
Japanese-Style Entrepreneurship: An Interview with Softbank’S CEO - doppp
https://hbr.org/1992/01/japanese-style-entrepreneurship-an-interview-with-softbanks-ceo-masayoshi-son
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loupeabody
Pretty blown away by the fact that he graduated high school in two weeks just
after learning English.

Don't know if that's a reflection of the American or Japanese public education
system in 1992, or just Masayoshi's raw intellect.

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adamzerner
I didn't read the article because it required a subscription for me, but I
feel pretty confident that he already had a lot of the knowledge. Because the
alternative is that he didn't have the knowledge, and actually learned 4 years
of information in 2 weeks, which seems crazy even for people with the highest
aptitudes.

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deciplex
Note that the article is from 1992.

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papriwalprateek
Yes, I was shocked to see Masayoshi Son's age as 34!

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honest_joe
And it is not japanese but korean. He is zainichi.

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curiousjorge
why do Japanese people love to point this out? I'm assuming you are Japanese
given your peculiar style of broken English grammar unique to Japanese and
your overall negative past comments on HN towards China and Korea in
particular. It's like saying "Michael Jackson. It is not american but
african." (in your own words). There's always this undertone of contempt and
jealousy from some Japanese users whenever anything Korean is mentioned. Just
take a look at youtube comments. Some Japanese folks are now posting under
terribly inaccurate American names or worse pretending to be Korean and
posting really weird shit.

Zainichi Koreans have suffered racism and long period of oppression. They are
far removed from Korean culture, it's the fact that Japan doesn't give
citizenship to what it considers impure blood yet at the same time, if you are
half Japanese, you are eligible. What does this say about Japanese society?
There's a deep rooted institutional level of racism. I'm sure those that have
lived in Japan will know of this ceiling.

What's remarkable about Masayoshi is that despite the odds being against him,
he pulled so far ahead of what an average Japanese could achieve. One of his
earliest childhood adversity is some Japanese kid threw a rock at him for
being Korean yet with no repercussions for such hate crimes.

Looking at Japan, celebrities and businessman of Korean descent but nowhere
are they considered to be Korean in Korea unless they speak the language and
appear on Korean variety shows (like Korean-Japanese UFC fighter and Judo
master Yoshihiro Akiyama), and they seem to be treated like shit in Japan.
It's no surprise that even Yakuza membership have lot of Koreans given the
poor level of opportunities available to them in Japan.

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deciplex
> _it 's the fact that Japan doesn't give citizenship to what it considers
> impure blood_

Okay, so Japanese treat Zainichi like shit. I'm not going to argue that,
because it's obvious. But what you're saying here has not been true for
_decades_. There is a path to Japanese citizenship for every Zainichi living
in Japan, should they choose to take it, and it is no more or less onerous for
them than it is for anyone else.

That is not to say that Zainichi have it easy in Japan today. They do not. But
this isn't the first time I've read even on HN, that the Japanese government
keeps Zainichi in some sort of permanent nationality limbo, and this is simply
not the case. Japan does require renouncing your current citizenship as part
of the path to Japanese citizenship, but they are not the only nation to do
this, and it is certainly not something they require _only_ of Zainichi.

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jotm
They really glance over the fact that he had patented inventions, connections
and quite a bit of money made before going back to Japan and starting
Softbank. Still, good story...

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curiousjorge
I have no doubts in the entrepreneurial abilities from Japan but one questions
if maybe, there's a limit to it seeing that so many past American acquisitions
by Japanese buyers have been nothing short of horrible. Recall that Masayoshi
bought Sprint and it's now less than half what he original paid for which was
close to 30 billion as I remember. More recently the acquistion of Financial
Times by Nikkei for over a billion dollars (during times of declining
subscription and falling ad revenues, washington post was 5 bought for times
less to Bezos). There are so many other poor acquisition strategies coming out
of Japan, I can't help but question if there's some inherent flaw to Japanese
thinking at least when it comes to market stategies. They almost certainly pay
a huge premium for no good reason, and are unable to spruce it up, either due
to incompatible culture or god knows what. California Golf, Docomo, Lehman
Brothers in 2008 by Nomura Securities (which have wiped out it's own shares),
there's quite a list of acquisitions that have proven to be disastrous for
these Japanese firms.

