Lekh Juneja, born in India, is one of the rare bosses of foreign origin in Japan, where he runs a famous brand of rice cakes: faced with demographic decline, the archipelago must rely on immigration to regain its dynamism economical, he says in an interview with AFP.
Despite the inexorable aging of its active population, the country remains notoriously reluctant to welcome foreign workers, and has sought for three decades to revive its sluggish growth.
“Forty years ago, I came to Japan because the country was near the top in the world in terms of GDP, it was booming,” recalls Mr. Juneja, 72 years old.
A biotechnology scientist, he is today general manager of Kameda, the Japanese giant of “senbei” (traditional salty sticky rice biscuits).
At one point, “Japan said to itself that it had already obtained everything, the desire to integrate into globalization faded,” laments Mr. Juneja during an interview at Kameda headquarters in Niigata (central west), in the heart of rice-growing Japan.
A national pride, Kameda grew in unison with Japan’s post-war boom, multiplying its revenues tenfold between 1965 and 1974: it became so popular that its name ended up being synonymous with the “senbei” that locals love. Japanese.
At the end of the 1980s, Japanese companies dominated the world’s top 10 in terms of market capitalization. Today, none are on the list anymore.
And the country that saw the birth of the Walkman, the high-speed train and Super Mario no longer sets the tone in terms of technology, overtaken by Silicon Valley, South Korea and China.
“Mindset”
After many ineffective recovery plans, the new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has just launched a massive new program to boost technological innovation – but also to stem the demographic “silent emergency”.
Due to a poor birth rate, the country is expected to see its population decline by almost a third over the next half-century: companies are already struggling to fill vacant positions.
Although it has relaxed its rules in recent years, Japan is not really willing to resort to immigration to meet its labor needs.
However, the world’s fourth largest economy “has no other choice” than to welcome more immigrants, insists Lekh Juneja.
Arriving for the first time in 1984 in the archipelago, he himself worked over the years for a food ingredient manufacturer and then a pharmaceutical company.
“It’s not just a question of numbers, it’s a problem of state of mind, of culture. We must embrace globalization,” he exclaims.
According to a recent study, Japan will need to triple its number of foreign workers by 2040, to 6.88 million.
“Japanese passport”
Since his arrival at the head of Kameda, with a typically Japanese identity, Lekh Juneja has tried to make it a more internationally oriented group and promotes “innovations” on rice-based specialties.
In the new product “test center,” employees try out new recipes and flavors likely to appeal to Vietnamese or American consumers.
Language “is a significant obstacle. When you bring people to Niigata who don’t speak Japanese, it’s very difficult for them,” admits Mr. Juneja.
“We need to change this: (if we employ) people who only know Japanese, our choices will be very limited” both in terms of human resources and development, he warns.
“It is very rare (for a foreigner) to become CEO of a Japanese company,” adds Lekh Juneja. “But look at the United States: Microsoft, Google, these companies have Indian CEOs! “.
For him, “Japan must change”: “Here in Japan, we are proud of our origins. But showing flexibility and integrating people from abroad would be an important asset” for the country.
Foreign business leaders have experienced some setbacks in the archipelago: the general director of the Olympus technology group, the German Stefan Kaufmann, resigned at the end of October after allegations of drug purchases.
In 2018, Carlos Ghosn, the Franco-Lebanese-Brazilian boss of the manufacturer Nissan, was arrested on suspicion of financial embezzlement, before clandestinely fleeing the country.
“He did not give a very good image of foreign CEOs here,” sighs Mr. Juneja. “But the difference between him and me is that I have a Japanese passport. »
