Author Archives: Hiro Shibata

About half a year ago, I wrote about corporate culture; in some companies like Toyota, different teams share a system, and I wondered whether those engineers communicate well unlike typical engineers, or someone established a system so that they can share information without willing to communicate with others. In another previous post, a few weeks ago, I wrote about customs; I wondered why Toyota style activities to improve manufacturing processes are called kaizen, which originally only means “improvement”. I wondered why plant workers are not considered to be “users”. Recently I had a good experience to have a glimpse of Toyota corporate culture. It adequately answered my questions.

A senior Japanese engineer was providing a seminar to Canadian supervisors about improving manufacturing processes in the Toyota style, and practiced it with Japanese engineers to see how it would work. He generously invited me to the practice session. In the seminar, he uses Lego blocks to play a “game” in order to show how different manufacturing processes bring different results, which is impressive and way more efficient than giving a lecture. To make a long story short, once a sophisticated system is established to run manufacturing processes efficiently, plant workers only need to focus on their section with one condition, which is to think of the people of the subsequent section. In that system, the entire manufacturing process runs smoothly and efficiently even though workers in every section do not have a big picture. Once a sophisticated system is established by someone smart, they only need to think of the workers of the subsequent section as “users of their interim products”. Isn’t this great?

Of course this is easy to say, so hard to do. A fact is that some people actually do it, which makes their company outstanding. This fact is discouraging in a way because the company I work for now is very different from them. On the other hand, it is very encouraging because it tells me that what I wondered and imagined can be reality.

Why are many people afraid of ghost? Why do they think a graveyard is a scary place?

Since my early childhood, I have felt supernatural beings at home. When I talk about it, like hearing footsteps from an empty room which happened to be my bedroom, many people are scared. But it was just natural for me. Because I, my mom and brother felt it but my dad didn’t, we assume it is my mom’s ancestor. Now I often see “something” away from home, something that is not a creature of “this” world. It looks like the thing that I saw at home, and when I see it, I feel safe; it is something I am familiar with. I don’t know if it is a supernatural being or a type of “ghost”, but it does not matter. Even if it is a kind of ghost, good people may become ghost after their death, and we don’t have to be scared of every ghost. But I know this is difficult for many people to understand.

Graveyard for me has been a place where relatives get together to meet our ancestors. It is still connected with the memory of my grandma; I used to visit there with her, and now I visit there to meet her. Every grave should be like that for other people, and I have no reason to be scared of other people’s ancestors’ grave.

Now I work night shift and often drive by a graveyard when it is dark. At night, a candle or something (LED?) is lit at many graves, and it looks beautiful to me. But some people say it is scary. Whether it is a candle or a ghost, it does not matter to me. But people have different perspectives.

As I wrote in a previous post about different perspectives, I want to retain the sensibility no matter what happens to me. Many people are instinctively afraid of darkness. But, I guess, many people are scared of ghost and graveyard partially because people in the past have created a scary image of them. Whatever it is, I want to retain non-biased perspective.

As I wrote in a previous post, foreign cultures often retain their original name, like lee-daa-shippu in Japanese. Some Japanese words, besides honcho (originally hancho), are used in English and in some other languages. One of the example is kaizen. It originally means (and in Japan we only mean) “improvement” in general. But in the manufacturing industry, it means activities to improve manufacturing processes. It sounds like “improvement” to me, and I have wondered why it is called kaizen. I have not done any research on it, but now I have got a hypothesis through my current non-design, non-creative job, which is interpretation at a plant.

When designers and engineers design consumer products, they strive to improve the products to meet and exceed users’ expectations, which include both functionality and usability. On the other hand, as I observed and wrote in an old post, engineers and technicians in a plant are “users” of the facilities in the plant, but those machines are typically not user friendly; once they are designed, they remain as they are originally designed as long as they function as expected. As I mentioned above, I have not done any research in kaizen, and now I only guess. Having said that, I guess, if engineers see factory workers as “users”, they strive to improve facilities, which is so unusual that people want to name it differently from other activities, and named it kaizen. This is only a guess, and probably not true, but makes sense to me. For technology-oriented, non-creative engineers, this must be a paradigm shift which is difficult to accept, but it should happen to make “user” friendly work environment for factory workers. But I know changing customs is not easy especially for conservative people. They need to be more creative to make changes.

By the way, do you know why hyperlinks are blue by default? According to this internet article, “Why is facebook blue?“, it is because of a very early web browser: Mosaic, which was designed for academic use. The background color of Mosaic was gray, and blue was the only color available at that time to make hyperlinks outstanding and still readable. Today, of course, this is not always the case; hyperlink color can be changed easily by adding a few lines in CSS. When creative people design a web site and make it user friendly, changing customs is not a big deal. (By the way, this is only a trivial topic in the internet article, and it includes more interesting tips on colors on web sites.)

I’ve been away from creative job for a long time. Working with conservative, non-creative people often depresses me, but it is also good to observe how they behave, or how they stick to their old customs. It gives me ideas of how we, creative people should make changes.

Some parents are often blamed for their misleading. For example, when their child does something annoying to other people in public and someone, a stranger, scolds the child, they say “stop it, otherwise that old guy gets angry with you”. But they are expected to say “stop it, you are annoying everyone”.

Now I work between Japanese engineers and Canadian workers. In Japan, employees are generally slaves. When I worked for a big company in Japan, the union did not function; they conveyed managers’ decisions to workers on behalf of the managers. Believe or not, there was a systematic and non-illegal way to make employees vote union executives who were obedient to managers. I worked in an insane work environment, but nobody helped me. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in Japan. On the other hand, in Canada, there are practical regulations to protect workers, which confuse those Japanese engineers who I work with. When they try to do something in a “Japanese” way, they are often prevented to do it. When it happens, they say “we cannot do it because the union does not allow us to do it”, while they are expected to say “we should not do it because we should protect the workers”. Should they be blamed?

During the war (in Japan, “the war” means WWII), soldiers were taught that surrendering was a shame and worse than death. Because they were told so, some Japanese soldiers treated captives brutally, which violated the international law. After the war ended, those Japanese soldiers went on trial, and got to know that what they had done was illegal. But it was too late; some of those soldiers were executed. Who should have been blamed? I do not have a single answer. It might be the executives who taught soldiers in that way, or might be the culture that cultivated that extreme spirit. In either case, any tragedy like that should be avoided at any level. I mean, at any level.

Now, what can I do?

When a foreign culture is imported, people often use its original name. For example, “honcho” is an English word, and it originated in Japanese: hancho. Being or behaving like a honcho is a Japanese culture. I lived in a small developing country called the Kingdom of Tonga. If I remember correctly, “responsibility” in Tongan language is “responisipiliti”. It’s a foreign culture in Tonga; if I understand correctly, people do not have to take responsibility in traditional Tongan life. When I heard of it, I thought “oh, Tongan…” But I should not blame them. In Japanese, leadership is “lee-daa-shippu”. It’s a foreign culture in Japan.

Now I work with Japanese workers who came to Canada to provide training to Canadian workers. But some of them are not good trainers, and those Canadian workers are often confused (and I seem the one who they can complain to). Who should be blamed? I don’t think those Japanese workers should be blamed because they have not been trained as a trainer; they have been trained as and have worked as workers. By the way, they are nice people and Canadian workers seem to like their personality. Someone, a manager, assigned them to come to Canada to provide training. Should he be blamed? No, not really. If I understand correctly, a manager in Japan is a honcho, and he/she does not have to “lead” his/her subordinates into doing their assigned job. After all, who should be blamed? I don’t know. Japan has developed technologies in many fields and they can compete internationally, but the speed of technology development is faster than the speed of cultural development.

I can think of two options now. One is to further develop Japanese culture so that they can be culturally competitive internationally. The other option is to retain the current level of Japanese culture and find areas where we can be competitive internationally as we are. Why do I distinguish between “they” and “we”? The answer is obvious.

Ramen is one of the most popular food in Japan. The origin of ramen is Chinese soup noodle, and Japanese people have modified it in a couple of hundred years and created new Japanese food. When I visited Taiwan and Hong Kong, I found that ramen is recognized as Japanese food. There are many ramen shops in Canada, but they are usually inauthentic; most of them are ran by Koreans or Chinese. There is a wide variety of ramen in Japan, but Canadian inauthentic ramen are clearly different from any of Japanese ramen. Let me put in this way. Some authentic ramen are as different as German shepherd and bulldog, but they are still dogs. On the other hand, Canadian inauthentic ramen is like prairie dog.

Recently a friend of mine in Vancouver posted some food photos on facebook. At a glance, I could tell they were Japanese food though they were not “traditional” Japanese food. If traditional Japanese food is Siamese cat, the food in the photos are like Persian cat, which is clearly different from typical Canadian style Japanese food that looks like meerkat. I even don’t know how I distinguish between German shepherd and prairie dog, or Siamese cat and meerkat (please do not take it literally. I’m not that much damn), but the difference is obvious for me. By the way, a day after posting photos of Japanese food, she posted photos of what looks like Chinese food to me, but I could not tell if it was authentic Chinese food or not.

I think this is all about authenticity; if you know it, you can tell, but you cannot tell how you can tell.