Japanese-Style Entrepreneurship: An Interview with Softbank’S CEO | Hacker News Reader

Japanese-Style Entrepreneurship: An Interview with Softbank’S CEO

hbr.org

42 pointsdoppp13 comments

Pretty blown away by the fact that he graduated high school in two weeks just after learning English.

Don't know if that's a reflection of the American or Japanese public education system in 1992, or just Masayoshi's raw intellect.

Probably a mix of the Japanese system/s and his intellect.

I didn't read the article because it required a subscription for me, but I feel pretty confident that he already had a lot of the knowledge. Because the alternative is that he didn't have the knowledge, and actually learned 4 years of information in 2 weeks, which seems crazy even for people with the highest aptitudes.

Note that the article is from 1992.

Yes, I was shocked to see Masayoshi Son's age as 34!

And it is not japanese but korean. He is zainichi.

why do Japanese people love to point this out? I'm assuming you are Japanese given your peculiar style of broken English grammar unique to Japanese and your overall negative past comments on HN towards China and Korea in particular. It's like saying "Michael Jackson. It is not american but african." (in your own words). There's always this undertone of contempt and jealousy from some Japanese users whenever anything Korean is mentioned. Just take a look at youtube comments. Some Japanese folks are now posting under terribly inaccurate American names or worse pretending to be Korean and posting really weird shit.

Zainichi Koreans have suffered racism and long period of oppression. They are far removed from Korean culture, it's the fact that Japan doesn't give citizenship to what it considers impure blood yet at the same time, if you are half Japanese, you are eligible. What does this say about Japanese society? There's a deep rooted institutional level of racism. I'm sure those that have lived in Japan will know of this ceiling.

What's remarkable about Masayoshi is that despite the odds being against him, he pulled so far ahead of what an average Japanese could achieve. One of his earliest childhood adversity is some Japanese kid threw a rock at him for being Korean yet with no repercussions for such hate crimes.

Looking at Japan, celebrities and businessman of Korean descent but nowhere are they considered to be Korean in Korea unless they speak the language and appear on Korean variety shows (like Korean-Japanese UFC fighter and Judo master Yoshihiro Akiyama), and they seem to be treated like shit in Japan. It's no surprise that even Yakuza membership have lot of Koreans given the poor level of opportunities available to them in Japan.

That's the Japanese style of exceptionalism. We Americans have our own flavor.

What's interesting is how friendly cultures take exceptionalism at face value. Watch how Japanese posts on HN get upvoted.

> it's the fact that Japan doesn't give citizenship to what it considers impure blood

Okay, so Japanese treat Zainichi like shit. I'm not going to argue that, because it's obvious. But what you're saying here has not been true for decades. There is a path to Japanese citizenship for every Zainichi living in Japan, should they choose to take it, and it is no more or less onerous for them than it is for anyone else.

That is not to say that Zainichi have it easy in Japan today. They do not. But this isn't the first time I've read even on HN, that the Japanese government keeps Zainichi in some sort of permanent nationality limbo, and this is simply not the case. Japan does require renouncing your current citizenship as part of the path to Japanese citizenship, but they are not the only nation to do this, and it is certainly not something they require only of Zainichi.

I was referring to "Japanese-style entrepreneurship" being korean instead. I was not addressing him in my first sentence. Then i have just said that he is korean. In no way i said that him being a korean is a wrong thing.

And in my previous comments on HN i have never ever expressed negative feelings towards Korea or koreans.

I stated facts.

I do despise china for being arrogant, filthy, communist country of thieves who do not respect intellectual properties. Yet I do not consider myself racist as what i have said is proven and it's simply a fact.

I am not japanese and i am well aware of japanese sentiment towards koreans even the ones living in Japan.

Bettet not talk about the recent pepper robot shite indeed.

They really glance over the fact that he had patented inventions, connections and quite a bit of money made before going back to Japan and starting Softbank. Still, good story...

I have no doubts in the entrepreneurial abilities from Japan but one questions if maybe, there's a limit to it seeing that so many past American acquisitions by Japanese buyers have been nothing short of horrible. Recall that Masayoshi bought Sprint and it's now less than half what he original paid for which was close to 30 billion as I remember. More recently the acquistion of Financial Times by Nikkei for over a billion dollars (during times of declining subscription and falling ad revenues, washington post was 5 bought for times less to Bezos). There are so many other poor acquisition strategies coming out of Japan, I can't help but question if there's some inherent flaw to Japanese thinking at least when it comes to market stategies. They almost certainly pay a huge premium for no good reason, and are unable to spruce it up, either due to incompatible culture or god knows what. California Golf, Docomo, Lehman Brothers in 2008 by Nomura Securities (which have wiped out it's own shares), there's quite a list of acquisitions that have proven to be disastrous for these Japanese firms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com