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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Derrick P. who wrote (6989)	10/7/1998 8:57:00 AM
From: chirodoc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

anyone who thinks japan is in a dramatic situation--read this! Wednesday October 7, 1:20 am Eastern Time Credit-crunched Japan businessmen resort to drama By Janet Snyder TOKYO, Oct 7 (Reuters) - With ever-increasing frequency, Japanese companies are falling victim to the credit crunch. But one group of small business people has taken a more dramatic approach to the problem: They produced a play about it. ''The Day the Banks Vanish,'' written, produced and acted by real-life entrepreneurs, hit the stage in central Tokyo on Thursday night, its only performance. About 700 people attended. On entering the auditorium, theatre-goers received the show's programme along with a floppy disk loaded with tips on how to get ever-scarcer financing to keep businesses afloat -- with or without the help of Japan's troubled banks. The Tokyo Association of Small and Medium Businesses, the play's organisers, distributed a manifesto calling for a direct funding scheme to ensure the flow of funds to small businesses and an insurance scheme to help rehabilitate or liquidate them. Kazuo Miyake, a realtor and one of the organisers of the event, told Reuters: ''We decided to try this creative approach to get our message across, and I think we succeeded, judging from the standing-room only crowd.'' Consultancy company owner Yuji Konaka, moonlighting as the play's scriptwriter, wrote in the manifesto: ''We owners of small businesses are suffering from the prolonged economic slump and are making desperate efforts to survive.'' ''Between choked-off demand and the drying up of credit, we're at the end of our rope,'' Konaka said. ''We can't adequately express our rage and sadness over the situation, but more importantly we need to live through this.'' The play could not have been timed better, coming after a Bank of Japan survey last Thursday that showed business sentiment among small firms more abysmal than ever. Japan's largest small business owners group said about 100 of its 4,000 member companies have gone bankrupt this year in the credit crunch. Miyake said this was ominous because Japan's small businesses provide an overwhelming number of jobs in Japan -- 80 percent of total employment. In desperation, a dozen managers of small companies, including Konaka and Miyake, put their heads together in late July to turn the spotlight on the plight of Japanese entrepreneurs. The group now plans to take its case to all of Japan's political parties this month. It is also thinking of taking the show itself on the road to press home the message nationwide