When my family visited Japan in 1991 we were amused by the transaction process in department stores. Upon approaching a cash register, a woman would take our merchandise, hand it to another employee (usually a woman) who would then convey it to the cashier (another woman). After receiving our money she would pass along the merchandise to another woman who would gingerly wrap it in a bag before giving it to us.
Women working in seemingly tedious, non-essential jobs were ubiquitous throughout the store. At each escalator, a woman oversaw entry and exit. So, too, at elevators.
One could only marvel at the extreme customer service Japanese stores provided compared to their American counterparts.
Ah, but that “luxury” service was a condition manifested by Japan’s full employment strategy, guaranteeing “work”—not meaningful work, just employment—to all. Japan had been riding a wave of economic vitality based on automotive and consumer electronics successes. Guaranteeing a job was deemed culturally appropriate.
Within a few years of our family’s visit, an economic tsunami hit Japan, the effects of which the country is still suffering through (https://share.google/aimode/cakQdcIIwMfFAXymW)
I’m reminded of this “Asian economics disaster” by an article in The New York Times detailing a court ruling in China that protects workers displaced by artificial intelligence (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/china-ai-unemployment.html?smid=em-share).
Long-term, it seems improbable that China will be able to accommodate the millions of workers, perhaps tens of millions, who will be made redundant by A.I. What amounts to forced retirement, even with a steady paycheck, will create a population seething with repressed energies.
Unlike Japan, China’s goal of Asian, if not world, hegemony lies beyond its borders. A.I. is not making gameplanning any easier for Chinese officials or their American counterparts.
During that same trip to Japan, organized around interviews with executives of Ito-Yokado, Japan’s most profitable retail company, I met with Toshifumi Suzuki, mastermind behind Seven-Eleven Japan. Suzuki’s passing at age 93 was reported last week (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/business/toshifumi-suzuki-dead.html?smid=em-share).
Suzuki was a dynamic, creative retailer. Though his haed-driving demeanor was not universally revered, his leadership made 7-Eleven a Japanese mainstay. When Ito-Yokado became a franchisee of Dallas-based Southland it opened one store in Tokyo in 1974. When I interviewed Suzuki it operated 4,300 highly-profitable units with extensive services beyond traditional convenience store fare, such as in-store banking. He also introduced bento boxes and seaweed-wrapped rice balls that were replenished several times a day in a store’s 24-hour operations. He also pioneered implementing the first large-scale point-of-sale system for item-by-item inventory management in Japan.
Thanks to Suzuki’s innovations Ito-Yokado was able to buy Southland.
Suzuki disdained market research undertaken by American companies. “American research doesn’t really capture the consumer market,” he told me for an article in Chain Store Age. “Americans look at point of sale data to make merchandise assortments and they think they’re filling market needs. POS data only shows what’s on the store shelf.
“Marketing means to elicit and realize their potential needs.”
In words as current today as they were in 1991, Suzuki said, “Convenience stores in the United States should be where customers want to shop and buy what they want.” He decried past practices that turned c-stores into soft drinks, beer and cigarette shacks. “That’s not a c-store,” he said. “People have illusions that these are c-stores.”
