Last week, Japan's media were exultant over a Nobel Prize in Physics award to three native sons. So it came as a shock when, rather than pop another champagne cork, co-honoree Shuji Nakamura poured cold water on the fete.
From his perch at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the 60-year-old scientist unloaded to a pack of giddy Japanese reporters about how Japan stymies the kind of innovation for which he was honored by the Nobel committee. In Silicon Valley, where he moved in 1999, "everyone has a chance to dream the American dream," he said. "Everyone has the chance if you work very hard."
Not so in Japan, he said, where failures to internationalize, take risks and value employees by merit have led to years of stagnation in the fields of computers, smartphones, semiconductors and solar panels. Oh, and as if to throw off Japanese conferenced in from Tokyo, Nakamura delivered his verdict in English. "It's the main reason why American and Chinese producers took over these markets," Nakamura told Kyodo News after his press conference. "If Japanese companies don't reform drastically and implement English as their daily business language, the economy will only continue to contract."