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Bob Johnstone

We Were Burning: Japanese Entrepreneurs And The Forging Of The Electronic Age Paperback – September 24, 1999

by Bob Johnstone (Author)

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Are the Japanese faceless clones who march in lockstep to the drums beaten by big business and the bureaucrats of MITI, Japan's miracle-working ministry of international trade and industry? Can Japanese workers, and by extrapolation their entire society, be characterized by deference to authority, devotion to group solidarity, and management by consensus? In We Were Burning, investigative journalist Bob Johnstone demolishes this misleading stereotype by introducing us to a new and very different kind of Japanese worker-a dynamic, iconoclastic, risk-taking entrepreneur.Johnstone has tracked down Japan's invisible entrepreneurs and persuaded them to tell their stories. He presents here a wealth of new material, including interviews with key players past and present, which lifts the veil that has hitherto obscured the entrepreneurial nature of Japanese companies like Canon, Casio, Seiko, Sharp, and Yamaha.Japanese entrepreneurs, working in the consumer electronics industry during the 1960s and 70s, took unheralded American inventions such as microchip cameras, liquid crystal displays, semiconductor lasers, and sound chips to create products that have become indispensable, including digital calculators and watches, synthesizers, camcorders, and compact disc players. Johnstone follows a dozen micro-electronic technologies from the U.S. labs where they originated to their eventual appearance in the form of Japanese products, shedding new light on the transnational nature of twentieth-century innovation, and on why technologies take root and flourish in some places and not in others.At this time of Asian financial crisis and the bursting of Japan's bubble economy, many are tempted to dismiss Japan's future as an economic power. We Were Burning serves as a timely warning that to write off Japan—and its invisible entrepreneurs—would be a big mistake.

Print length

448 pages
Language

English
Publication date

September 24, 1999
Dimensions

5 x 1.03 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0465091180
ISBN-13

978-0465091188
Lexile measure

1220L
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About the Author

Bob Johnstone is a freelance journalist who has written about science and technology for fifteen years. He has served as Japan correspondent for New Scientist, technology correspondent for Far Eastern Economic Review, and has been a contributing editor and writer for Wired. He was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991 and was the recipient of an Abe Foundation Program grant.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; 1st Paperback Edition (September 24, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465091180
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465091188
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1220L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 1.03 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,056,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #534 in Exports & Imports Economics
- #1,644 in Industrial Manufacturing
- #4,885 in History of Technology

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12 ratings

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Bob Johnstone

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Books by Bob Johnstone include L.E.D.: A History of the Future of Lighting; Switching to Solar; and Brilliant!: Shuji Nakamura and the Revolution in Lighting Technology. Now based in London Johnstone was Japan correspondent for New Scientist, technology editor for Far Eastern Economic Review and contributing editor for Wired.

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Lobsterfrosting

Good read...

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2013

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This is a pretty good book about how the electronics industry has developed in Japan (mostly) and the rest of the world. I do not like the authors use of 'hole flow' which was unfortunately taught to me when I went to AT school in the navy. Hole flow is retarded if you know anything about the molecular level of electronics. Otherwise, this book is very good and interesting.

Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 1999

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An excellent look at several decades worth of innovation. One bonus is the fascinating portrayal of leading edge developments at major US labs who then fumbled the transfer to products. I can't say enough about how well-written it is and how unique the historical perspective is. Superb!

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Mark J. Motley

Electronic pioneers my Dad worked with

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2013

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This Book well brings back memories of my youth and my Dad's work with Mitsutomi at Hycom. It reminds me of his work an the fruits of his labor, the current proliferation of flat screens and Digital communications.

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R. Beise-Zee

Valuable stories but wait .. don't generalise yet

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2003

Bob Johnstone accomplished the long awaited account of the enormous effort Japanese entrepreneurs have put in innovations in the electronics industry. Western economists have tended to overlook the personal contribution in the success of the Japanese electronics industry. After reading the book, it is just laughable that some in the West have accused the Japanese of stealing western technology. Johnstone provides the details of how painstaking the development of semiconductors was. Yet, the more detail, the less generalisations. Johnstone's stories are not representative, they are selective. It is not true that all technology was created in the US and all technology applied in Japan as Johnstone makes us believe. The book "only" proves that the success of Japanese firms was based on hard work. One of the problems of the book is, that the contribution of Europe are almost (with one exepction) totally omitted (there was considerable scientific progress in seminconductors, LCD, solar cells). This is problably to much to ask for, but it means that the book is incomplete. The second problem is, that the book does not really explain the dominance of Japan in several products lines. Entrepreneurship exists in the US as well, big companies that are unable to develop new industries exist in Japan as well. Johnstone is not convincing that there is a general difference between the US and Japan in entrepreneurship. Maybe he should have looked more into the domestic markets (military customers in US vs. consumers in Japan).

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The Spectator2

Superb description about the reality of Japanese engineers

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 1999

This is one of the best books in the topics of research and development in microelectronics. I was so fascinated by the actual human stories of how unknown researchers and engineers were heavily involved in the process of great innovations through each carrier. In particular, as myself a research engineer, I came across one great common truth throughout the reading : g The great motivations for work are not inspired by financial richness but by individual curiosities leading to a far-sighted vision.h . Probably It may be a quite common sense among researchers and engineers. This book also brought about the fair-minded and objective look for research and development implemented by particularly USA and Japan. This vivid and unique approach could get one out from the stereo-type of idea about the general policies and individual attitudes of science and engineering at both countries. For example, the myth of MITI is not actually representing the great success of Japanese microelectronics industry. Japan could not have developed such highly creative products without having such highly-motivated personalities. However, one thing which I wonder is the difference between English original version and the Japanese one. Compared to two books, the Japanese version did not duplicate the exact same content of English version. Individual photos and some descriptions for example about the dispute between MITI and professor Nishizawa were carefully eliminated from the original English version without any excuse from the translator. I am quite curious to be aware whether the translator got a sort of permission to do so from Mr. Bob Johnstone, who is an author of this book. Otherwise, this book is highly recommended to everybody who wishes to understand the actual story behind the remarkable development of IC chip.

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Arturo DiGenero

Useful corrective, but...

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2007

Johnstone's account of the invention and development of several products on which much of modern technology is based is fascinating, and a useful corrective to myths about the lack of Japanese creativity in science and business.

However, Johnstone's focus on the engineers and businessmen has its own problems, foremost of which is that it gives the reader the impression that inspired geniuses are behind every invention, and leads him to neglect inventions which were developed at companies whose research was more systematic.

Johnstone is an entertaining writer, but sometimes rather hard to follow.

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J Gites

A great book

Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2000

Bookstores in the US are buldging with entertaining and informative "insider" books on Apple Computer, Microsoft, IBM, Xerox PARC etc. and a similar English-language writeup on Japanese companies such as Sharp, Sony, and Seiko is long overdue. Fortunately the Japanese stories and characters are every bit as entertaining and there are the bureaucratic villains as well. As a bonus, nice background information on the growth of the worldwide semiconductor industry is weaved into the narration. "Japan INC" seems a lot less monolithic after reading this book.
The author is married to a Japanese national and apparently devoted much of his adult life to researching this story.

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A. Huang

We were burning

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2002

A must read book for all electronics/computer technology professionals/hobbist. Bob's comprehensive research and writing style made it easy to read and informative.
The book gives you retrospect on what had happened and how it happened. Although they were history but it gave us lesson on the past and we can plan or predict the future. It also gives a lot of insight on technology management. What made things happened and what screwed things up. In another prospective, as a technology worker, it also taught us not to give up easily.
Highly recommended.

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jannis53

Warum Japan den Elektronik-Markt erobern konnte

Reviewed in Germany on July 30, 2015

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Diese Buch sei so manchen Manager ans Herz gelegt. Es zeigt auf, dass es nicht Geld von MITI war, welche die enormen Fortschritte in Schlüssel-Technologien brachte. Es waren vielmehr unternehmerische Fähigkeiten wie Vision, Zähigkeit und Quer-Denken. Weiters denken erfolgreiche japanische Firmen längerfristig.

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We Were Burning: Japanese Entrepreneurs And The Forging Of The Electronic Age Paperback – September 24, 1999

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