Great story, Matt. What strikes me is how perfectly Akiyama belongs to that particular moment in Japan: spectacularly over the top, slightly absurd, and somehow rather poignant in retrospect.
There’s also something wonderfully Japanese about spending $30 million to send a salaryman into space, only for him to come back and decide that growing shiitake mushrooms in Fukushima was a better use of his time.
I had never heard about this, but this is so cool. I love Japanese tv, bubble era boardroom hubris, and obscure Soviet history, so it’s a good mix of my interests.
Bringing it to modern Japan, I think if the right streetwear brand or surviving Shibuya indie fashion label gave it a look, that USSR flag with a Sony logo under it would go so hard on t shirts and sweaters.
Like how NASA stuff took off, I think Japanese corporate sponsored Soyuz stuff would be even cooler.
I would pay real money for it. That’s who I am, Matt.
On that note otaku have long been fascinated by the Soyuz rockets -- an homage to one plays a key role in the climax of the 1998 film The Wings of Honneamis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO90L3hkp3s
You inspired me to add a photo of Akiyama to the end of the piece, taken in 2023, showing off his flight suit with the official patches on it.
Like the rest of Japan, I had completely forgotten this stunt.
That year, the stock market had lost over 50% of its value and by December the signs of Japan’s approaching economic troubles were already clearly on the wall. Anybody with a little foresight had more important things on their mind…
I wonder how many citizens really grasped the depth of the economic situation at the time. The Bubble may have been over, but the party continued for a good five years, until the Kobe quake and Aum terror attacks.
Even still, it's absolutely wild to me TBS was able to pull the cash together for this stunt.
For the average citizen it may have been difficult to grasp, but it should not have been for people in management. I ran a chain of language schools at the time. To small business operators like myself it was pretty obvious. But there were indeed lots of people who considered the problems as a temporary setback.
I thought we were in for a very long haul of economic challenges. So I closed the schools in August of 1994, when the business was still in the black and I was still able to pay everybody's salaries and return the prepaid tuition to the hundreds of students.
But even that late after the bursting of the bubble, there were indeed still lots of people saying that "next year things will improve." Lots of top managers, like those of TBS, were too far removed from the average person on the street to fully appreciate what was happening, or just plain ignorant.
I am still furious about how NOVA, one of my main competitors, dealt with the problems. We both had started in the same general neighborhood, Osaka's Shinsaibashi district. NOVA's CEO Sahashi had started there in 1981, I launched in 1984. I grew my schools organically, but NOVA borrowed big to grow huge fast.
They ignored all the signs and never considered their staff and students. When they filed for bankruptcy in 2007, tens of thousands of students lost all their prepaid tuition, and staff were never paid.
At the time, NOVA was not an exception. Lots of Japanese managers were irresponsible and ignored very fundamental economic and management principles.
As you write, it was indeed wild how TBS was able to pull the cash together. It was also incredibly irresponsible.
Thanks for the report from the trenches! And sorry to hear about how things played out for your school. NOVA was one of many companies engaging in financial shenanigans at all levels. It was the custom for many CEOs to play "zaiteku" which was a buzzword that essentially meant borrowing against revenues to invest in stock, real estate, etc. This kind of thing makes one feel like a genius until everything comes crashing down. It's almost like a drug.
Indeed, Matt. Banks were involved as well. Bank managers visited me at home, offering loans. As if they were boy scouts selling cookies. It was ridiculous.
Anybody who had studied a basic amount of economics and read the business pages of newspapers and business magazines would have been aware of the economists who warned of the pitfalls of this strategy. People like Paul Krugman, Christopher Wood (The Economist), Edward Lincoln (Brookings Institution), and the German economist Richard Werner were all shouting warnings, as were many Japanese economists.
But people were blinded by greed. I remember a conversation I had with my dentist. He was borrowing like crazy to purchase real estate. I repeatedly told him that prices had risen way above what was economically sound, and that a crash was around the corner. “Will never happen in Japan,” he said, “Japan is a tiny country with too many people and real estate values will always rise.”
Great story, Matt. What strikes me is how perfectly Akiyama belongs to that particular moment in Japan: spectacularly over the top, slightly absurd, and somehow rather poignant in retrospect.
There’s also something wonderfully Japanese about spending $30 million to send a salaryman into space, only for him to come back and decide that growing shiitake mushrooms in Fukushima was a better use of his time.
I guess once you’ve reached the literal top, the only way to go is down (into the soil!)
I had never heard about this, but this is so cool. I love Japanese tv, bubble era boardroom hubris, and obscure Soviet history, so it’s a good mix of my interests.
Bringing it to modern Japan, I think if the right streetwear brand or surviving Shibuya indie fashion label gave it a look, that USSR flag with a Sony logo under it would go so hard on t shirts and sweaters.
Like how NASA stuff took off, I think Japanese corporate sponsored Soyuz stuff would be even cooler.
I would pay real money for it. That’s who I am, Matt.
It is a pretty amazing juxtaposition.
On that note otaku have long been fascinated by the Soyuz rockets -- an homage to one plays a key role in the climax of the 1998 film The Wings of Honneamis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO90L3hkp3s
You inspired me to add a photo of Akiyama to the end of the piece, taken in 2023, showing off his flight suit with the official patches on it.
Like the rest of Japan, I had completely forgotten this stunt.
That year, the stock market had lost over 50% of its value and by December the signs of Japan’s approaching economic troubles were already clearly on the wall. Anybody with a little foresight had more important things on their mind…
I wonder how many citizens really grasped the depth of the economic situation at the time. The Bubble may have been over, but the party continued for a good five years, until the Kobe quake and Aum terror attacks.
Even still, it's absolutely wild to me TBS was able to pull the cash together for this stunt.
For the average citizen it may have been difficult to grasp, but it should not have been for people in management. I ran a chain of language schools at the time. To small business operators like myself it was pretty obvious. But there were indeed lots of people who considered the problems as a temporary setback.
I thought we were in for a very long haul of economic challenges. So I closed the schools in August of 1994, when the business was still in the black and I was still able to pay everybody's salaries and return the prepaid tuition to the hundreds of students.
But even that late after the bursting of the bubble, there were indeed still lots of people saying that "next year things will improve." Lots of top managers, like those of TBS, were too far removed from the average person on the street to fully appreciate what was happening, or just plain ignorant.
I am still furious about how NOVA, one of my main competitors, dealt with the problems. We both had started in the same general neighborhood, Osaka's Shinsaibashi district. NOVA's CEO Sahashi had started there in 1981, I launched in 1984. I grew my schools organically, but NOVA borrowed big to grow huge fast.
They ignored all the signs and never considered their staff and students. When they filed for bankruptcy in 2007, tens of thousands of students lost all their prepaid tuition, and staff were never paid.
At the time, NOVA was not an exception. Lots of Japanese managers were irresponsible and ignored very fundamental economic and management principles.
As you write, it was indeed wild how TBS was able to pull the cash together. It was also incredibly irresponsible.
Thanks for the report from the trenches! And sorry to hear about how things played out for your school. NOVA was one of many companies engaging in financial shenanigans at all levels. It was the custom for many CEOs to play "zaiteku" which was a buzzword that essentially meant borrowing against revenues to invest in stock, real estate, etc. This kind of thing makes one feel like a genius until everything comes crashing down. It's almost like a drug.
Indeed, Matt. Banks were involved as well. Bank managers visited me at home, offering loans. As if they were boy scouts selling cookies. It was ridiculous.
Anybody who had studied a basic amount of economics and read the business pages of newspapers and business magazines would have been aware of the economists who warned of the pitfalls of this strategy. People like Paul Krugman, Christopher Wood (The Economist), Edward Lincoln (Brookings Institution), and the German economist Richard Werner were all shouting warnings, as were many Japanese economists.
But people were blinded by greed. I remember a conversation I had with my dentist. He was borrowing like crazy to purchase real estate. I repeatedly told him that prices had risen way above what was economically sound, and that a crash was around the corner. “Will never happen in Japan,” he said, “Japan is a tiny country with too many people and real estate values will always rise.”