How Tokyo looks to Europe for inspiration in troubled times

Date: 20/03/03

Can Japan learn anything from the EU as it struggles to revive its economy? In the final part of his analysis of the EU-Japan relationship, EV editor Dennis Abbott speaks to two of Tokyo's leading young entrepreneurs and a UK diplomat

OKI Matsumoto is something of a media star in Japan, where he is regularly portrayed as a 'great hope of the East'. Quite a burden of expectation for someone who's not yet 40?

Matsumoto seems to take all the interest in his stride. After all, he's been used to the limelight for the best part of a decade: at 30 he was the youngest ever partner at Goldman Sachs and, other than the investment bank's founder Marcus Goldman, the only partner educated outside an English-speaking country.

Matsumoto left Goldman Sachs just ahead of a major flotation that would have made him seriously rich, even though he knew it was imminent, to set up an online brokerage in Tokyo called Monex in April 1999.

Sony took a 49 stake in the fledgling company, which subsequently went public with a listing on the Tokyo stock exchange.

Although it doesn't sell outside Japan, Matsumoto - "call me Oki, everyone else does" - says he was determined to invest Monex with a European-style ethos from the start. "We're very transparent - we disclose everything. This was very new in Japan."

He also delights in taking on the famously obdurate Japanese bureaucracy, which has a reputation for not enjoying dialogue.

"When I deal with the bureaucrats, I don't give up. I tell them, 'I'm a taxpayer, you're an administrator'."

His efforts to employ a European-style approach with the bureaucrats sometimes ends up with him running into a brick wall, though. "If I ask them, 'are you ordering me to do such and such?', they're liable to reply, 'no, we're just asking you to reconsider'. If that happened in the EU or United States people would go crazy."

Matsumoto, who stresses that he is a "Japanese patriot", is also critical of the kisha press club system, which enables the government and leading companies to largely control the flow of information to news organisations via favoured journalists.

"This is just PR," says Matsumoto. "People are trying to make changes here and, once they are properly informed, a majority will support them."

On the rare occasions that a radical idea does make the headlines, the powers-that-be often respond by trying to undermine the credibility of the source.

"They won't attack the idea," claims Matsumoto, "they'll just make sure the newspapers and magazines get to know who the person is sleeping with."

Of course, that never happens in European newspapers.

Can Japan learn anything from the EU as it struggles to revive its economy?