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The press preview of the 34th Tokyo Motor Show (Commercial Vehicles) which will be opened to public from tomorrow started at 9:30 am. this morning. At a joint display corner of the Toyota Group's three manufacturers, Toyota, Hino and Daihatsu, President Chou of Toyota made the introductory speech to press. Following him, top executives of every manufacturer which exhibited its products made speeches at its company's display by noon. |
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Some news agencies including NHK reported yesterday about products exhibited at the show and also interviews with top executives of manufacturers before the official press preview of today. So I felt the preview lacked tensions and was not exciting.
Toyota group's three companies exhibited their products on theme of environment, ITS and safety, and welfare. Every category of them was very difficult to express visual so that they could not express themselves well enough for attracting people. Nissan concentrated their efforts to their products with a slogan "The Best Solution Partner Nissan." Their attitude is quite a contrast to the former one.
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In order to join our class meeting which is held once a year, I drove up to Gakushi Kaikan leaving the show quickly.
26 members got together. Four members who are in Osaka and Kobe areas, Messrs. Yasuo Asagoe, Shinya Uemura, Ichiro Kitano and Etsuzo Tanimoto joined the meeting. They livened up the party. Dr. Hiroshi Suzuki, an honorary professor of Tokyo University who taught us how to design machines as an assistant professor more that fifty years ago, joined us as usual and made a short speech (Another former professor, Dr. Norio Takenaka, who taught us "material dynamics" fifty years ago, called me last evening and canceled his attendance to meeting because of some emergency problems. He said he was quite well and would join a Krosunakai Golf Match on November 20.)
Dr. Suzuki said "Not only young assistant managers, managers, general managers but directors on board of big corporations have become irresponsible these days. They avoided to work on difficult problems which seemed to be not overcome soon and tried to leave them to their successors. They worked quietly during their assigned time and expected promotions because of no fault record. Japanese business has become inactive, I am afraid."
He added further "Those who become top executives of companies should get MBA. Not only technical people but especially Japanese business people should take graduate course of business."
When I talked with him later, I found that he was rather critical about e-business. He contributed to the extraordinary development of the Japanese steel mill industry by improving steel mill operation with computers. But he does not like internet society. I was surprised by his unexpected criticism.
The theme on which attendants talked about most was "sickness."
