Mr. Yen

[Michael]

... otherwise known as Professor Eisuke Sakakibara (Aoyama Gakuin University). He has a knack of predicting the Yen/Dollar exchange rate. He's calling for as low as 78 Yen (considering it was 120 3 years ago, and even over 300 back in the 80s - - 78 is LOW).

What's going on? Well, according to supply and demand, the world's center of gravity is moving to Asia (China, Japan and India). Who knows, one day in the future there may even be a common currency between these three nations :shrug:

So? Why in the religion section.

Well, I wonder what that means for the future of monotheism (I was going to say the Three Great monotheisms, except I don't think they're great and there's more than three - Baha'i and Mormons instantly come to mind).


I really wonder what these Asians' future policy regarding religion will be? Unlike the West they still have a (or are still) polytheistic. So, we're not only moving from a Western World to an Eastern one, but also from a Monotheistic dominated world to one that's presently Polytheistic, or at the least, has an open-mind and acceptance of polytheism.


Is it just me or is this shift in the religious center of gravity being overlooked? I can't remember any threads on it? There's a lot of talk about the potential affects Asia will have on future business models, but what about religion? I find Asians have a profoundly different take on religion. They are open-minded, but they are no idiots. Many see monotheism as narrow and restrictive and sometimes even insulting. But, Asians are more easy going, live and let live when it comes to religion as well.

Any ideas?

 

[Lori_7]

i worked for a japanese owned and managed auto parts manufacturer for a couple of years, and i certainly hope their behavior was not representative of asians in general, or of eastern religion.

 

[Michael]

Business-wise, it may have been? I worked for GM and I can say, it seemed like a representative example of why we were loosing out to the Japanese. The funny thing IMO, was that back in my grandfathers' day, I think Americans ran their businesses more like the Japanese do now - hardnosed. Now it seems people no longer care about quality or work ethic. That was my experience at GM. Where I worked we had a meeting one day. The ppm (parts per million that didn't function but were sold anyway) was around 1200. They were hoping to get it down to 900 in a few years. Guess what the ppt at Toyota was? 12-14. THAT'S the difference. We're talking GM was hoping to get down to 900! Shit, no wonder the whole plant closed down and another 15,000 Americans lost their jobs.


That aside, I was just asking an Asian the other day what they thought of Christianity - if there was anything good they liked about it. They said they liked Christmas Holiday. I said, you don't have to be Christian to celebrate a Holiday. Was there anything else?
Nope.

Chinese, Japanese and Indians have been exposed to Christianity for 2000 years. Yet, for the most part, they don't seem to find it appealing? Oh, in China "Western" is in fashion and being a Christian is seen as a rather good way to move up in the world - so some Chinese are becoming Christian (actually more than some but still small percentage wise) in the hopes that whatever it is about the Christian faith that made our societies so successful will rub off on them (individuality maybe?). However, as the East begins to eclipse the West, well, it's my guess things will change on that front - conversions to Christianity being one of them.

One thing I can see happening is a re-invigoration of Buddhism in China and it's export to the West.

 

[Lori_7]

i don't know a lot about buddhism, but one of my brother's best friends is a buddhist, and he's nothing like these people i worked with.

and i know that here in the states we study japanese business models. but i get the impression that the men i worked for hadn't studied a damn thing, business models or buddhism.

they were sexist, racist, browbeating, ass-kissing liars, void of any business or manufacturing knowledge whatsoever, and yet, were the officers and top managers of the company. it was apparent to everyone who worked there that they got their positions for no other reason than they were japanese men, and had kissed the right butt.

and it's one thing to be a figurehead, but these guys actually thought they were magically qualified to micromanage a manufacturing entity, just because they were born male and japanese. they had no respect for the people who actually were educated and qualified to do their jobs, particularly americans, and particularly women.

i remember they hired an adorable japanese american girl, to be a translator and assistant to the president of the company. she seemed very intelligent, professional, and i know she had a degree in accounting. within a couple of days, they had her hemming the pants of a male japanese support staff member at her desk. i walked into their office and saw that and about dropped my coffee. she only lasted about a week before she resigned, but before she did, me and some other ladies took her out for lunch. we asked her if our managers were like all japanese businessmen, and she laughed and said no, that they were the equivalent of japanese rednecks. that was good to know.

there was another japanese woman who worked there for a long time, and she had a phd yet the male managers treated her like shit...had her serve them tea...no kidding. she hated them. and listen to this...this lady was a bit off her rocker too. i don't know, maybe all that pent up anger...but she was volatile, and would yell at people, she slapped one of the production people across the face, she had a sexual harrassment lawsuit against her, and yet they wouldn't fire her. know why? because apparently, the president of our parent company had hired her, and they didn't want to shame him. swear to god, that's how they ran the business.

they were stressed out, emotionally volatile, abusive from the top down, subservient from the bottom up. if they fucked something up (which they did all the time) they would lie straight to your face about it, and didn't care that you knew they were lying. and if you challenged them, they would through temper tantrums and attempt to browbeat you into doing whatever assinine thing they wanted you to do. that's actually why i resigned with severance, because i was the assistant manager of accounting, and my manager, who knew absolutely nothing about accounting, was trying to browbeat me into doing shady things with the books. that, and it's never a good idea to pound your fist on a desk and yell at me to shut up while i'm contributing to a meeting i've been, not invited to, but commanded to drop everything and attend, with no agenda, no preparation...that's how they always called their meetings with the subservients. the man who did that to me dropped over dead from a heart attack a few months after i left the company. that's what you get motherfucker.

they hated americans. they called us "lazy roundeyes". they would actually change out their japanese management staff every few years just because they didn't want them to become "americanized", which hurt the company a lot. it would take the americans four years to try to train and educate one of those egotistical idiots, and then they would haul them back to japan and replace him with another egotistical idiot, and the learning curve just never caught up.

it was a very hostile work environment. i hated it. those assholes made me furious.

 

[Michael]

Wow, I'm shocked that this company could maintain a profit and stay in business! What sort of work was it? While these guys probably were rednecks, your experiences does reflect aspects of Japanese culture (which can be and is insular, nationalistic at times, chauvinistic [although that does seem to be changing honestly] etc...).

The Japanese business model in Japan seems to go like this: There is one Big Brain at the top. He/She does all of the thinking. Everyone else does their one job to the very best of their ability without thinking too much about things outside of that one job. They should concentrate on that one job and how to do it better.

I don't know why, but this seems to work well for many people - a lot of people (IMO) just like to be told what to do and not think to much (safe in the knowledge the Big Brain is keeping them safe).

It's really interesting how we get things done. I have to hire a few people each year and work pretty closely with them - the research they do takes a LOT of training and it's extremely complicated. I've found that being a manager is a bitch and I've become extremely picky in the types of people I hire. I imagine there's a million different way to do things but I feel it just takes two people who work well together to work well together. I've been too nice and hired people that seemed "friendly" and I've also been too picky. I prefer to error on the side of too picky because once you've invested a year into someone, no getting that time back and getting rid of them without a lot of pain ... not easy.

I really don't know what the answer is either. I mean, I have hired people and we work very well professionally and others nadda. meh....

I wonder how those Japanese even got the idea to open a company running in the USA in the first place is beyond me! I wouldn't be able to work there.