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Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

bbc.com

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Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#221

Post by samatman »

icebraining wrote: post #163
Danieru wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering it is illegal in the UK and frowned upon by the IRS, it leads me to think you are confusing adoption of children with the adoption of adult men. Note how often these adult men are being adopted along with marrying the daughter of the family. I dare say outside of Japan such an arrangement would be considered weird.

> being adopted along with marrying the daughter of the family. How does that work? They become both husband and brother to the same person?

Yes, with the proviso that everyone understands that it's different and the taboo against incest doesn't kick in.

In practice what it means is that the couple adopts the family name of the wife, not the husband, which is the name associated with the family business that he's taking over.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#222

Post by gibspaulding »

ip26 wrote: post #21
bane wrote: post #18

It's interesting about growing older. I don't know if this is a function of aging or a change in how humanity recons time. When I was younger, a century seemed like forever. Now it's just 1920 and we have film, music, audio, books and so on from that time period readily available. In many ways 1920 doesn't really seem all that far away to me while 1860, 1870, 1880 (a century from when I was a child) seemed to be fore…

When you were in middle school, 1920 was 8 or so lifetimes ago. Now it's closer to only 2-3 lifetimes ago. I'd also reckon you can more easily relate to people who lived with older technology, having lived pre-internet yourself. When you are young, everything just is , and it's hard to relate with living differently.

I think the world has at least in many ways changed a lot less between 1920 and today than in the preceding century, or even the preceding few decades. WW1 did a lot to yank the world into modernity: large scale assembly line industry, women working outside of the house, US interventionism, social welfare (the 30's technically, at least in the US), not to mention the entire modern geo-political landscape all happened, v or at least we're accelerated by the war. Obviously they didn't all happen exclusively in the few years of the war itself, however the few decades surrounding it we're certainly a tumultuous time.

It seems like if you were to graph the pace of change, there would be a hump around the First World War. I think the coming of the information age is creating another hump, but at the same time it seems like so far, surprisingly little has changed as a result of it.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#223

Post by allovernow »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #206
ehnto wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy did I have a comment brewing for you, before I realized you were being sarcastic! There is something refreshing about the feeling of permanence I got when I was in Japan. There is so much old infrastructure that's still working, because it's maintained. In the west, we assume we'll be replacing pretty much everything within 5-10 years so why bother with upkeep, and who cares if it doesn't even function that we…

Pretty negative? Water and sewage infrastructure can last 100 years in the USA. The company that makes commercial pumps for cities is still around, and called upon to recreate 80-year-old pumps to replace ones still in use under New York streets. Our electrical grid is unparalleled in the world. Our phone/internet. These things are not so wonderful in other countries (when they even have them at all). What infrastruc…

>Our electrical grid is unparalleled in the world

Our electrical grid is actually in a terrible state[0], and allegedly just one solar storm away from total failure. Our ancient power lines regularly cause forest fires and power companies don't seem to be held accountable.

Some 9.1% of bridges in the U.S. are in a dangerous state of disrepair[1]. Most major cities in the U.S. are known for having terrible roads under constant maintenance (not sure how roads in dense cities fair in other nations, but things seemed much more efficient in Korea).

It's pretty bad all around [2] and honestly I don't understand why no recent president has committed to a massive infrastructure project. It would likely have bipartisan support, create millions of semi-permanent, semi-technical jobs across the country, and simultaneously act as a public welfare project and a very much needed modernization/repair effort with people being paid to perform necessary work on massive scale. Not to get political, but it's one of the few things I like about Bernie, since he's at least mentioned such a commitment.

0.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-electrical-gri...

1. https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/

2. https://www.businessinsider.com/asce-gives-us-infrastructure...

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#224

Post by [deleted] »

ehnto wrote: post #202
johnklos wrote: post #191

(Slightly, but not completely sarcastic) They've learned plenty from the United States, but they haven't learned that in order to succeed, others must fail. They should be trying harder to make these businesses succeed hard or fail. After all, life isn't about living - it's about how much we can accumulate at the cost of others. They should also learn the Unites Statesian way of "going out of business" for the purpos…

Oh boy did I have a comment brewing for you, before I realized you were being sarcastic! There is something refreshing about the feeling of permanence I got when I was in Japan. There is so much old infrastructure that's still working, because it's maintained. In the west, we assume we'll be replacing pretty much everything within 5-10 years so why bother with upkeep, and who cares if it doesn't even function that we…

[deleted]

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#225

Post by kyuudou »

ilikeathechacha wrote: post #215
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live in CA, so local news there doesn't get very far.

Well then it’s good I offered three major incidents, two outside of California, that received worldwide attention, but thanks for the detailed engagement on my point. The California power grid fires were on the television in a pub in northern England last time I was there, not to put too fine a point on it. Speaking of, you should visit Europe and get back to me on infrastructure, especially continental transit. I’m…

But, our military needs to occupy Afghanistan for 18+ years! Minor bridge collapses should not faze your patriotism, citizen!

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#226

Post by novok »

exhaze wrote: post #197
johnklos wrote: post #191

(Slightly, but not completely sarcastic) They've learned plenty from the United States, but they haven't learned that in order to succeed, others must fail. They should be trying harder to make these businesses succeed hard or fail. After all, life isn't about living - it's about how much we can accumulate at the cost of others. They should also learn the Unites Statesian way of "going out of business" for the purpos…

PS Happy to answers any questions about Tokyo life as an engineer/entrepreneur, just reply to my comment. I get where you're coming from, but you can make the same one-sided joke post about Americans. Having done both... - started YC backed startup while in SF and worked at Uber for 4 years - in Tokyo for the past 2 years I honestly think that the outcomes here in Tokyo are much better than in SF. Yes, incomes are lo…

What kind of company move did you make to tokyo? Work at Google and then do a transfer or a Japanese startup?

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#227

Post by oblio »

mrleiter wrote: post #137
bump64 wrote: post #128

Another point I want to mention is that Japan was never invaded on its own territory by a foreign power and it wasn't ruled or politically influenced by outsiders for many centuries. This helps a lot to build and preserve a business. On the contrary if you take the Balkans in Europe every few centuries the ruling power changed. First was the Roman Empire, then the Byzantine Empire, Bulgarian Empire, many other nation…

It was hit by two atomic bombs.

This is always a dangerous game played on a slipper slope, but Japan had casualties of about 3-4% in WW2. Including the nukes!

Yugoslavia, who basically nobody cared about, had casualties of 7-10% in WW2.

Big, relevant nations are highlighted way more than the little guys.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#228

Post by ghaff »

cbg0 wrote: post #100
reustle wrote: post #99

If I own a reasonably successful business, and want the prestige / vanity of something like "Since 1953", could I buy a small / failing business in some small town and merge the companies? Would my company now technically be running since 1953? I have companies in both Japan and the US. It's a fun though experiment at the very least. I don't think I'd ever execute on something like this, but a software development ag…

Sure, but brand recognition is still much more important than the founding date.

Brand recognition cuts both ways. Sometimes companies deliberately sunset their brand. For example, Foot Locker today is actually a successor corporation to Woolworth which was an example of what used to be called five and dime stores.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#229

Post by samatman »

2038AD wrote: post #110
gumby wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another fun fact: the oldest monarchy in the world was also founded by a Korean immigrant https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/world/japan-rediscovers-i...

As far as I can tell you've misread the article. The grandmother of one of the emperors may have been Korean but the first (non-legendary) emperor was Jimmu who was born in Japan. I'm also a little wary of that article since it says "Yamato is the name of the family that founded Japan's imperial line" when Yamato is the word used for the ethnic group to which most Japanese belong. I'm wondering if there's a link here…

Yamato is also the family name of the Japanese Imperial family.

These facts are directly related, through the Yamato region, from which the Yamato family ruled for some centuries.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#230

Post by umvi »

exhaze wrote: post #197
johnklos wrote: post #191

(Slightly, but not completely sarcastic) They've learned plenty from the United States, but they haven't learned that in order to succeed, others must fail. They should be trying harder to make these businesses succeed hard or fail. After all, life isn't about living - it's about how much we can accumulate at the cost of others. They should also learn the Unites Statesian way of "going out of business" for the purpos…

PS Happy to answers any questions about Tokyo life as an engineer/entrepreneur, just reply to my comment. I get where you're coming from, but you can make the same one-sided joke post about Americans. Having done both... - started YC backed startup while in SF and worked at Uber for 4 years - in Tokyo for the past 2 years I honestly think that the outcomes here in Tokyo are much better than in SF. Yes, incomes are lo…

Is it true Japanese companies pay software engineers peanuts compared to USA? How much Japanese do you need to speak to get by?
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