Made In Japan

by Akio Morita

  What I noted about the old system was that the accounting division learned rather late what was going on, and so did corporate planning. By the time they knew what was being spent for early research and development and what projects were under way, there could be quite a loss of money. We are not a research institute, after all, and so when we decide to go ahead with R&D the executives should know at the very beginning what the goal is.

  This does not prevent our people from doing basic research. We authorize a lot of it. For example, we use a new, exotic kind of material for our Video 8 recording head, and that new material was developed by our metallurgists in our research center. There was no project for Video 8 when the new material search was authorized, but we knew that high-density recording would be an important field, and so we authorized the project. At the same time, even though we didn’t have eight millimeter in mind, we knew that we needed to research new kinds of recording head systems. It developed that for the new heads, new materials would be welcome, perhaps needed, and so the research projects came together at about the right time.

  But some projects, such as the high-resolution plasma display worked on by one of our researchers, have been set aside. In this instance, as I said earlier, we invested some venture capital in the project, which the researcher decided to pursue outside of Sony. At some future date, we and others may benefit from it, but I could not justify the continuing investment in this research.

  IV

  Once a year we hold our own technology fair—we call it our Technology Exchange Convention—at which all of our divisions and the project teams set up booths just like at a trade show. Only Sony people are admitted, and invitations are tightly controlled. Last year six thousand Sony employees from Japan and overseas visited the displays. Here they can see the state of our research and technology, and they can often find things they can use in their own work. We display process equipment as well as materials and demonstrations on the status of research. Engineers and technicians are on hand to answer questions, and sometimes visitors leave their calling cards and collect brochures and make appointments to exchange information, just as at a regular trade show.

  There is no way of knowing exactly how much we have saved by these conventions, but we have learned that by keeping a close eye and a tight control on R&D and using it with a minimum of duplication— except where we think it is worthwhile to try more than one approach to solve a problem—we can be more effective in allocating our funds. It would be very good if the future goals were clear and simple, for example, how to make a new kind of video recorder. But when the challenge is to produce new kinds of systems, even if you start working with the idea that a certain type of system would be best, you could be wrong, because such systems are not yet familiar to us. Computer companies, for example, are always having problems with that sort of thing. When you design a computer, you simply can’t think of it as a single device with limited use outside the system of people’s lives. As I said earlier, in the not-too-far future, a computer will have to be able to hook up to larger networks of information, into systems for home security, weather forecasting, financial affairs, shopping, and so on. Making the bits and pieces of such a system will not serve a company well; a successful company will have to come up with the full systems that are needed. In the future we will no longer be able to do business as we once did, when we made things thinking that they would be useful only in themselves, such as videos and tape recorders. We made them believing that people would find them useful, which they were, and that people would really discover their need for them, with each item as an end in itself. But such thinking in tomorrow’s world will not be good enough —it must be broader.

  I would like to see the day come soon when all of the worldwide patent information will be assembled in one data bank. Today, it is an enormous job for every company to keep track of all the information about other companies’ patents. It could be put on optical disks, and constant updating would be possible. It would be a great advantage to companies everywhere if this could be done and hooked into the worldwide information system, so that the new patents could be scanned by anyone interested in a license anywhere in the world.

  The precise direction in which all this will head by the end of this century is hard to guess. Obviously, by the end of the century the information systems we are starting on now, combining television, computers, and communications, will become commonplace in the home. We are in the midst of a cultural and social revolution. And it may be more and more difficult to impress people as time goes on, because even today, although the fact that we can pick up the phone and dial directly all the way around the world is a wonder to people of my generation, younger people whose memories do not go back very far don’t seem to give it a second thought.

  The director of our research labs at Sony, Makoto Kikuchi, says the invention of the solid-state device was the start of the science of modern electronics, a true technological revolution. The evolution that developed from that breakthrough, to the very large-scale integrations (VLSI) of today, are all part of the same revolution. It is about time for a second electronic breakthrough, and we are all thinking about it. What will there be after the VLSI, and how will we move into a whole new generation of devices that can contribute to our survival? Large-scale integrations are fascinating, but as physicists we know there is a limit to how far we can go and should want to go with this technology, even though we are still producing new technology in integrated circuits and other devices, selling equipment to make them, and licensing technologies to other companies. I have already mentioned our development of a new way of making very high-quality silicon single crystals, and we expect even better results when we do it in zero-gravity on a future space flight. We have come a long way with integrated circuits, and some say we might be coming near the limit of their development. In producing these devices the techniques we have used for etching the circuits onto the chip have progressed through lithography, photo-lithography, shortwave-length photo-lithography, and electron beam photo-lithography. Miniaturization reaches its peak in these chips. What will be next? How much more will we continue to pack onto a piece of pure silicon?

  Kikuchi believes that a new generation integrated circuit should be much more than an expansion or extension of what we now have. He thinks the approach would be to take a giant step: layer the device, making the first layer photosensitive and the second layer function the way the human eye transmits data to the brain; the next layer would contain some logic; and the last layer or layers would contain pattern recognition. In other words, this new device would be a simple kind of mechanical brain. “The VLSI we have today,” says Kikuchi, “are too simpleminded for the work that they will have to do in the future.”

  He is particularly intrigued by the idea of the biochip and by work in molecular electronics. A half-step has been taken in this direction motivated by U.S. naval research. Kikuchi is intrigued by the possibilities opened up by the discovery of the photochromic effect. If you select a certain large organic molecule that is transparent and colorless, and you bathe it in ultraviolet light invisible to the human eye, the photons of the ultraviolet will kick off one of the electrons of the molecule and the molecule will twist itself and turn blue. When you shine visible light on it, it goes back to its original state, losing its blue color. So there you have the basic two-state (on or off) memory, the basic building block of electronic technology.

  Since Kikuchi thinks current technology is only good for another ten years, he is accelerating work in many fields to be ready for what is needed next. His worry is that there may not be enough scientists interested in basic research. But we are both optimistic. One of the reasons for our optimism is the steady increase in the number of Japanese papers cited as references in the Journal of Applied Physics, from 2 to 3 percent in 1960 to over 30 percent today. His pessimism, not completely shared by me, is that while Japan’s contributions in improving process technology, such as dry etching, focusing of lase
rs, and so on, is making a major contribution, when it comes to opening completely new fields, our scientists are still catching up. Although we are proud of having one Nobel Prize in physics from our own Sony laboratories, Japan has only won a total of three Nobels in physics. However, as I have pointed out before, when it comes to turning ideas into reality, we have been very successful and very creative.

  Several years ago, we had one of our regular company international scientific conferences at the lab at Atsugi near Yokohama. The British staff came with a theoretical idea on digital video tape recording. Six months later, at the next meeting, a Sony engineer from the Atsugi lab showed up with a working model of the British design. Our foreign colleagues were astounded. “We could wait ten years to do something like that,” said a British staff member. “This would never happen in Britain.” Kikuchi pointed out that even at Bell Labs when they get an idea they try it out first on a computer. Here it is the normal reaction of a researcher to say, if the idea sounds good, “Let’s make one and see how it works!”

  The technology that will help the world’s people to survive is not all in the hands of the world’s scientists and engineers. But we have great ability to develop that technology. We proved that during the oil crisis. It seemed for many years as though the appetite for oil would just grow and grow. I could envision in my mind a virtual pipeline of tankers, bow to stern in both directions, stretched from Japan to the Persian Gulf. In those days I flew over the Nagoya shipyard in my helicopter while they were building the drydock for the construction of a one-million-ton supertanker. Another million-tonner drydock was built in the harbor at Nagasaki, and there were predictions that if this kept up the oil wells would be pumped dry in our lifetime. But before a single mammoth tanker could be built, the embargo came and everything changed, and, as I said earlier, it was eventually beneficial. Because we learned to conserve, we survived the crisis, prospered, and learned how to advance on even less oil than before.

  We are using nuclear fuel to generate about 26 percent of our electric power in Japan, a much smaller percentage than in France, but a higher percentage than in the United States, and this despite our “nuclear allergy,” the understandable awe and fear our people have of this incredible power that destroyed two of our cities and hundreds of thousands of lives in a mere flash. We have three national nonnuclear principles: that the nation will not make, maintain, or introduce nuclear weapons. Our own nuclear-powered demonstration ship, which has been a commercial failure, is being put out of service. The visit of nuclear-powered American warships was once greeted by riots in the streets. Today there are protests, but they are less dramatic and rarely violent. Even after the accident at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union, it is understood that nuclear power for peaceful purposes can be a benefit. As new nuclear power plants are built, there are protests, but in the end, at least so far, the plants have been built because the people understand that the power is essential and contributes to our ability to survive.

  I appeared on the Live Aid rock show in 1985 in Japan to appeal for aid to Africa’s starving people. People are starving not only there, but in many other places on earth, and yet I know that there is the technology available to feed everybody. At the Science Expo ’85, one of the major demonstrations was a tomato plant with more than twenty thousand tomatoes on it. The plant grew from a single seed and lived on very little water that was fortified with nutrients, which kept recirculating in a closed loop system called “Hyponica.”

  I don’t think we can feed the world only tomatoes, but this demonstration, and many others I know of, proves that marvelous things are possible if we apply ourselves and we care. If we can figure out how to accomplish the task of feeding the world, we may end up with a population problem and a space problem, which might yet lead to another food problem. But I am optimistic enough to believe technology will solve all these problems.

  Some people have said that the postindustrial society is here, and some predict that we cannot expect technological innovation anymore, that we will have to live smaller lives, with less satisfaction and luxury. I don’t believe it. My prediction is that we can enjoy our lives with less energy, less of the old materials, fewer resources, more recycling, and have more of the essentials for a happy and productive life than ever. Some people in the world, especially the Americans, will have to learn something of the meaning and spirit of mottainai and conserve more. Step by step, year by year, we must all learn how to be more skillful and efficient in using our resources economically. We must recycle more. As to the expanding populations, that will be a challenge to everyone, for they will have to be fed, clothed, and educated. But as the standard of living of a people increases, the population tends to level off, people live a different way, acquire different tastes and preferences, and develop their own technologies for survival.

  In the United States and Europe, the steel makers or computer manufacturers or automobile companies periodically say they cannot compete with foreign technology, and their reaction always is to put people out of work. I have already explained how the Japanese companies attempt to avoid letting any workers go, but try to use them to bring the company back to health. When the electronic analog technology began to give way to digital technology, we did not fire our analog engineers or put ads in the paper to hire digital engineers. Our analog engineers eagerly learned a new field. They had to, to survive. Learning new technologies is a way of life for us in Japan, and others will have to do it; it is not possible or desirable to cling to the past.

  JAPAN AND THE WORLD: Alienation and Alliance

  I

  Relations between modern Japan and the rest of the world have often been stormy, and it is no surprise that today the United States and the European community are locked in a cycle of recurring problems over trade with Japan. I think we should recognize and be grateful that our problems are not yet so badly politicized that we cannot sit down and talk about them rationally. But this situation is like a chronic illness, and we must find a way to cure it. Obviously two nations like the United States and Japan, which share more than eighty billion dollars in trade and together account for more than 30 percent of the world’s goods and services, are bound to have some problems, because of the very size and diversity of that trade. And it is always easier to blame the other person for a problem than to look at your own faults. This has too often been true on both sides of the Pacific.

  We think differently, and the way we look at the problems that cause these never-ending difficulties between two great nations is often very different. There are also crucial differences between our systems. Traditional ways of doing things, right or wrong, exist on both sides. And there are problems that don’t have anything to do with race or culture or history or tradition, but with human attitudes that are very easy to understand.

  Before Ronald Reagan took office as president of the United States, one of his advisers came to Japan to get some ideas for formulating Reagan’s Asian and, specifically, defense policies. He talked with some leading Japanese figures, and in one conversation with a Tokyo economist, he linked trade problems with defense and said he thought Japan should build some warships and give or lease them to the U.S. Navy. The economist told him he thought that this would probably not be possible because of article nine of Japan’s constitution, which renounces war and prohibits us from maintaining any war potential or exporting it. Mr. Reagan’s friend and adviser said, “Well, then, change the constitution.” Very easy to say, but very difficult for any democratic nation like Japan, or the United States, to do. (Actually, the American framers of our constitution expected that Japan would write its own once the Occupation period was over, but the present one has become so ingrained that any talk of changing it is viewed with suspicion, as though any changes would automatically bring back the bad old days of the militarists. I think it is shortsighted of Japan’s politicians, who should have the courage to change what needs to be changed. After all, the document was not even written by Japanese.) />
  Americans and Europeans seem to think that their idea of how the world trading and monetary systems work and should continue to work should be universal, especially in the business world, and that since they believe they invented the game the rules should never be amended. The system up to now, they believe, has served them well, and there is no need to change. Moreover, some American and European businessmen still look at the Japanese as newcomers, as novices who should still be paying tuition to the school. What they don’t want to face is the fact that we are not only in the same school; we have joined the faculty.

  Japan’s Economic Planning Agency recently made a detailed study of important economic trends and extrapolated them to the year 2000. This study shows that the United States will continue to lead the world and will produce 19.6 percent of the world’s gross national product. The Soviet Union will contribute 12.5 percent, and Japan will be third with 11.9 percent. The next largest economy, West Germany, will contribute 5.9 percent, and China will have 5.3 percent of the world’s production. France will contribute 4.3 percent, and Britain 2.9 percent. The world economic map looks very different from 1960, when the U.S. produced 33.4 percent, the Soviet Union 15 percent, and Japan only 1.8 percent. But today the U.S. has dropped to 22.4 percent and Japan has risen to 10.1 percent. This indicates clearly that Japan’s industrial prowess and economic power cannot be ignored within the world trading system and that it is worthwhile for nations to try to understand what Japan is all about and to listen to what she has to say.