Do you know the lyrics to all the tracks on Two Door Cinema Club’s debut album?
No, neither do I, but tens of thousands of young Japanese people do, as I discovered when on my first weekend in Japan I went along to the Summer Sonic Music Festival. Held in the unlikely venue of a convention centre on the outskirts of Tokyo, it attracted hoards of Japanese music fans, and their familiarity with and obvious passion for bands like The Maccabees and Delphic made it abundantly clear why Japan is a major market for UK music.
I first came to Japan in 1985 to study Japanese, and have spent about half of the 25 years since then in the country. I’ve not been back for seven years though, so am interested to see what’s changed since then – beyond the increasing eclecticism of Japanese music tastes.
Well the ferocity of the summer heat hasn’t changed, though thankfully the dress code has relaxed a bit – it’s now acceptable for a businessman to leave off his jacket and tie in meetings – part of the Cool Biz initiative to try to save energy on air conditioning. Tights still seem to be a requirement for women in the office though…
Another very visible sign of change is the proliferation of signs in Chinese and Korean. It’s now common to hear Chinese being spoken on the street and in the subway and shops, and department stores are full of Chinese ladies snapping up the latest cosmetics and fashions. Although China is in some ways seen as a threat for Japan (it was confirmed this month that it would overtake Japan as the world’s second largest economy sometime this year), in others it represents a massive opportunity – to attract tourists, shoppers and students, as an export destination and as a location for manufacturing and joint ventures. It strikes me that there may well be scope for British companies to partner with Japanese companies in parts of East Asia, to take advantage of their growing expertise there – rather as Japanese companies have often benefited in the past from UK expertise in places like the Middle East or Hong Kong.
By contrast, Westerners seem much less in evidence. Maybe it’s because they’re away for the summer, but there has definitely also been some whittling away of staff in the financial sector following the “Lehman shock”, as it’s called here. The collapse of some of the big English language school chains like Nova, formerly big employers of young westerners, has also had an impact. The statistics show a definite decline in the number of young Japanese people wanting to study or work overseas too – one statistic I hear is that whereas 300 Chinese students enrolled at Harvard this year, only one Japanese student did.
There’s a growing recognition that this quiet withdrawal from the outside world is not in Japan’s longer-term interests. As markets at home become saturated, and the labour supply of working age diminishes (already 25 per cent of the population is over 65) the government has launched a new Growth Strategy which aims, among other things, to thicken up exchanges and links with other countries. For example, they want to accept 300,000 foreign students from abroad by 2020. There’s a target to double the number of highly skilled foreign workers in Japan and for 25 million international tourist arrivals by 2020, and a big push to link up with other countries on research into life sciences, smart grids etc. These are all objectives that could offer interesting opportunities for British companies.
So lots to play for British business in the Japanese market. All it takes is a good product or service, a commitment to quality and a bit of patience and hard work. In the words of the Two Door Cinema Club track: “Something Good Can Work”.
Sue Kinoshita
Director, UK Trade & Investment, British Embassy, Japan
1 comment
Comment by caan posted on
Great article i love japan