The Golden Age of Japanese Electronics — How One Decade Changed Everything

Everything you believe about Japanese electronics is wrong. You think of Sony and Panasonic and Toshiba as the brands that made affordable consumer electronics. Reliable products at reasonable prices. Good value for the money. Respectable but not extraordinary. That is not what they were. For one decade between 1968 and 1978 the Japanese electronics industry was not producing affordable approximations of excellence. It was producing excellence itself. The finest consumer electronics products ever manufactured for any price anywhere in the world were coming out of factories in Tokyo and Osaka and Nagoya during those ten years. Not comparable to the best Western products. Better than them. By measurable margins. At lower prices. With more consistency. This lasted for one extraordinary decade. And then it ended. Not because the industry failed. Because it succeeded so completely that the economic conditions that had produced the achievement were destroyed by the achievement itself. In this video we uncover the full story. How Japan went from made in Japan meaning cheap and poor quality in 1950 to producing the finest consumer electronics in the world by 1973. How W Edwards Deming and the kaizen manufacturing philosophy created the conditions for golden decade excellence. How Pioneer, Sony, Kenwood, Sansui, Nikon, Canon, and Honda simultaneously peaked across multiple industries in the same decade. How the Plaza Accord of 1985 ended the manufacturing advantage that had made it all possible. And why nothing from any industry in any country has quite matched what happened in Japan between 1968 and 1978. — How Japan went from cheap and unreliable to best in the world in twenty years — The W Edwards Deming quality philosophy that built the foundation — Why the kaizen manufacturing approach produced measurably better products — How Sony Pioneer Kenwood and Sansui simultaneously reached their engineering peak — Why the Nikon F Canon F-1 and Olympus OM-1 destroyed German camera dominance — How the Honda CB750 ended the British motorcycle industry in five years — Why the Plaza Accord of 1985 ended the golden decade permanently — What Samsung and LG did to Japan that Japan had done to America New video every week. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one.