The agony of Japan Inc.

 

Companies like Apple, IBM and Microsoft once stood in the shadow of much larger and more powerful Japanese electronics giants. Those days are long gone -- and, lately, it looks like they may never come back.

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

"This country is in a war and some people understand it and some people are siding with the enemy."
FORTUNE -- Believe it or not, someone once wrote those paranoid words about Japanese corporations. It was only two decades ago, when people fretted – wrongly, if profitably – about the awful and certain specter of Japan eating America's economic lunch.
I found that paranoid quote in Rising Sun, the forgettably terrible 1992 airport novel about American cops foiling Japan Inc. with videotapes (consumer goods almost certainly manufactured by Japan Inc.). But it wasn't only Michael Crichton profiting from such cultural hypochondria. Nonfiction bestsellers in that bygone era included Karel van Wolferen's Enigma of Japanese Power, Clyde Prestowitz's Trading Places, and Pat Choate's Agents of Influence.
They were all bad books, and the only reason to remember them now is to measure the high watermark of innovative power that Japan's electronic giants once touched, albeit briefly, before falling again. And falling hard. There was a time when companies like Apple (AAPL), IBM (IBM) and Microsoft (MSFT) stood in the shadow of Japanese electronic giants like Sony (SNE), Panasonic (PC), Sharp (SHCAY) and Nintendo (NTDOY). But no more.