Like the nation’s famous cherry blossom trees, business in Japan is opening up after a bleak covid winter. But this time things seem different. John Church reports
Slowdown and lockdown are two words with which we are all too familiar in terms of influence over the past few years, and Japan has been affected by both, but it’s there that the similarity with many other nations ends.
Few nations’ business activities have been so dominated by cultural influences in past decades, and few seem to have evolved so quickly since those two lynchpin words have impacted the global economy.
It would be foolhardy to suggest any radical about-face or restructuring of ideology in a country so well-known for its closed cultural identity and resistance to outside influences that permeates all walks of life, from personal to business practice and even politics.
Yet there is a sense that Japan is at a crossroads, and to progress it has quickly endorsed necessary changes and the mindset to accomplish future growth. A compendium of factors has global investors in unprecedented numbers knocking on Japan’s door – and perhaps for the first time the door is being earnestly left ajar.
“These observations are reasonable,” says Masakazu Iwakura, senior partner at TMI Associates and professor of law at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. “Japan is internationalising its development,” he says. “Businesspeople, particularly, are obliged to change due to the impact of the outbound effect. They must internationalise and they must change – they must not be as they were pre-pandemic.”
Recent trends have seen large companies recruiting and professionalising their teams to international norms, and talent sent abroad for international experience returning to Tokyo boardrooms. Domestic law firms, once poor cousins to the international outfits, are now holding their own on cross-border deals.
Activity inbound and outbound is pulsing as the nation accepts that conditions predetermining future growth have changed in a post-pandemic world that in some ways has reshaped Japan’s business and legal psyche. Laws governing employment fairness and inclusivity continue to evolve apace. So, what is driving Japan on?
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