Pro Commerce

Inside gossip

You probably don't care about gossip from Japan. Here it is.

Michael Jackson was in Tokyo a few weeks ago to pick up a music award. He has plenty of followers here and his trials and tribulations in the U.S. don't matter much. Two highlights of his visit were a stop at one of the only orphanages in Japan and a visit to Kiddyland a great spot in Harajuku for little kids and toys.

Jacques Chirac comes to Japan often. Like me he loves sumo, but he has created a sumo museum near Paris. He always stays at the Okura Hotel and rejects the Imperial Guest House. He has a very beloved mistress in Tokyo.

Gossip, but also true.

Art in Japan

I went to an art museum in a suburb named Fuchu. Excellent show of a collection by a farmer who sold his farm land to the city of Tokyo for a cultural center in Shinjuku.

Enjoying art in Japan has required s significant change in my views of art.

I know art history fairly well and have a superb eye. I can tell from a few inches, who painted or created the whole work. In 1956, at age 17, on a visit to the Metropolitan I wrote a complaint to the curator that the most famous David painting was clearly not by David. I turned out to be right; the painting was by a female student of David's.

Most professional art people are looking for new styles in art. I have always done that myself. New styles are exciting. Derivative art is usually by amateurs who don't know the sources of their derivation and the work is of no consequence to begin with.
So what happens when top flight artists who are well trained start using a style or styles from another culture? The question should give you a clue. Post-impressionism and modernism were the consequence of first rate artists being exposed to Japanese art (in Vienna) and African art (in Paris).

The same thing happens in Japan. Top flight artists conceive a work of art and they chose a European style to express it. Often they create a brilliant piece. I saw many such pieces.

I've put two examples on this page. One is Rouault and Rouault style in Japan the other is Goya and Goyaesque in Japan.

Old planet errors

In an earlier blog I referred my readers to an article I wrote thirty years ago with projections about the creation of new planets.

I was very wrong. I predicted:"...the end of this century: there will be two to five construction satellites in earth orbit with 10,000+ inhabitants on each, building a variety of space objects (such as power facilities and manufacturing stations), including a few planets for solar orbit. One or two of these solar orbiting planets will be functioning with populations of 40,000 or more. Most of these space objects will be oriented toward nation/cultures on Earth and will be affiliated with language groups such as English, Russian, and German, and also possibly Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese."

Why was I so far off?

First.............

Free speech vs barricades

The free speech movement of when? Just a short comparison of the same event in Berkeley and Paris.

In America, the student rebellion started the first year that the baby boomers reached the University,1964. The rebellion at UC Berkeley was about the use of the word fuck on the steps of the Administration Building. The students took over the building and held it hostage for a great deal of publicity.

Two personal asides on this event. First, I organized and led a student revolt at the U. of Chicago in 1957. I put a picket ring around the Senate Building where a critical vote was about to take place. It never crossed my mind to actually block the faculty from entering the building. That brilliant innovation came about in Berkeley.

Second, when I was a grad student at U. of Calif. Berkeley in 1962 I organized the Grad Student Association. (I did the same, long distance, at UCLA.) The treasurer of my organization was Mario Savio, later the leader of the Free Speech rebellion. I knew Mario and may have taught him a little about organizing.

Back to the baby boomer student uprising. In America the date is relatively unknown and the issue was about some sort of free speech. In France the students waited until the leaders had graduated and the entire University was full of baby boomers. Then they manned the barricades demanding everything imaginable. The French mark this as a seminal point in their intellectual history, the year 1968 is the description of the event.

The French never stop reliving their Revolution against King Louis and we Americans apparently never stop remembering our war of independence from King George ('no taxation without representation'). July 4th is independence, July 14th is revolution.

My quest

My quest this year in Japan is to answer the question 'How is Japan approaching the problem of commercial creativity?'

Years ago I worked on the problem for the Japanese Foreign Office. I pointed out (with the prop of a Bell Labs phone book) that the U.S. had the world as its effective population because nearly every great creative genius felt welcome to come to the U.S. and many were invited to immigrate.

Japan couldn't have that so I suggested building research labs in Hawaii.

Japanese companies followed my advice and have many large research labs in Honolulu.

Japan also created....

Hotter coffee

The ongoing issue about hot coffee has led me to the photo on the right.

Doutor’s, the coffee shop that has coffee that stays hot, has a steam box that keeps the cups at 100C. The same box goes into the dish washing machine. Roughly nine out of ten Doutor’s customers sit down and drink from a cup. The Japanese appreciate coffee and enjoy using a cup of coffee to relax.

So what is American “fast coffee” about?

Should you read Burke?

Edmund Burke is considered a father of Conservatism. Should you read him?

Burke had a brilliant mind, clearly understood the roots of conservative thought and well deserves his place in the intellectual pantheon. But should you read him? 

Two confessions will explain my emotional ambiguity on this subject. First, I have never gotten close to reading all of Ulysses or Finnigans Wake. James Joyce drives me nuts with his flowery language and circumlocution. I get lost and forget the point, if there is one.

Second, I could only...