Foreigners in Japan: Where Are the Leaders? Where Have All the Real Men Gone?

I have read about a time when "real" men were considered the "strong, silent type."

DAVID BOWIE - YOUNG AMERICANS

"Where have all papa's heroes gone?"

Where have all the strong silent types gone today? Previously, I asked what lessons did panicking and running away from Japan - without thinking and doing some cursory, calm and level-headed risk assessment - teach our staff and associates about what kind of people we are? 


In an earlier blog post entitled: Tokyo Crisis Update: Nuclear Meltdown, Drama Queens, TV News and Coca-Cola.

I will, here, take this chance to strongly criticize the foreign management of Coca-Cola Japan for showing such a compete lack of responsibility to their employees and to the Japanese people. So much for Corporate Social Responsibility, eh Coca-Cola? Also, so much for dedication to your work and company. Leaving on a "business trip"? Disgusting. Don't you clowns have the guts to even say that you are running away? Saying that it is a "business trip" allows you to get paid from your company at the same time you skirt your responsibilities all the while you expect that your staff and workers continue on like everyday? If I were your boss, we'd definitely have more than a few words about this. I'd probably fire you.

I can understand you sending your family away... But you running away too? And then expecting to get paid at the same time!? 

In that article, I take Coca-Cola Japan executives to the mat for their cowardice and dishonesty. But you can be sure that they are no more or less guilty than many foreign upper-management at other companies. The Japanese have lost respect for those people. Their positions of authority have been completely compromised. In many cases, their companies should start to look for replacements.


It takes a very long time to build trust. It takes one action to destroy that trust. The Japanese no longer trust these people.

I have even written in Nuclear Disaster: The Scorecard So Far how the back lash against these people has begun:

If the situation were so bad and they bothered to make rational decisions - while showing a tiny bit of leadership qualities - then they'd have had the guts to say that they were running away and told the Japanese staff to go home; or they would have sent their families away and stayed with the ship. I know for first hand fact that the Japanese staff left over by their panicking foreign bosses have very little respect for those people. They probably should have zero; which were just about the odds of a nuclear disaster hitting Tokyo.

Let me give you an example of a leader who deserves massive respect and knows how to make a company culture whereby his staff and workers will follow him to the end of the earth. I heard from an extremely reliable source that, during the crisis, the foreign president of Godiva chocolates, Jerome Chouchan, decided to send his family away but he stayed on because he said that he felt like, "If I leave now and leave my Japanese staff to fend for themselves it would be like the captain leaving the sinking ship first." He said this and this gentleman is a French citizen! (This means you other westerners who diss the French must bow their heads.) Bravo!

Don't believe me? I also posted about how the ridicule has begun amongst the Japanese in New Word in Japanese Lexicon: "Fly-Jin":

Akiko Fujita tweets, Learned new term tonight: "Fly-Jin." Foreigners who fled Japan.

Perhpas even worse than the disrespect we have created, what about the longer lasting, and more devastating effects did our actions teach our children? What did our actions teach them as to how to handle themselves in the case of an emergency? You can bet your bottom dollar that our kids will face more than one emergency in their lives. What a great lesson in responsibility and calm, level headed thinking did our blind panic teach them?

What will our children think of us when they grow older and compare us to, say, our grandparents who sacrificed all and fought and died in World War II?


Where have all the real men gone?