When it comes to learning Japanese, most of us muddle through. This article is for the muddlers.

Kaizen here is organic, ubiquitous and attuned to the physical and psychological needs of human beings. At its best, this "human-scale kaizen" eliminates or eases many of the mundane uncertainties, annoyances and embarrassments of daily life.

I recently served as a "private sector representative" in a panel discussion before an audience of foreign graduate students at the University of Tokyo. Many of the students will soon be seeking employment in Japan; because I have spent 25 years living ...

It is a political season. Barack Obama was recently re-elected president of the United States, China has anointed Xi Jinping as its new leader, and Japanese politicians are jockeying for position in advance of a general election to be held on Dec. 16. In ...

A Ponzi scheme. Alleged yakuza ties. Accounting scandals. Executive misuse of company funds for gambling. A record-breaking bankruptcy. Callous disregard of public health and safety. Japanese companies are in the headlines a lot these days. But for all the wrong reasons. While ...

Aimless, Japan has been struggling to find a suitable vision, or model, for its future. Should it strive to be like Finland, small but prosperous? Should it de-emphasize economic growth and focus on sustainability and lifestyle? Should it look to the go-go '80s for ...

Japan is not No. 1. After 20 years of stagnation-punctuated decline, it should not be news to anyone that Ezra Vogel got it wrong in his 1979 best-seller, "Japan as Number One: Lessons for America." Yet, in their endless navel-gazing and wheel-spinning (which, sadly, ...

On the day of his departure from Hokkaido on April 16, 1877, at the end of his tenure as the first president of what later became Hokkaido University, William Smith Clark left his charges, and Japan, with a parting message: "Boys, be ambitious." For ...