ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Japanese firms succeeded first at home and then in exports, but overall failed to move successfully into international operations and globalization. It also examines the relative performance of Japanese firms on several databases, such as the Fortune Global 500 and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Compared to their initial brilliant lift-off in the first global list produced in 1995, Japanese MNCs, like the Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite, seem to have failed to reach global orbit and have fallen back to earth. Much of the loss in market share by Japanese firms was taken up by companies from Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). The foreign customers did not have the same preferences or tastes as Tanaka's domestic Japanese customers or as the easy export acceptors in these foreign markets. As Tanaka-san and his large group of Japanese expatriate managers sought to build up Tanaka Corporation's local operations in the USA.
