Why Japanese excellence doesn’t resonate abroad, and how to give it a proper voice
By Sho Sato
October 31, 2025
Japan’s cultural pull has never been stronger. Record tourism[1], a global boom in Japanese restaurants, and an ever growing fascination with Japanese craft and design. Yet the value captured by Japanese companies and founders lags far behind the attention. This isn’t a product problem; it’s a communication problem.
In a favorable home market, shared context lets quality “speak for itself.” For decades, Japan’s world leading economy allowed companies to live comfortably in this environment. However, as Japan’s economy has weakened, and international expansion shifted from what was once a luxury to a necessity, a gap emerged. Abroad, the familiar context disappears. Markets built on diversity require explicit communication, not just of features, but of values and philosophies. If you can’t articulate why your work matters, you can’t command premium pricing. You become a commodity.
This is the reality Japanese companies have failed to adapt to. Accustomed to a domestic market where everyone shares the same aesthetic vocabulary and cultural codes, they never learned to compete on story or meaning. Without that capability, their philosophy of “good quality at reasonable prices” becomes a self-fulfilling trap toward low-margin commodity competition.
“This is the reality Japanese companies have failed to adapt to. Accustomed to a domestic market where everyone shares the same aesthetic vocabulary and cultural codes, they never learned to compete on story or meaning.”
Other countries learned this earlier. When Italy and France needed to compete globally, they built systematic infrastructure to communicate value—not just legal protections like “Made in Italy,” but coordinating bodies like Comité Colbert that align luxury houses around unified narratives. They train designers, chefs, and craftspeople to articulate not just what they make, but why it matters and what ownership signals.
That’s why Italian leather and French wine command premiums: decades of systematic storytelling about terroir, heritage, savoir-faire. That infrastructure—glossaries, origin stories, trained ambassadors—converts craft into pricing power. Japan has extraordinary craft but almost none of this infrastructure.
Large companies like Uniqlo and Sony learned this through decades of expensive mistakes, before ultimately coming out right. But 95% of Japanese companies are small and mid-sized enterprises. They have no framework for this. They have products, a history, and then fragments of a story.
“Large companies like Uniqlo and Sony learned this through decades of expensive mistakes, before ultimately coming out right.”
Ultimately, they lack a system to communicate with audiences outside of Japan with intentionality that builds connection.
This is what K&C builds: a communication infrastructure through a brand lens that lets Japanese companies creatively articulate value in terms global audiences and markets understand.
At the most fundamental level, Japanese companies need to answer three questions:
1. Why you exist
2. Why you matter
3. Why people should listen
The answers must be systematically integrated into how they communicate their work. This infrastructure is the foundation—not for changing what Japanese companies make, but for ensuring the world understands what they’ve made all along.
The Challenge
The urgency isn’t hypothetical. Every year without this infrastructure, Japanese companies forfeit billions in value to competitors who simply tell better stories. Meanwhile, Japan’s demographic cliff means there’s no going back to domestic-only strategies. The window is closing.
But here’s what makes this moment different: global interest in Japanese culture is at an all-time high. The appetite exists. The products exist. The willingness to pay a premium exists. What’s missing is the bridge—the systematic ability to translate Japanese excellence into visual, written, and experiential language that captures its true value.
This isn’t about becoming less Japanese. It’s about being Japanese in a way the world can finally hear. To be globally Japanese.
That’s the work.
1
Brand Finance, Global Soft Power Index 2025: press release (Feb. 25, 2025) confirming Japan #4 overall and #1 for Business & Trade.
2
Reuters, Apr. 17, 2025: Japan welcomed a record 36.87 million visitors in 2024.
3
Asahi Shimbun (English), Oct. 25, 2024 on MAFF survey: 209,000 Japanese restaurants overseas; +13% YoY, +77% since 2017.
4
World Bank national accounts data. Japan was the world’s second-largest economy from the late 1960s until overtaken by China in 2010, and by Germany in 2023 when measured in nominal GDP.
5
Japan's nominal GDP was approximately $5.3 trillion in 1995 and roughly $4.2 trillion in 2024 (IMF World Economic Outlook Database, October 2024).
6
OECD data shows Japan’s real wages have been largely stagnant since the mid-1990s, with periodic declines. Real wages in 2023 were roughly at 1990s levels when adjusted for inflation.
7
OECD Average Annual Wages data (2023). Japan: approximately $41,000 PPP-adjusted; Germany: $53,000; United States: $77,000. Nominal figures vary but show similar relative gaps.
8
National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (Japan), ‘Population Projections for Japan: 2016-2065’ (medium-fertility variant projection).
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Why Japanese excellence doesn’t resonate abroad, and how to give it a proper voice
By Sho Sato
October 31, 2025
Japan’s cultural pull has never been stronger. Record tourism, a global boom in Japanese restaurants, and an ever growing fascination with Japanese craft and design. Yet the value captured by Japanese companies and founders lags far behind the attention. This isn’t a product problem; it’s a communication problem.
In a favorable home market, shared context lets quality “speak for itself.” For decades, Japan’s world leading economy allowed companies to live comfortably in this environment. However, as Japan’s economy has weakened, and international expansion shifted from what was once a luxury to a necessity, a gap emerged. Abroad, the familiar context disappears. Markets built on diversity require explicit communication, not just of features, but of values and philosophies. If you can’t articulate why your work matters, you can’t command premium pricing. You become a commodity.
This is the reality Japanese companies have failed to adapt to. Accustomed to a domestic market where everyone shares the same aesthetic vocabulary and cultural codes, they never learned to compete on story or meaning. Without that capability, their philosophy of “good quality at reasonable prices” becomes a self-fulfilling trap toward low-margin commodity competition.
“This is the reality Japanese companies have failed to adapt to. Accustomed to a domestic market where everyone shares the same aesthetic vocabulary and cultural codes, they never learned to compete on story or meaning.”
Other countries learned this earlier. When Italy and France needed to compete globally, they built systematic infrastructure to communicate value—not just legal protections like “Made in Italy,” but coordinating bodies like Comité Colbert that align luxury houses around unified narratives. They train designers, chefs, and craftspeople to articulate not just what they make, but why it matters and what ownership signals.
That’s why Italian leather and French wine command premiums: decades of systematic storytelling about terroir, heritage, savoir-faire. That infrastructure—glossaries, origin stories, trained ambassadors—converts craft into pricing power. Japan has extraordinary craft but almost none of this infrastructure.
Large companies like Uniqlo and Sony learned this through decades of expensive mistakes, before ultimately coming out right. But 95% of Japanese companies are small and mid-sized enterprises. They have no framework for this. They have products, a history, and then fragments of a story.
“Large companies like Uniqlo and Sony learned this through decades of expensive mistakes, before ultimately coming out right.”
Ultimately, they lack a system to communicate with audiences outside of Japan with intentionality that builds connection.
This is what K&C builds: a communication infrastructure through a brand lens that lets Japanese companies creatively articulate value in terms global audiences and markets understand.
At the most fundamental level, Japanese companies need to answer three questions:
1. Why you exist
2. Why you matter
3. Why people should listen
The answers must be systematically integrated into how they communicate their work. This infrastructure is the foundation—not for changing what Japanese companies make, but for ensuring the world understands what they’ve made all along.
The Challenge
The urgency isn’t hypothetical. Every year without this infrastructure, Japanese companies forfeit billions in value to competitors who simply tell better stories. Meanwhile, Japan’s demographic cliff means there’s no going back to domestic-only strategies. The window is closing.
But here’s what makes this moment different: global interest in Japanese culture is at an all-time high. The appetite exists. The products exist. The willingness to pay a premium exists. What’s missing is the bridge—the systematic ability to translate Japanese excellence into visual, written, and experiential language that captures its true value.
This isn’t about becoming less Japanese. It’s about being Japanese in a way the world can finally hear. To be globally Japanese.
That’s the work.
1
Brand Finance, Global Soft Power Index 2025: press release (Feb. 25, 2025) confirming Japan #4 overall and #1 for Business & Trade.
2
Reuters, Apr. 17, 2025: Japan welcomed a record 36.87 million visitors in 2024.
3
Asahi Shimbun (English), Oct. 25, 2024 on MAFF survey: 209,000 Japanese restaurants overseas; +13% YoY, +77% since 2017.
4
World Bank national accounts data. Japan was the world’s second-largest economy from the late 1960s until overtaken by China in 2010, and by Germany in 2023 when measured in nominal GDP.
5
Japan's nominal GDP was approximately $5.3 trillion in 1995 and roughly $4.2 trillion in 2024 (IMF World Economic Outlook Database, October 2024).
6
OECD data shows Japan’s real wages have been largely stagnant since the mid-1990s, with periodic declines. Real wages in 2023 were roughly at 1990s levels when adjusted for inflation.
7
OECD Average Annual Wages data (2023). Japan: approximately $41,000 PPP-adjusted; Germany: $53,000; United States: $77,000. Nominal figures vary but show similar relative gaps.
8
National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (Japan), ‘Population Projections for Japan: 2016-2065’ (medium-fertility variant projection).
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