How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
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Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#2Nakanishi was opposed to treating corporate identity as just a logo and a logotype; instead, he created a framework splitting it into three layers. MI, or Mind Identity, is the philosophy, values, and vision behind a company. BI, or Behavior Identity, is how the company and its people act in the world — the kind of service they provide. And VI, or Visual Identity, is the visual expression of how the mind and behavior identities are manifested.
A nice framework for all types of communications.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#3A factor not mentioned is Japan's cultural sense of duty and honour. I don't think employees in the West generally feel such dedication or perfectionism towards their company but in Japan it helped make all these efficient and meticulous changes possible, and avoids issues of privatisation like neglecting maintenance / short term profit maximisation.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#4I've always thought the JR logo looked like 駅, the kanji for “train station”, and assumed it was deliberate. Perhaps that was a factor in them settling on the JR name?
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#5A factor not mentioned is Japan's cultural sense of duty and honour. I don't think employees in the West generally feel such dedication or perfectionism towards their company but in Japan it helped make all these efficient and meticulous changes possible, and avoids issues of privatisation like neglecting maintenance / short term profit maximisation.
In the west the employee / employer social contract died sometime in the 80s. It's rare, especially in tech, to have employees with decades of tenure. You see Microsoft trying to buyout older employees recently.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#6Here a link to the best recent HN-featured long-form article on Japan rail network. Probably spent more time with this than any other item posted here in months.
“Why Japan has such good railways”
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#7Reading this article, I get the feeling that a nationally inefficient infrastructure is made to be perceived as a stable one through a single JR mark. Privatization forces people to bear inefficient and high train costs due to misguided policies, but the value of a well-designed brand logo and branding offsets all of that. Looking at the content of the article itself, there are some unsettling points, the dissolution of the national railway, the split into companies, and regional profitability gaps. In other words, that signals regional inequality within Japan. It seems like the question is how the dismantled national railway, broken up for the benefit of traditional construction companies, can be perceived as stable through a single brand. I always think that it's not always the good ones that win; even if it's inefficient, you can learn a lot from how you brand it. It's a good article
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#8A factor not mentioned is Japan's cultural sense of duty and honour. I don't think employees in the West generally feel such dedication or perfectionism towards their company but in Japan it helped make all these efficient and meticulous changes possible, and avoids issues of privatisation like neglecting maintenance / short term profit maximisation.
In the west the employee / employer social contract died sometime in the 80s. It's rare, especially in tech, to have employees with decades of tenure. You see Microsoft trying to buyout older employees recently.
Pre-Carly Fiorina Hewlett-Packard was a great example of an old-school Silicon Valley company, long before the era of “move fast and break things” and of Zuck, Elon, and Altman. I used to work for a Japanese company until I left a few years ago to teach, and when I read about the HP Way, it reminds me in many ways of life at my former employer:
https://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/publications/me...
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#9The U.S had the greatest rail network and then we built the Interstate Highway system and abandoned rail.
Truth is that nobody funds multiple competing transportation network. Japan chose rail, we chose highways.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#10The U.S had the greatest rail network and then we built the Interstate Highway system and abandoned rail. Truth is that nobody funds multiple competing transportation network. Japan chose rail, we chose highways.
japan is a small island
the US is one of the most extensive and biggest distance from population centers country on earth
I tihnk that helps explain the feasiability of train on each country more than inherent choices