Those Weren't the Days, My Friend

by John Boyd

Just before I graduated with an Asian Studies degree from Sophia University's International Campus in Tokyo in 1978, the college arranged for a US Embassy official of long-standing experience in Japan to come and speak to the non-Japanese graduating students on job prospects in Japan. What he had to tell us was stark and disheartening.

Just three ways to get ahead
Other than serendipity and becoming a missionary, reported the embassy official, there were only three realistic possibilities of finding gainful full-time employment in Japan (work in dubious nightclubs not included).

The simplest way was to get hired teaching English at any of the hundreds of foreign-language schools that were blooming like cherry blossoms throughout Japan. Unfortunately, many of these establishments were prone to disappear almost as quickly as the pink petals.

The second way - a difficult, long-term prospect that required careful thought, planning, and dedication, stressed the official - was to head back home to the United States, Europe, or wherever, and find employment with a company that conducted major business operations in Japan. The idea here was that after working a number of years in the right department, and developing the right connections, you would then (hopefully) have proven your worth and be able to wangle a transfer to Japan. A risky long-shot, but if you succeeded a fat ex-pat contract and the chance to live in one of those luxurious apartments in Hiroo or Azabu quite likely awaited you. Ahhh!

The third possibility was finding work with the CIA! Not wearing a cloak and dagger, the official hastened to add, but rather using an electronic calculator (no sophisticated PCs then) to compile the Mt. Fuji-like proportions of economic data and statistics the CIA produces every year on foreign countries, particularly Japan.

The end of an era
Such was the job scene for most foreign graduates in the 1970s and on into the '80s. Remember, this was the era of the "Japanese economic animal." An export-driven Japan Inc., unconvinced of its own industrial might, was determined to protect its home markets from "disruptive imports," even to the point of hurting its own consumers and its reputation as a mature nation.

Imported ski equipment was blocked because Japanese snow was "different." Foreign beef was unfit for Japanese consumers because they had longer intestines (the Japanese, not the cattle). Importing US modems was frowned upon because their nonapproved components might cause NTT's phone infrastructure to go haywire. And foreign semiconductors were shunned - probably because the silicon was doped and full of holes.

But gradually, things began to loosen up. Intense US government pressure to open markets, the forced revaluation of the yen from an artificially low JPY 360 per US dollar, and Japanese industry's growing self-confidence in its own remarkable strength all helped to bring about changes in the 1980s.

IT markets open up
One of the first industries to be opened to foreign competition was computers. All quotas and tariffs on computers and software were removed, since by the 1980s MITI (the Ministry of International Trade and Industry) had accomplished its goal of working with domestic computer manufacturers to create a competitive indigenous industry - the only one in the world to seriously challenge the US. IBM had been dethroned by Fujitsu as the country's largest computer manufacturer, and NEC had ousted Apple, Tandy (then Radio Shack), and Commodore, the three American computerteers, from their 1970s' table-topping position in Japan's fledgling PC industry.

But it took the ascendancy of the PC over the mainframe to really open up the market to foreign entrepreneurs and IT startups. Particularly important was the success of IBM Japan in getting the industry to support the PC/AT international standard through its pioneering work with DOS/V and the Open Architecture Developers' Group. More recently, the introduction of Microsoft's Windows 95, along with the Internet boom, has helped further uncap a veritable whirlwind of foreign entrepreneurial energy.

Today, you can find successful foreign-led IT firms in consulting and market research, maintenance and support, software and hardware marketing and sales, systems and network integration, software development, IT training and education, and Internet access and Web design. There is even an individual (me) eking out a living by writing about the industry. And Terrie Lloyd, the publisher of Computing Japan, has founded three successful IT companies since 1988, and plans to spin off others over the next several years.

Most of these opportunities weren't even a dream 19 years ago, when the US embassy official spoke of meager employment opportunities here. This makes me wonder what he would think today - and where we might be 19 years hence.