Wired editor Chris Anderson is blogging his Davos experience at Slate. He sat next to Nobuyuki Idei of Sony at the Japan dinner at Davos. Today he covers Joi Ito’s performance as MC of the Japan dinner. I wish I could have been there!
Wired – Dispatches From Davos By Chris Anderson

Finally it was time for the Ito Show. Out came the acid candor, no less shocking coming in this ultra-establishment setting than it had been last year. He had been warned, he said: “Don’t talk about complicated issues, the foreigners won’t understand.” Nevertheless, he railed. Reform plans read like “Zen riddles,” and nothing ever comes of them. The bureaucracy is defined by its resistance to change; a system that “rewards people for their obedience” and leaves critics fearing retaliation. (“In fact,” he half-joked, “fear of retaliation is what I’m feeling right now.”) Japan had, if anything, fallen further since last year; Ito called again for revolution.

Now while I agree that Japan should do more to export it’s youth culture, it will take a lot more work to turn what is essentially at it’s core a manufacturing economy into an intellectual property economy. It will take another 30 Sanrios and Nintendos etc. Plus, who’s to say that another youth culture won’t become popular in the next decade (Chinese for instance) and supplant the IP from Japan?
Additional relevant articles blogged here.

Japan’s Problems Draw Yawns in Davos; China Becomes New Focus

Japan’s problems seem to have drawn little but yawns from participants in this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, while China’s growing presence on the world economic stage became the center of attention, at least so far as Asia is concerned, Nihon Keizai reported. Economy minister Takenaka did get up and deliver a stemwinder promising that Prime Minister Koizumi is for sure going to cure deflation by expanding the money supply. He did, however, stick to Koizumi’s new line (Digest, 1/24) by avoiding any mention of an “inflation target.” Other Japanese appearing on a Davos panel, including Tokyo University Prof. Takatoshi Ito and Keizai Doyukai chairman Yotaro Kobayashi, seemed unable to make up their collective minds about whether deliberate inflation makes wise policy. Takenaka also drew a little sting from Princeton Economic Paul Krugman, who criticized his lack of follow through on ways and means to push more money into the economy. But most of those who attended the Japan session, Nikkei said, seemed to feel that the pace of change is too slow to deal with the problems. The audience for the Japan panel, the paper observed, was far smaller than one drawn by Cheng Siwei, the vice chairman of China’s National People’s Congress, and the real debate about Asia this year centered not on Japan but on how to strike a balance between the growing Asian superpowers, China and India.

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via Japan Digest