The thought of Japan makes me nostalgic. I used to visit once or twice a year when I worked at Oxford University Press. We had two companies there, TOPELL which sold English Language Teaching books and TOPMAST which sold the rest (you can puzzle out the acronyms for yourself). I was a director of TOPMAST. The nostalgia comes not just from fond memories of a wonderful country but from a time when publishers could make money from a rich and vibrant economy. Our standard discount to retailers was 25% (30% for very large orders). There were no returns whatsoever. Orders were substantial, placed in good time and the quantities ordered were meant to keep the book available for several years (rather than several hours as in much of the UK today). Accounts were paid absolutely on time. Business courtesy was everything. The ethics of business remain the same. It says a lot about a culture when the two owners of a major book importer committed suicide recently because they could not meet their financial obligations. However, the market is not what it was. A combination of demographics, economic slow-down and regional shifts have all served to push Japan down the league of publishing hotspots.

But books still appear and one of our directors, Richard Nathan, has just published a new edition of his Frequently Asked Questions about Corporate Japan and I attach his notes about it:

The new revised edition was published on the 28^th of August by Kondansha (http://www.kodansha-intl.com) eight years after the first edition, which sold more than 17,000 copies after six re-printings. The first edition also came out in audio format and believe it or not was licensed to Microsoft for use in research they were conducting on translation software. Apparently, according to the Microsoft boffins, the Japanese-English bilingual structured format was ideal for computers to try to mimic. I doubt the research came to much and I haven’t noticed any improvement in translation software or seen a Microsoft branded product like the Babel Fish in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but you never know it might just be round the corner!

Many of the original questions in the book came from the mouths of visiting Macmillan executives to Japan when I was based in Tokyo. Such as “Why do Japanese businessmen exchange business cards so often?”; “How are annual pay rises negotiated in Japan?” and “Is sexual harassment a problem at Japanese companies?”  Not sure why they asked the last question, but we did have some pretty faces in the office.

It is quite amazing how much Japan has changed over the last 8 years. For example, the finance and banking industry has been completed restructured. In the early 1990s there were 23 major banks including retail banks, long-term credit banks, and trust banks in Japan, but this number has now fallen to 8, and three groups now dominate the market. The largest bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (http://www.mufg.jp/english) which has the rather odd slogan “Quality For You“ is now the world’s largest bank and manages a staggering 40 million accounts. It doesn’t compare well to US and European banks in terms of profits. Nevertheless, it is still amazing how much has changed since the last edition of the book.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that Maruzen (http://www.maruzen.co.jp/home-eng) is still the oldest surviving company listed on the stock exchange in Japan, despite all the changes and disruption to traditional publishing activities in Japan following the collapse of the economic bubble and the entry of Amazon and others into the Japanese market. Maruzen was founded in 1869, the same year that Macmillan published the first edition of Nature (www.nature.com) and today Maruzen sells print and online editions of Nature to universities and libraries across Japan. In its early years Maruzen imported and sold Burberry rain coats and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The book (ISBN4-7700-4035-0) is available from Amazon Japan at: www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4770040350/sr=1-2/qid=1156779250/ref=sr_1_2/250-0114605-6236240?ie=UTF8&s=books and probably at all good bookstore in Japan including Maruzen.