Corruption, dead bodies, Yakuza… Sounds like a movie
Al Lewis, a columnist for The Denver Post Newspaper has published an article that has some stunning allegations that the Japanese mafia (Yakuza) are quietly running the mortuary businesses in Japan.
John Kamm, a gaijin working in the mortuary business in Japan, has made some fairly volatile announcements about the real world of “dead business”. What is most shocking, perhaps stupid, is that the article leads us to believe that Mister Kamm is going up against the yakuza and trying to change the way business is done.
Look, let me be honest. Mister Kamm, you’re a gaijin, a foreigner in a country where 70% of the people don’t hate the fact that your there in the first place. I cannot think of one foreigner who tried to change the way business was done in Japan (post war mind you) and was successful. Howard Stringer of Sony Corp is the closest that comes to mind.
But you’re one guy going up against the Yakuza. And in my limited experience, you have a better chance of ending up a client of your companies then keeping your company afloat. At any rate it’s an excellent article. Read it HERE.
“I cannot think of one foreigner who tried to change the way business was done in Japan (post war mind you) and was successful.”
perhaps Carlos Ghosn CEO of Nissan?
January 14th, 2007 at 5:53 amBen, good post. In my opinion Carlos didn’t change the way business was done in Japan at all. He did however bring credability to non-Japanese people running Japanese companies and proved that we could do it.
He is also known as the man with 10,000 jobs losses on his hands after he cut spending so much that something like 1/5th of Nissan employees lost their jobs.
January 14th, 2007 at 6:08 am