I am also a big fan of not using chairs at meetings -- everyone gets too comfortable, and people start reading blogs or whatever instead of focusing on the meeting. The end result is spending 8 hours on something that should have taken 20 minutes.

With that in mind, though, if I were Canon, I'd make sure that the employees subject to these rules got above-market pay and benefits -- otherwise, they'd just leave for less-strict competitors. (Maybe that's not an option with Japan's societal rules right now -- but I'm sure in a generation or so that won't be a problem at all.)

They could also meet the employees half-way and install a moving walkway that moves 5 meters in 3.6 seconds. Then the employees could just stand there and be equally productive.

Also, it might be that the current president of Canon is an ex-soldier. To my experience, ex-soldiers at top positions like this are inclined to invent such weird rules and impose on others without hesitation.

Despite our constant fervor to rush, nearly everything involving the military is ridiculously and irreparably inefficient in ways that outsiders probably wouldn't even believe. Although, I am mostly cognizant of the fact that it takes a hell of a bureaucracy to keep the wheels turning, even if it makes those wheels rusty in the process.

Try us - I'm curious.

You're given a semi-trailer-sized shipment of heavy "product" (whatever it may be). You're directed, along with a half dozen other troops, to empty the truck (by hand; nothing is on pallets) and put the items in the "yard" at location X.

You get about half way through with the truck 2 hours later, and you're told actually the items would go better at location Y. You start moving them. An hour later, it looks like the contractor screwed up and sent you some of the wrong stuff; nobody bothered to check beforehand. You re-load half the truck.

Another hour or so goes by and the Commander decides that since the contractor screwed up one item, you're just sending it all back. You spend a few more hours re-packing the entire truck.

You just spent hours doing something you should have never done in the first place, but it was really important to finish it quickly, which actually, ironically, caused it to take far longer than it should have, due to constantly conflicting orders.

In general, there is a lot of "move stuff here, okay never mind, move it here." or "do this, okay new orders from the top, do this instead" or "do this because it was ordered, even though everyone here knows it will be reversed next week".

You can see this taken to its logical end when it comes to in-country Units replacing each other. Basically, anything and everything the previous Unit accomplished is completely negated and thrown out by the incoming Unit, as they Do Things Differently, Thank You. People wonder why we don't make any lasting progress and the answer is really simple: Ego. Ego and people covering their own asses constantly instead of doing what they know needs to be done.

</rant>

If you ran everything at full efficiency you would need far fewer people - but then in a war there would not be enough people. So you do everything inefficiently so the people (and resources) are there when you need them, and in a war you press the magic efficiency button.

Take your examples:

The loading/unloading was a form of exercise.

Sending the full truck back was a way to keep the truck drivers busy, and also of making sure the trucks are used.

Sending the entire shipment back was a way of keeping the supplier occupied, so that they need to keep people on payroll, who would be needed in a war.

The thing about the in-country units, was actually a form of training - you want each unit to know how to accomplish the entire task. Sure you could use the previous work, but then the incoming unit would not know how to do it. Plus it keeps the incoming unit busy, and everyone, and everything else associated with it, both busy, and in practice.

A unit commander has a big problem: how do I keep my soldiers both busy and trained. The simplest way to do that is to make them redo things someone else already did.

Try looking at all the inefficiency in this light, and it will all make sense.

PS. Were you ever a commander/officer (not sure of the right term)? Or did you ever keep children occupied in the summer?

Uh, no, this was a war-time example. So were my notes about "incoming Units". When we were relieved in Afghanistan, our work was pretty much thrown out, despite the fact that we'd had the most successful deployment (in terms of native opinion improvements, processes improved, etc.) of that theater in years (for our AOR anyway).

While I appreciate the logic of your argument in theory, I assure you, there is no such thing as a "magic efficiency button", which any actual soldier will tell you (or rant to you about) for hours ;)

It's interesting to read the thoughts from people on HN, RE the military, because they are almost universally preposterous.

I wouldn't trust my life to a general who hadn't also successfully run a company full of people who didn't care what he thought and quit when he did something stupid. You may be an experienced military X, but you'd probably be a better X if you also knew how to do X as a civilian. In fact, you'd better be ready to do X as a civilian when your service is terminated, however that may happen.

What a sentence! Instead of arguing and pointing out obvious, I highly recommend you read something about Japan, other than "internet news".

Putting a label on someone's culture at least calls for a few years of actually living there. After 10 years in US I still wouldn't dare giving a grade to American culture, it would take a tome (and I'd still be wrong), let alone labeling it with a single word.

Disclaimer: I'm not Japanese

P.S. Canon&Nikon, despite their "counterproductive" cultures, pretty much destroyed American and German photo equipment industries. These days it feels awkward to say "Kodak moment", most kids will probably ask "who is Kodak?"

My girlfriend works at Proto, a company that produces a bunch of entertainment-related websites. Large company, 10k people. Between meetings and actual work, she spends approximately 15 hours a DAY at work. This is not abnormal. Another friend who works at a kindergarden works 6 days a week (sunday is spent preparing lessons) and about the same (15-16 hours a day).

Read that again, tell me how that is not "counterproductive". In my girlfriend's case, the meetings alone take up 3-4 hours in a day. She leaves at 7 AM and often gets back after midnight. And for what? So that the world can find out the latest gossip about Korean dramas with an easy-to-use GUI?

While working on my startup, I took a small contract at Fujitsu. I was responsible for cleaning up the translations on some of their cell phones (the Docomo F1100 being the main one - a story for another day). I had a chat with some people there and they told me how the game works; Fujitsu gives a small salary, and pays overtime. As a result, average workers sit around for half the day, then work like nuts during overtime to finish their work.

A lot of younger workers realize this is madness, but keep in mind that the people in charge generally came up during a worker shortage in the "bubble" era. These were less competent people who now have seniority in a seniority-based system. Can you imagine how depressing it is to work on a project that you know is going to fail? That's life.

I love Japan, I love the trains, I love the politeness and I love the people. However, given a level playing field (IE: No banks artificially propping up a company to avoid declaring losses on their own records), it wouldn't take much to break the back of a lot of local companies. (As much as I hate admitting it, but I can't work effectively after 8 or 9 hours - and the Japanese don't have superior body operating systems)

> Putting a label on someone's culture at least calls for a few years of actually living there.

No, it doesn't. To give an example, I have no problem labeling Aztec culture as violent.

(Here's the long, boring thread debating this point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=548429 )

I don't need to live somewhere to be able to point out cultural flaws, like I don't need to drink alcohol to point out the dangers of ethanol intoxication.

Don't know if you're trolling, but the iPhone doesn't even support background tasks or multimedia messaging. My Moto RAZR (from 5 years ago) has those features, and supports google maps, video recording, text messaging, full web browsing (via opera mini), and music/video playback.

Takeshi Natsuno, the inventor of Japan’s i-mode mobile web service and former Senior Vice President NTT DoCoMo, said in an interview, “I believe the iPhone is closer to the mobile phone of the future, compared with the latest Japanese mobile phones.” Natsuno also said uses the iPhone 3G himself.

Signed, a guy who used to work at a japanese telco research lab outside of Tokyo.

Point being: Everyone influences everyone else. Pretending one culture is somehow above another is idiotic and irrelevant.