I'm from the same era and remember many 'Made in Japan" products, all sorts of little knick knacks and toys and hand painted doo dads. "Made in Japan" was a joke and Japan was cheap labor in the '50s into the '60s.
And then all of a sudden, in the later '60s, just about every damned radio or TV or camera or anything electronic came from Japan, old American brands and Japanese brands.
Then the funny looking little Toyota cars started showing up and the rest is history.
Rebuilding Japan With the Help of 2 Americans
8. Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) and W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993). Rebuilding Japan
http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/25/news/ss-26184
As Japan’s products started moving to overseas markets during the 1950s and early 1960s, however, their quality was often a joke. “Made in Japan” had such a bad connotation initially that some companies set up plants in the Japanese village of Usa, which allowed them to say their products were “Made in USA.” It’s difficult to believe now, but even Japan’s vaunted autos flopped miserably when first introduced to the United States in the late 1950s.
Much of the credit for Japan’s flight to quality and the making of its world-class reputation goes to quality guru W. Edwards Deming. Deming urged companies to concentrate on constant improvements, improved efficiency and doing it right the first time.
Deming was a professor of statistics at New York University when he was invited to Japan in 1950 to run a seminar for business leaders. Since the 1930s, Deming was interested in using statistics as a tool to achieve better quality control. Essentially, his idea was to record the number of product defects, analyze why they happened, institute changes, then record how much quality improved, and to keep refining the process until it is done right.
Deming owes at least part of his legendary status in Japan to a professor named Genichi Taguchi, Japan’s home-grown quality management expert, who credited many of the American’s ideas for his so-called Taguchi method. Taguchi and others would go on to influence a generation of Japanese engineers who would become the backbone of the nation’s growing manufacturing prowess.
“I’m very impressed by the way the Japanese admire [Deming],” said Gregory Clark, president of Japan’s Tama University. “They keep on talking about him as if he’s a god.”
Scholars note that Japan was also receptive to Deming at a time when America was not, in part because Deming’s ideas dovetailed with many of Japan’s own traditions. Japan had long held hard work and quality craftsmanship as important virtues, and its technology even during the war surprised many Americans. Deming preached that companies must treat workers as associates, not hired hands, and he blamed management if workers were not motivated to work well.
“We imported the system, but modified it to the Japanese style,” said Naohiro Yashiro, professor of economics at Sophia University.
When Japan hit its peak in the 1980s, forcing many U.S. industries to their knees and prompting Americans to experiment with quality circles and low-inventory manufacturing systems, many of Deming’s ideas were rediscovered by the United States.
As Japan looks ahead, some argue that Japan could learn a thing or two again from the likes of MacArthur and Deming. Japan needs to restructure, weaken the grip of the second generation of huge companies and open the door for a new group of dynamic entrepreneurs.
Likewise, others argue, a decade-long recession, weaker confidence and the complacency that springs from significant wealth may be undercutting Japan’s legendary attention to detail.