"Some Thirty, and Some Sixty, and Some An Hundred"
(Good for G.M., Good for Toyota)
From April 1, fiscal 2009 has started in Japan.
Students start to go to new schools and graduates start to work in companies.
Even in TV stations, new programs start and some old ones are terminated. Or some TV personalities are replaced by new ones. Yet, Ms. Hiroko Kuniya is now making her appearance as usual on a notable NHK's TV program, reporting Japanese high-tech industry's strategies.
As NHK is a public broadcasting corporation supported by a Japanese national budget, only sophisticated and decent personalities are allowed to announce news, moderate a discussion program, interview VIPs and ordinary people, or presenting any such a program on NHK channels. Remarkably, in these decades, no one has been able to replace Ms. Kuniya, though nowadays bilingual newscasters and candidates are many around the Japanese TV broadcasting industry.
When she was studying in a university in the U.S. in late 1970's, G.M. must have been so overwhelmingly shining on American streets even in the post-Vietnam era, since Japanese youths then felt so lucky and rapturous to see a Cadillac though such an encounter was rare on a Japanese city road. And, she must not have wished to work in Toyota, a Japanese auto maker which was then not the number one company in Japan for students who were to graduate from schools soon.
And, if a prophet had told her then that G.M. would face real bankruptcy while there would be 300 million consumers in the U.S. 30 years after, she would not have even taken it serious and must have forgotten it instantly.
It was late 1980's when I first saw Mr. Kuniya on TV, but I could not foresee that she would still make a TV appearance for 30 minutes every evening 20 years after, though I felt in those days that she had a hard core in her clean-cut integrity, alienating me from a TV somehow.
Anyway, there is a reason why the U.S. automobile super-manufacturer has to face bankruptcy in the early 21st century.
The key is of course integrity of an entity.
The unbridgeable gap between the management in its headquarters and workforces in its plants must be harming and distorting the G.M.'s integrity for so long.
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Why Toyota Can Finally Take Over the U.S. Car Market
By 24/7 Wall St. Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009
...
Toyota's (TM) share of the U.S. light vehicle market is 18% and Honda's (HMC) is 10%. GM's (GM) share of its home market is about 22%. Fifty-five years ago, the No.1 U.S. car company had 54% of the U.S. market. By this time next year, GM's piece of the American car pie could drop another 50%, bringing it closer to Honda's.
...
Toyota has played a long waiting game. It played well. It made better cars than U.S. companies. It kept labor costs low. It built a reputation for durable and dependable products. The Japanese car company is being hurt by the global car sales downturn, but it never had the labor cost or corporate debt problems that plagued GM. It has the balance sheet to make it through the crisis. Maybe Toyota has been lucky for decades or maybe Toyota was just smart.
...
Whether it is due to wits or good fortune, Toyota will become the No.1 car company in the U.S. sometime in the next year, and an American car operation will never hold that position again.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1888571,00.html
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Toyota has been neither simply lucky nor just smart; the Japanese car maker has been just cautious. In other word, they mind fully psychology of American consumers: how much they are proud of GM or how much they are cool to G.M. Accordingly, it is more a matter of G.M. than of Toyota.
What's more, the U.S. media have not realized how much American consumers respect Japan in these decades.
*** *** *** ***
Twenty years later, Toyota may face real bankruptcy.
You might be reporting it, say, from ABC or CNN.
In addition, you must now know how important integrity is, since it is good for G.M. and Toyota if not so clean-cut.
(L'argent ne fait pas le bonheur. It is so since love is originally not from money.
http://www.countrymidikaraoke.com/duocentury/L%27argent%20ne%20fait%20pas%20le%20bonheur%20(Les%20Parisiennes).kar.mid
Source: http://www.countrymidikaraoke.com/duocentury/)
Mar 4:1 And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land.
Mar 4:2 And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine,
Mar 4:3 Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow:
Mar 4:4 And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up.
Mar 4:5 And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth:
Mar 4:6 But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.
Mar 4:7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.
Mar 4:8 And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred.
Mar 4:9 And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.