Japan, every mention
183 scenes · ← back to Japan
tap a year for its mentions
every year anyone David Rosenthal 101Ben Gilbert 52Howard Schultz 11Sam Bankman-Fried 6Packy McCormick 4Ben Thompson 2Steve Ballmer 1Mitch Lasky 1Michael Ovitz 1Doug DeMuro 1
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Japan comes up
Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired
- ▶ 3:08:04 David Rosenthal I remembered this from the research when I went back and looked at it to start streaming Seattle Mariners games to Japan.
- ▶ 3:08:11 David Rosenthal Because Ichiro had come to MLB and was a phenomenon back in Japan.
- ▶ 3:08:29 David Rosenthal Japan and Ichiro.
- ▶ 4:17:16 Ben Gilbert Japan would not let it.
The Walt Disney Company: The most successful enterprise for monetizing human nostalgia (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 4:16:45 David Rosenthal It was the Disney license for the playing cards in Japan that kicked off modern Nintendo.
Formula 1: Fast cars, celebrities, and B2B software (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:29:38 David Rosenthal Well, it turns out that before the Honda engineers got pulled away back to Japan, they had come up with a new aerodynamic innovation called the double diffuser.
10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:39:14 David Rosenthal So gambling was illegal in Japan, uh, after the Meiji Restoration.
- ▶ 1:39:18 David Rosenthal And so they made Hanafuda cards, which are cards in Japan, and the Yakuza was the main customer.
Trader Joe’s: Hawaiian shirts and counter positioning (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 8:38 David Rosenthal In the seventies, the Southland Corporation franchised the seven-eleven concept to a company in Japan, a supermarket chain there.
- ▶ 8:47 David Rosenthal It became so successful in Japan and seven-elevens in Japan are like so deeply part of the Japanese culture that in the nineties, seven-eleven Japan bought out the seven-eleven parrot and now own the company.
- ▶ 2:03:20 Ben Gilbert The Japanese trading company is a little bit of a twist, but.
The Steve Ballmer Interview · Acquired
- ▶ 12:41 Steve Ballmer There was kind of a famous meeting amongst me and Paul, uh, and Bill and this guy, Kazuhiko Nishi, who ran our kind of affiliate in Japan.
Indian Premier League Cricket (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 7:18 David Rosenthal Yeah, the industrial structure in India, at least to date, seems to be more like South Korea or Japan, the big conglomerates.
- ▶ 4:10:51 David Rosenthal But it's still very, very strong and vibrant in Japan and South Korea.
- ▶ 4:11:01 David Rosenthal I mean, man, Shohei is a very valuable commodity, both in terms of playing on the field and the market that he generates in Japan.
Rolex (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:38:02 Ben Gilbert They organize these trips to South America, the West Indies, China, Japan.
- ▶ 2:47:27 Ben Gilbert He lived the quartz crisis firsthand and was flying around to Geneva and Taiwan and Japan and reporting on it live.
- ▶ 2:51:22 Ben Gilbert Well, we all think of like, oh, quartz comes from Japan and Seiko, and then that was this huge disruption of the switch watch industry.
- ▶ 2:54:43 Ben Gilbert So over to Japan, the Seiko Astron is launched in 1969.
- ▶ 2:56:05 Ben Gilbert So here's how the quartz revolution went, and the Japanese sort of think of it as the quartz revolution.
- ▶ 2:58:24 Ben Gilbert This was the thing that the Japanese did first in 1969.
- ▶ 2:58:41 Ben Gilbert Seiko, Citizen, and later Casio were extremely successful, for a time, making these out of Japan.
- ▶ 2:59:27 Ben Gilbert By 1981, the next year, Japanese watch exports surpass Switzerland.
- ▶ 2:59:40 Ben Gilbert And then, 1985, just four years after Japan meets Switzerland, Japan's exports are three X Switzerland.
TSMC · Acquired
- ▶ 1:08:00 Ben Gilbert So, more historically, you've got LAM Research, you've got Applied Materials in the US, you've got Tokyo Electron in Japan,
- ▶ 2:01:57 Ben Gilbert But they're also starting a fab in Japan that came out on their last earnings call.
Mars Inc. - The Chocolate Story (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:55:43 David Rosenthal The brothers take them to Japan, China, Russia, the Middle East, South America.
IKEA (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:34:30 Ben Gilbert In the seventies, they opened in Japan, Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
- ▶ 1:34:37 Ben Gilbert In 75, they entered Japan for the first time.
- ▶ 1:35:21 Ben Gilbert In these dense urban areas in Japan, that's not really possible, and so they pull out after 12 years.
- ▶ 1:35:27 Ben Gilbert They did eventually go back in in 2006 and make a bunch of changes to make it work today, but I think Japan was kind of this, after they saw success in all these other markets, it was a little bit of humble pie.
- ▶ 1:35:45 David Rosenthal It is amazing in the seventies, really until they go to Japan laughing using the word, uh, well, we'll come back to another reason why I shouldn't be laughing using the word.
Starbucks (with Howard Schultz) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:29:06 Ben Gilbert So, I love the Japan story.
- ▶ 1:29:47 Howard Schultz And then, uh, we, we narrowed our focus very quickly on Japan.
- ▶ 1:29:54 Howard Schultz Japan had a couple of thousand coffee stores named Dotur.
- ▶ 1:30:06 Howard Schultz And so I said to the board, we want to go to Japan.
- ▶ 1:31:03 Howard Schultz No one in Japan will ever walk in the street with a cup of coffee, they would lose face.
- ▶ 1:31:30 Howard Schultz And then one day we get a handwritten letter from a Japanese company and the founder of the company, Yuji-san had a LA restaurant and he was enamored with Starbucks.
- ▶ 1:31:58 Howard Schultz We go to Tokyo, we meet him, we ended up forming a JV, and you know, the folklore at Starbucks, which is not that unrealistic, is the reason we went to Japan as an international market is because it had direct flight to Seattle.
- ▶ 1:33:45 Howard Schultz And Japan was a extraordinary success from minute one.
- ▶ 1:34:03 Howard Schultz No, the coffee, no, it was the iconic reputation and anticipation of something that they had convinced themselves was unique, proprietary, not in Tokyo, not in Japan, that they wanted to have.
- ▶ 1:35:00 David Rosenthal You know, Japan was Microsoft's first international market.
- ▶ 1:35:07 David Rosenthal Bill and Paul got a cold call from Kei Nishi, who was a guy in Japan who had somehow gotten a hold of the basic interpreter, loved it, and said, I'm so passionate about this, I want to bring it to Japan.
- ▶ 1:37:33 Ben Gilbert So, Japan's 96.
- ▶ 1:38:24 Howard Schultz And so, Japan was a partner, successful.
- ▶ 2:14:01 Howard Schultz The biggest magic and what, you know, the lightning in the bottle is when you go to Japan or Shanghai or Malaysia and you see the culture
- ▶ 2:55:58 Howard Schultz But we never, we, we, you know, Japan was the turning point of thinking we could build an international business, but we, we, none of us had any international experience.
Microsoft Volume I: The Complete History and Strategy of founding through Windows 95 (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:16:59 Ben Gilbert Let's open in Japan and become an international company.
- ▶ 1:17:05 David Rosenthal Bill gets a call from a guy named Kazuhiro Nishi or Kei Nishi, who's a computer enthusiast in Japan, has gotten a hold of Microsoft Basic, totally shares the same vision as Bill and Paul.
- ▶ 1:17:24 David Rosenthal He's like, I'm going to bring you guys to Japan.
- ▶ 1:17:29 David Rosenthal They agree that Kei will become Microsoft's exclusive distribution partner in Japan.
- ▶ 1:17:35 David Rosenthal And by the next year, in 1979, half of Microsoft's revenue is coming from Japan, which is wild.
Hermès (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:44:16 Ben Gilbert Like, they can go to America, and then they will observe the rise of Japan, and then they'll go to Japan in the nineties and 2000.
- ▶ 2:20:19 David Rosenthal And I think, actually, the best story that illustrates this is one that the family members themselves do not tell, but that you'll hear out there in the lore about Hermes, which is that in, uh, I believe it was in Japan, they had a…
- ▶ 2:20:50 David Rosenthal And Hermes is selling a canvas beach bag in Japan, and it is flying off the shelves selling like hotcakes.
- ▶ 2:22:39 Ben Gilbert A canvas beach bag in Japan?
- ▶ 3:11:13 Ben Gilbert At that point in time, Japan represented 27% of sales.
- ▶ 3:11:22 Ben Gilbert Japan was that in the early 2000.
- ▶ 3:11:26 Ben Gilbert Japan was one and a half times France in terms of sales for Hermes.
- ▶ 3:11:37 Ben Gilbert So we talked about Japan being 27% of sales.
- ▶ 3:11:41 Ben Gilbert Outside of Japan was only 17%.
- ▶ 3:11:47 Ben Gilbert Japan was almost one and a half times as large as rest of Asia.
- ▶ 3:11:55 Ben Gilbert Half of Hermes' business is Asia excluding Japan.
- ▶ 3:12:08 David Rosenthal The Japan story actually, I think, is still significant.
- ▶ 3:12:12 David Rosenthal Japan today is what, like, 10% of revenue?
- ▶ 3:12:15 Ben Gilbert Yeah, Japan's larger than France.
- ▶ 3:12:17 Ben Gilbert It's nine percent in France, 10% in Japan.
- ▶ 3:12:26 David Rosenthal But on a per capita basis, Japan buys twice as much Hermes as China.
- ▶ 3:12:34 David Rosenthal Japan is, I believe, around a 10th of the size of China, and is 10% of Hermes sales versus 48% for rest of Asia.
- ▶ 4:07:07 David Rosenthal Jenny has negative interest in football, but she's telling me about, like, what Taylor is wearing, you know, whether she's gonna be able to make it back from Japan from the Super Bowl.
Novo Nordisk (Ozempic) · Acquired
- ▶ 3:38:48 Ben Gilbert And Japan, and so parts of it are in French, parts of it are in Japanese, and parts of it are in English, and so you have to read subtitles for the majority of it, but it is a beautiful story about wine and family and love, and it's got…
Holiday Special 2023 (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:28:22 David Rosenthal For people who don't know about these, and I think this is probably most of the world outside of Japan,
- ▶ 1:29:09 David Rosenthal It's a Japanese company.
- ▶ 1:29:11 David Rosenthal Everybody in Japan has one of these things.
Visa (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:26:11 David Rosenthal And it wasn't just Barclays in the UK, it was Sumitomo Bank in Japan, it was other banks throughout Europe, it was Canada, it was Latin America.
- ▶ 1:26:42 David Rosenthal I'll pick Sumitomo Bank in Japan.
- ▶ 1:53:15 David Rosenthal Imagine you're trying to buy something in Japan, and the Japanese merchant bank calls your cardholder bank back in America.
Charlie Munger (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 30:37 Andrew Marks There's been a lot of discussion about Berkshire's investments in the Japanese trading houses.
- ▶ 30:58 Charlie Munger The interest rates in Japan were half a percent per year for 10 years.
Costco (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:34:23 David Rosenthal That they could clear across all the countries that they were operating in and planning to operate in, and so Kirkland Signature, like, that works in Japan, that works in Korea, that works in Taiwan.
- ▶ 1:38:17 David Rosenthal So first they go to the UK, then they go to Korea, to Taiwan, to Japan, ultimately China, which is now a big initiative for them.
- ▶ 1:38:34 David Rosenthal Global or globally aspiring retailers that were entering Asian markets, because it's not exactly obvious that a huge warehouse with bulk packaging would work in cultures like, say, Japan, where people live in tightly packed, dense urban…
Nike (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 12:26 David Rosenthal Leica was the most famous camera brand, and then at this point in time in the fifties and sixties, the Japanese are starting to enter the market.
- ▶ 14:36 David Rosenthal So, Phil Knight's thesis here, it actually didn't get any sort of notice or praise famously from his classmates, or even really from the faculty, because they're like, okay, this is a good idea to apply Japanese low ed disruption to the…
- ▶ 17:41 David Rosenthal Phil, though, goes on to Japan, and he's still thinking about this idea.
- ▶ 17:45 David Rosenthal And when he's in Japan, he starts going to tracks in Tokyo and watching what people are wearing running around the tracks, and he observes, and he decides that the Tiger brand shoes that he's seeing are the best.
- ▶ 18:02 David Rosenthal Turns out they're made by a company called Onitsuka, which is based in Kobe in the south of Japan near Osaka.
- ▶ 24:23 David Rosenthal Back in Portland and asked him to wire 50 dollars to the Onitsuka Corporation of Japan for purchasing these samples.
- ▶ 34:48 Ben Gilbert You have to pay to import these shoes from Japan.
- ▶ 53:55 David Rosenthal They're selling out of the Cortez's literally as fast as they can get them off the boats from Japan.
- ▶ 1:02:02 David Rosenthal How he had never heard of Japanese trading companies before then, given the amount of business he was doing in Japan, is crazy.
- ▶ 1:04:09 David Rosenthal These are enormous companies, and especially in the seventies, as Japan was really rising, we told the story on the Sony episode,
- ▶ 1:05:49 Ben Gilbert Well, the first thing you have to know is Nisho knows Japanese manufacturers, and so they start asking Phil Knight questions like, well, who do you work with in Japan?
- ▶ 1:07:04 David Rosenthal Nisho's gonna say, hey, we'll introduce you to manufacturers, to factories here in Japan.
- ▶ 1:14:43 David Rosenthal Is waiting on spinning up the Japanese factory relationships with Nisho Iwai.
- ▶ 1:24:10 David Rosenthal Two, Nisho will help Blue Ribbon set up direct manufacturing relationships in Japan, which they do.
- ▶ 1:26:14 David Rosenthal So once this is all in place, Phil goes over to Japan and works with Nisho, goes, visits lots of factories,
- ▶ 1:28:19 David Rosenthal And by the end of this trip, Phil and Blue Ribbon Sports has a whole new line of athletic shoe models coming out of Japan with a much better relationship, solid financing, and a brand new brand to show it all off.
- ▶ 1:42:21 David Rosenthal At first, this, of course, is in Japan with Nippon Rubber.
- ▶ 1:42:24 David Rosenthal But as we were saying, Japan is coming up in the global economy, and right around this time, Nixon cuts the dollar pegged to the yen loose, and the yen starts floating against the dollar.
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