated as a partially privatised former ministry of telecommunications organisation) to competition domestically. So merging the company back into a holding company is likely to be regarded with suspicion by its competitors in Japan. However, NTT has reached a limit of how much it can cut costs domestically, and although overseas turnover has risen thanks to all the acquisitions, profitability is not on target. So it was felt more radical steps were needed.

One model for this might be Japan Tobacco, says Kazuyuki Okudaira in the Nikkei. JT was also part privatised and acquired RJR Nabisco’s non-US tobacco business in 1999 and also Gallaher in the UK in 2006. Japan Tobacco’s global headquarters is in Switzerland, and 60% of its sales are now overseas.  “Whether NTT can repeat JT’s success remains to be seen” says Okudaira.

Is not being the US or China enough?

NTT has said it won’t confirm the decision about where it will base its global HQ until July, but has already moved into a swanky new office in the City of London. Dimension Data has 2,500 employees, over 10% of its global workforce, in the UK and its global hub and executives are in London.  In the short term at least, London remains the global financial capital in need of the kind of data centres and infrastructure NTT provides, and has a multinational, multilingual IT workforce. It’s also not the USA, and Japan is not China (see Huawei controversy).  In the longer run, however, if Japan Tobacco is meant to be the model, it’s worth remembering JT shut down the Gallaher factory in Northern Ireland in 2017, with the loss of 1,000 jobs. Even though it has a 41% share of the UK market, the factories and the bulk of the jobs are elsewhere in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

As we found at Fujitsu, even if you try to base your global marketing out of Europe, you still have to compete with US rivals – not only with IBM but Google and Amazon – in IT B2B services. NTT has a big brand recognition challenge on its hands which may mean that global profitability is elusive for a while yet.

 

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Top 30 Japanese employers in Germany – Japan’s appreciation of German ‘monozukuri’ continues.

Although Japanese business people tend to think of Germany as being a fellow “monozukuri” (manufacturing/craftsmanship) country, there are actually proportionally fewer (28%) Japanese companies which are manufacturing in Germany than there are in the UK (36%).*

Of course this has a lot to do with the fact that Nissan, Honda and Toyota have factories in the UK and do not have any plants in Germany – as well as the supply chain of manufacturers that they have attracted, many of whom set up production to be as close as possible to their customers.

The biggest sector for Japanese companies in Germany is wholesale. Automotive wholesale is playing a role here, as Japanese suppliers try to diversify away from supplying Japanese car makers and target European car brands as well. It has been noticeable that one reaction to Brexit by UK based Japanese automotive suppliers is to open a branch or subsidiary in Germany and/or transfer customer accounts and sales functions to those branches.

Like the Top 30 in the UK, the biggest Japanese companies in Germany have grown through acquisition. IT services dominate the top spots with NTT at number 1 thanks to its acquisition of Itelligence, Cirquent and Net mobile, as well as Dimension Data.

Fujitsu – the biggest Japanese company in the UK – is the second biggest in Germany. Fujitsu bought out Siemen’s share of their joint venture in 2008. Fujitsu is about to shut down the last remaining computer factory in Europe – which was in Augsburg, and around 1800 jobs will be lost across Europe.

Duncan Tait, SVP and head of EMEIA (Fujitsu’s own regional acronym – Europe, Middle East, India and Africa) somewhat disingenuously claimed on the BBC news recently that Fujitsu’s regional headquarters had been in the UK for 20 years and that “there was zero intention of moving out of London” like Sony just announced. Actually it is Fujitsu Services that has been headquartered in London, with some offices in Europe, whereas Fujitsu Technology Solutions, the hardware side, was headquartered in Munich, with a rather more extensive network of operations across Europe.

But as Fujitsu shifts, like many other Japanese electronics companies, to IT services and B2B, so the locus of power has to shift to where the customers are. Over 80% of Sony Europe’s turnover was to non-UK EU countries, but this is not the case for Fujitsu Services. Because of Fujitsu Services’ legacy of acquiring ICL in 1990, the UK public sector is still a key customer. So it’s no wonder Tait does not intend to shift out of London any time soon.

More recent acquisitions in Germany by Japanese companies do include a fair number of manufacturers – Mori Seiki has finally consummated its marriage with Gildemeister, Lixil acquired Grohe, Musashi Seimitsu acquired Johann Hay and Nidec continues on its overseas M&A rampage. As you can see from the ranking below, Japan’s appreciation of German monozukuri continues.

Rudlin Consulting can develop a more detailed, customised list of Japanese companies in Europe (for a fee). Please contact pernilledotrudlinatrudlinconsultingdotcom with an outline of your requirements.

*2018 Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs – who identify 1814 Japanese companies (this is very loose, they include branches, joint ventures and companies established by Japanese entrepreneurs in Germany) . There are 21 categories including “other”. For Germany the top 4 are wholesale/retail 31% (of 1814), manufacturing 28%, hospitality 7%, IT 6%. UK is 36% manufacturing, 13% wholesale/retail, 8% financial, 8% “other”.

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Size matters when choosing a Japanese company

Whether you’re looking to work for or supply to a Japanese company, size matters.  The most obvious reason being, as bank robber Willie Sutton apparently never said, “that’s where the money is”.  That’s why we started our Top 30 Japanese Employers rankings  – we’ve found them useful in understanding our customer base and the likely concerns of participants in our seminars.

We use the number of employees as a proxy for size rather than turnover or profit, and although there is a degree of correlation between employee numbers globally and in Europe and overall profit, there are some exceptions.

Toyo Keizai have recently listed up the companies* who made the biggest cumulative profit in the past 10 years and it’s absolutely no surprise that Toyota, one of the biggest companies in Japan and #9 amongst Japanese companies in Europe, made a whopping Y11 trillion ($99bn) cumulative profit from 2007 to 2017, far outstripping NTT and NTT Docomo at #2 and #3 who made less than half that amount.  NTT and NTT Docomo are not in our Top 30 Japanese companies in Europe, although another group company, NTT Data, is.

However NTT and NTT Docomo never made a loss, whereas Toyota did go into the red – with a loss of $.8.6bn in 2008/9.  Honda, who has had a tough time in Europe (and is #23 in our rankings), has also never made a loss, and accumulated a $36bn profit over the decade.  Nissan, who made a loss but was famously turned round by Carlos Ghosn, is 10th largest in Europe in our rankings and has the 6th largest cumulative profit.

I was surprised to see my old employer Mitsubishi Corporation at #5, as they too had some rough patches particularly with losses in the commodity side, but clearly overall the Japanese trading companies have been very profitable, despite their death being heralded every decade – Mitsui is at #9, Itochu at #11, Sumitomo Corp at #14 and Marubeni at #21.

Unsurprisingly, almost none of the Japanese electronics companies feature in the top 30, apart from Canon at #10 and Mitsubishi Electric at #25.  Other industries in the top 50 most profitable are automotive (Denso, Bridgestone) and pharmaceutical (Takeda, Astellas) related, and also heavily domestic businesses such as telecommunications (KDDI, SoftBank as well as NTT mentioned above), rail and retail (7&I, Fast Retailing).

Two of the largest Japanese companies in Europe – Fujitsu and Hitachi – are at #69 and #70 – Hitachi’s cumulative profit was heavily dented by the historic loss of $8bn in 2008/9.  The largest company in the Europe and Africa region – Sumitomo Electric Industries (due to its labour intensive automotive manufacturing operations) is at #38, with a $6bn cumulative profit.

*Excludes banks, insurance and other financial services companies

 

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Octopus balls to Tokyo – why it matters where your company is from in Japan
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Takoyaki (octopus balls) are typical Osaka street food

Most countries have rival cities – usually the official capital city versus other cities which consider themselves to be the real business, historical or cultural heart of the country – think London versus Manchester or Birmingham, Berlin versus Dusseldorf or Frankfurt, Rome versus Milan, Madrid versus Barcelona.  Japan is no exception and the rivalries go way back into history.

Kyoto used to be the capital of Japan, before Tokyo (or Edo as it was then) began to usurp it in the 17th century.  If you ask Japanese people today about Kyoto, they joke that Kyotoites still think Kyoto is the real capital of Japan, and the Emperor is just temporarily visiting Tokyo (he moved there in 1868, when Tokyo became the official capital) – and will return one day.

Tokyo literally means the Eastern Capital and is part of the Kanto region, where the ruling feudal Tokugawa shogunate was based from the 17th century.  Kanto means East of the Barrier (usually considered to be the Hakone checkpoint) and Kansai – the region where Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto are based – means the West of the Barrier (originally the Osaka Tollgate).

Before Kyoto’s reign as capital for a 1000 years, Nara (also in the Kansai region) was the capital and seat of the Emperor but is now a quiet backwater, more visited by tourists than business people.  Kobe is the other main city in the Kansai region – a port with a strongly cosmopolitan feel and very close to Osaka geographically.  Whilst Kyoto remains aloof and quietly superior (and has some very successful high tech companies of its own such as Kyocera and Nidec), the real battle now in business culture is between Osaka and Tokyo.

Osakans see Tokyo as standardizing, dull and full of bureaucrats and view Osaka (which historically had very few samurai but plenty of merchants) as the real money maker, with vastly superior food.  Many of Japan’s celebrities, comedians and musicians come from the Kansai region too.

So what does this mean for corporate cultures?  Osaka companies often have merchant roots – the joke goes, when you meet an Osakan, you don’t ask “how are you” (ogenki desuka) but “how’s business” (moukarimakka).  To which the correct response is “bochi bochi denna” – a wonderfully vague way of giving nothing away, like saying “plodding along nicely thank you”.  Osaka companies are brash, tough negotiators and mean with the money.  “They’d skin the fleece off a gnat” said one British engineer to me, describing his colleagues in the Osaka HQ of a consumer electronics company.

Tokyo companies are gentlemanly but at the same time highly political.  You need to have a good understanding of their organisation, the factions and the individual relationships to understand how to get things done.  Mitsui and Mitsubishi, both Tokyo based corporate groups, are distinguished by the saying “Mitsui  is people – Mitsubishi is the organisation”.  It’s hard sometimes to understand how exactly this is different, but it seems to boil down to the idea that if an individual is powerful enough at a Mitsui group company, they can get things done, whereas at a Mitsubishi group company, the whole organisation has to support an action.

The other main corporate groups, Sumitomo and Itochu, are Kansai based companies.  Both have strong “mercantile” roots – Sumitomo in metals trading, hard-nut, conservative and domestically focused and Itochu – strong in fashion and consumer goods, and seen as the more maverick, progressive and international in outlook.  The regional cultural differences don’t seem to have been that strong between Sumitomo and Mitsui as various mergers have taken place between their respective member companies, particularly in financial services.   However regional cultural differences have definitely had an impact on Astellas Pharma, the product of a merger between Yamanouchi (Tokyo) and Fujisawa (Osaka).  Apparently many Fujisawa employees were horrified that Yamanouchi was going to be the dominant partner in the merger.  Fujisawa had a strong tradition of innovation and had regarded Yamanouchi as “Mane-nouchi” (Mane = imitation) – a bunch of play-safe Tokyo bureaucrats.

Those who know Japan well will have spotted that there is an important region missing from this analysis – Chubu.  Literally and metaphorically this is the midlands of Japan.  Just like the Midlands in the UK it is the historic heart of the car industry.  Nagoya is the main city, and teased just as Birmingham in the UK is for being ugly and soullessly modern.  The area has the last laugh though, as it is the most wealthy in Japan – thanks to the enduring success of Toyota (so mighty their home town was renamed Toyota City) and its corporate group of suppliers such as Denso.

So, where are the top 30 Japanese companies in Europe from?

Kanto/Tokyo based companies:

• Asahi Glass
• Astellas (but Fujisawa originally Osaka)
• Canon
• Daiichi Sankyoshutterstock_36509791
• Fujifilm
• Fujitsu
• Hitachi
• Honda
• Kao Corporation
• Mitsubishi group
• Mitsui group
• Nissan
• Nomura (but was Osaka originally)
• NTT group
• NYK group
• Olympus
• Ricoh
• Sony
• Toshiba

Kansai based companies:
• Horiba (Kyoto)
• Nidec (Kyoto)
• Nippon Sheet Glass (Sumitomo Group)
• Omron (Kyoto)
• Panasonic (Osaka)
• Sharp (Osaka)
• Sumitomo group (Osaka)
• Takeda Pharma (Osaka)

Chubu based companies:
• Denso
• Seiko Epson
• Toyota

Chugoku (Hiroshima etc) based companies:

• Fast Retailing/Uniqlo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reports, profiles and other research on the Top 30 largest Japanese companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa are available to subscribers to our premium, paid newsletter – subscriptions are available here.

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NTT Data in Europe – digitization for the Vatican, ERP for Daimler

vatican libraryNTT Data had an extensive write up of their Vatican digital library project in the Financial Times recently, which must have pleased President Toshio Iwamoto.  As he admitted in a recent interview in the Nikkei Business, despite the Vatican project, and also winning a global ERP support contract from Daimler, NTT Data’s brand is still not strong enough globally.  Although the US represents the highest proportion of business for NTT Data overseas, they are still only #40 in the US systems market.  Consequently, they do not get any approaches from major customers.  “It’s not a problem of our technical strength, simply the challenge of getting them to knock on our door” says Iwamoto.

It takes time to build brand recognition “so we have to buy time”.  By acquiring companies in Asia and Europe, NTT Data now has operations in 175 cities in 41 countries.  Iwamoto wants the overseas to domestic turnover ratio of the company to be 50/50 by 2020.  In 2014, overseas business was around Y400bn compared to Y1trn domestically.  He expects to further increase overseas sales through acquisitions to around Y800bn in 5 years, and attain the remainder through organic growth.

“We have no intention of becoming a mini IBM or even a mini Google.  We have to differentiate ourselves from them through creating our own value.  This will be based on our experience in the Japanese domestic market of ‘a quality which satisfies the customer’ – a very Japanese aspect.  Usually when IT systems companies say ‘quality’ they mean there are not many bugs in the software but we mean a total management of quality from sales through to the system management.  Talking to our overseas employees, they say this quality will be recognised globally and that we should promote our ‘Japanese quality’.  Previously, Japanese quality meant cars or consumer electronics, but now Japanese quality of service is becoming known around the world, in beauty or education, so we should be able to provide a service which cannot be replicated by local suppliers in the IT industry too.”

The interviewer asks whether the many parts of the NTT group (NTT Communications as well as NTT Data) all doing different things make it confusing for customers overseas.  Iwamoto says there are historical reasons (presumably to do with government ownership) why this has happened, and that it can’t be helped.  In fact it is often the case that NTT group companies even team up with other companies such as KDDI or Softbank to provide the customer with what they want.  The trend is towards more open systems in the IT industry, he believes.

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Interview with Hiroo Unoura, NTT President – the courage to say we are only one of many

As outlined in a previous blog, NTT, the partly state owned Japanese telecoms company, is undergoing a major global shift.  Nikkei Business interviewed the president of the NTT group, Hiroo Unoura, about how he has been trying to change NTT since he became president in 2012.

In June 2013 he announced to the top executives of the group companies that “we should not leave any homework for future generations”, by focusing on what kind of services would be needed for the era of cloud computing, and that NTT must no longer regard itself as the main player, but simply “one of them” due to the diversification and globalization of the telecoms services and applications market. He is reshaping the organisation globally, using North America as a starting point for global expansion.

NTT has set up a 100 strong cloud research center in Silicon Valley.  Unoura believes that businesses in the USA are far more inclined to see shifting to the cloud as a life or death matter, whereas the Japanese market is still hampered by regulation.

Unoura was involved in cleaning up the mess after the major losses made by NTT in the early 2000s from overseas investments.  Those acquisitions were not about increasing turnover, he points out, rather about acquiring 3G technology from AT&T Wireless or building a global internet network in the case of Verio.  The current acquisitions are about expanding the business.  As Dimension Data is a specialist in cloud, by acquiring them, NTT is hoping they will find further candidates for NTT to acquire in the cloud business.

Acquisitions such as the recent purchase of Spanish IT company Everis are all discussed with NTT overseas operations such as NTT Com, NTT Data and Dimension Data first.  However NTT has no intention to abandon Japan – the idea is to learn from overseas, and bring that knowledge back to Japan once Japan’s own industrial structure has changed.

NTT is of course putting itself into direct competition with the very Japanese companies who used to rely on NTT as a key customer, such as Fujitsu and NEC, by focusing on cloud and global markets.  Fujitsu in particular already expanded overseas decades ago through purchases of European and North American companies, although it took many years before it then tried to integrate them into “One Fujitsu”.  Time is not on NTT’s side, and trying to integrate strong and distinctive companies such as South African Dimension Data into “One NTT”  may need all of Unoura’s apparent boldness and courage and then some to push through.

 

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NTT’s global acquisitions bear fruit

Nikkei Computer magazine has run a 4 part series (articles in Japanese) on whether the formerly domestic oriented telecoms company NTT group can really succeed globally.  The answer appears to be yes, in part thanks to its agressive acquisitions over the past few years of Dimension Data, Keane, Centerstance and others.  The major question is whether a strong enough leader can be found in Japan to keep the momentum going.

The first part of the series examines NTT’s recent successes in winning deals in the USA – with the Texas Department of Transportation for application maintenance and support involving NTT Data, Dimension Data and MSSP Solutionary (which it acquired last June) and an IT services contract with Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut) in Kentucky. Both of these deals involve the transfer of hundreds of employees over to NTT Data, which I imagine will prove quite a challenge for NTT.

An insider says that because NTT is very much seen as a challenger in the North America, this sense of being an outsider has united NTT ‘s various companies to cross sell and bring in deals such as the TDoT and Yum! deals.

The NTT group lost a trillion yen (around $10bn) in the US market a decade or so ago on investments in AT&T Wireless and Verio.  In response to the question of why they are trying again now, Tsunehisa Okuno, Director of the Global Business Office at NTT Holdings says that as the USA is the largest and most competitive IT market in the world – “if we can’t succeed there, we will not succeed in globalizing our business.  The winner in the cloud market is  not decided yet, and North America is the key to that market”.  NTT’s intention is to develop its technology and skills in North America, then bring that to Europe, the simplify further and bring to developing markets.

Nikkei Computer highlights three areas of concern for NTT:

1. Developing the strongest services

In particular, NTT need to address the duplication of IaaS and MSS offerings from its subsidiaries NTT Communications, Dimension Data, Solutionary and NTT Security (in Germany) if it is to compete effectively with Amazon, IBM, Dell and Verizon.

2.Standardizing knowhow and methodology

NTT is finding that rolling out what they have developed in Japan as the global standard has not been easy, and instead is now looking to standardize methodologies originating in its overseas subsidiaries.

3. Complex organisational structure

NTT has retained the brands and the founders of the companies it has acquired, believing this to be key to keeping motivation high.  However it can lead to lack of oversight and any sense of unity across the group, as well as a very complex organisational structure. NTT Holdings is still over 30% owned by the Japanese government, and there are laws in place preventing anyone of a foreign nationality becoming a director in the holding company.

Up until now NTT has  relied on posting a small group of executives across its subsidiaries who knew each other well and had the same vision for NTT – Okuno was from NTT Com, Kazuhiro Nishihata a director at NTT Data also comes from NTT Com and used to be President of NTT Europe.  Okuno feels a limit has been reached on this management by jinmyaku (human network) and from now on NTT will have to communicate more based on logic, taking as long as necessary to persuade others.

Takashi Enomoto, former Senior EVP of NTT Data, in charge of overseas business, was very keen that there should be one NTT Data brand, and was able to persuade the founders of acquired companies by pointing out that IBM is IBM, Accenture is only the Accenture brand. A second Enomoto is needed at NTT to ensure the success of its global strategy, says Nikkei Computer.

 

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Successes of Japanese cross border M&A #4 – NTT Communications

Having covered the perceived failures of the Nippon Sheet Glass/Pilkington, Daiichi Sankyo/Ranbaxy and Ricoh/Ikon M&As, Nikkei Business in its December 9th edition then goes on to examine some of the more successful deals by NTT Communications, Kirin Holdings and Terumo.

NTT Communications bought US telecommunications company Verio in 2000 for $5.5bn, just before the dotcom bubble burst, resulting in NTT Communications posting a $5bn loss in 2002. Nikkei Business points out the same assumption was made “that the company would just keep growing as it is” that Nippon Sheet Glass and other Japanese companies made about their acquisitions and that the acquiring company then uses economic crises as an excuse for the acquisition’s failure and the need to shrink it down or cut back, rather than their lack of any plans for worst case scenarios.

NTT Communications went down that route, and did not make any further major acquisitions until 2011, however, they used the intervening years to completely overhaul their M&A strategy.  Instead of relying on investment banks and consultants, they decided to build up their own knowhow and insist on planning beforehand how they were going to restructure any business, rather than after the acquisition was made.  In the case of Verio, they pulled out of the ISP business and merged the backbone business with NTT Europe, leaving only small-medium enterprise hosting with Verio. This was in order for NTT to strengthen its services to larger customers.

As well as rethinking how to restructure their business, they also decided that future candidates for acquisition would be found by themselves, and analysed inhouse – all aspects from management, services, legal, financial and HR. They listed up over 1000 targets for this process.  They saw the need to get back into the acquisition game as the telecommunications market was changing, and there was a need for interconnected large scale data centers, used by multiple customers.  NTT Communications felt the only way to put such an infrastructure in place quickly was through acquisition.  In 2012 they bought an Indian data center company Netmagic and UK company Gyron Internet, followed by a French web based conferencing system company Arkadin and then in 2013 spent a further $875m on US companies Virtela and Raging Wire.  Operating profit has been on the rise since 2011, and sales look to be recovering next year too.

 

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Does having more women managers help Japanese companies globalise?

The question of nadeshikowhether having more women managers would help Japanese companies to globalise was raised, but not discussed in depth due to time constraints, at a dinner I recently attended, hosted by a delegation to the UK from J-WIN (Japan Women’s Innovative Network – a Japanese non profit organisation).  An impressively large number of younger women (70) had been sponsored by their companies to come to the UK for a week, visiting various UK companies such as British Telecom and AON, to study global leadership and diversity.

My view is yes, it does help Japanese companies to globalise if they have more (Japanese) women managers, for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, it helps Japanese companies and corporate culture seem less “alien” to Western companies if there are more women in management positions in the headquarters, and secondly, because the adjustments Japanese companies will have to make in order to incorporate a more diverse Japanese workforce (gender or other diversity) will help them be more inclusive of “non-Japanese” diverse groups.  Attitudes to overtime and working from home would be a couple of areas needing adjustment I would suggest.

On the first point, the question of the role of women in Japanese companies is frequently raised in the cultural awareness sessions we conduct in Europe for Japanese companies.  Japan never does well in surveys of the position of women in society – see the most recent World Economic Forum Gender Gap report, placing Japan 114th out of 144 countries (updated for 2017).  While you can (and this has been a topic of discussion on our Japan Intercultural Consulting LinkedIn group) question the methodology of such surveys, then along comes another one, conducted amongst Japanese women, showing that 1/3 of them want to be full time housewives.

Which leads me to point out in our training (and in the Advancing Gender Diversity day I spoke at for Hitachi’s European group companies – presentation on SlideShare here) that Confucian values remain strong in Japan – it’s not that women are seen as somehow less capable than men, more that there are expectations around the role they should fulfil in society.

Prime Minister Abe is trying to square a circle with Abenomics, by trying to raise the birthrate but at the same time encourage women to go back to work – aiming to have 30% of senior positions in all parts of society, by 2020, through improving childcare and parental leave.  But with the amount of pressure on women to be good housewives and stalwarts of the Parent Teachers Association, no amount of improved childcare and leave is going to counteract this or compensate for both parents doing overtime until late at night.

Although the Japanese government can directly change the economy with the first and second arrow of Abenomics, through fiscal and monetary actions, the third arrow of structural reform requires nudging, or even shaming Japanese companies into doing the right thing – legislation alone will be hard to push through and even harder to enforce.  So Abe launched in February the “Nadeshiko” * scheme, recognising firms which are making efforts to improve the working environment for women.

Firms given the Nadeshiko “brand” in February of this year include Kao, Nissan, Fast Retailing (Uniqlo) and Daikin.  The scheme is not the only initiative taking place – various other surveys have been done of best places for women to work and the Hitachi Gender Diversity Day was partly inspired by the President of Hitachi, Hiroaki Nakanishi, declaring recently that the company aims to more than double the number of women managers by 2020.

Other recent surveys have named Benesse (no coincidence that the founder of Benesse is also the founder of J-WIN) as the most career friendly for women and companies such as Toshiba, KDDI, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and NTT have all announced targets for women managers.  The Nikkei group has also jumped on the bandwagon, with a seminar series aimed at aspiring women managers (and even has a magazine “Nikkei Woman” ) and published its ranking last year of best places for women to work, which put foreign companies at the top (IBM Japan, Procter & Gamble) along with 2 life insurance companies, Takashimaya department store, Daiwa Securities, Sony, Panasonic, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ, Fujitsu and Sharp.

* Nadeshiko is a type of pink danthius flower associated with women in Japan. It was adopted as a nickname by the women’s soccer team of Japan on its way to becoming the first Asian team to win the World Cup, in 2011.

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