Considering the current state of Japan's economy, it's remarkable to recall that 60 years ago there were hundreds of companies both old and new jockeying restlessly to fill the vacuum left after almost all the nation's cities were heavily bombed in World War II — jockeying, that is, with the kind of entrepreneurial verve now associated with China or India.
And yet, in the memories of many now elderly Japanese that bygone spirit of experimentation, creative product development and aggressive marketing lives on. Kotaro Horiuchi is a case in point.
Horiuchi, who is currently in his 85th year, is a boat designer whose career almost perfectly coincided with the postwar decades in which Japan rose from ruin to become the first country dubbed an "Asian tiger."