“He often said that it was impossible to separate business from politics or vice versa.”

Paul Adirex, Until the Karma Ends

“Japan is not a Western industrial state; it is organized quite differently. And the Japanese have invented a new kind of trade – adversarial trade, trade like war, trade intended to wipe out the competition – which America has failed to understand for several decades.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Since 1987, there have been a hundred and eighty American high-tech and electronics companies bought by the Japanese.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“You know, if you wanted to buy a Japanese company, you couldn’t do it. The people in the company would consider it shameful to be taken over by foreigners. It would be a disgrace. They would never allow it.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“The Japanese are masters of the smear job.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“In the last twenty years, Japan cut the energy cost of finished goods by sixty percent. America has done nothing. Japan can now make goods cheaper than we can, because Japan has pushed investment in energy-efficient technology. Conservation is competitive.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“The Japanese can be tough. They say ‘business is war,’ and they mean it. You know how Japan is always telling us that their markets are open. Well, in the old days, if a Japanese bought an American car, he got audited by the government. So pretty soon, nobody bought an American car. The officials shrug: what can they do? Their market is open: they can’t help it if nobody wants an American car. The obstructions are endless. Every imported car has to be individually tested on the dock to make sure it complies with exhaust-emission law. Foreign drugs can only be tested in Japanese laboratories on Japanese nationals. Foreign skis were once banned because Japanese snow was said to be wetter than European and American snow.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“All’s fair in love and war, and the Japanese see business as war. Bribery is fine, if you can manage it.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“In American organizations it’s all about who fucked up. Whose head will roll. In Japanese organizations it’s about what’s fucked up, and how to fix it. Nobody gets blamed. Their way is better.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“A Japanese organization simply cannot move fast in a new situation.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Japanese organizations are actually very slow to respond in a crisis. Their decision-making relies on precedents, and when a situation is unprecedented, people are uncertain how to behave.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Business is war.”

Japanese saying

“If everybody minded their own business the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“Business is their national sport, and, like most national sports, semi-sacred.”

John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes