Here's a clue:
"...that land, from the top of Fujiyama to the bottom of its sea, where even right now chubby half-naked diving girls are irritating oysters to produce pearls."
I must stress that quote is not from Mr. Keohane but rather is from a character in the television series M*A*S*H.
I do not know Mr. K's thoughts about Fuji or oysters.
From the Financial Times, November 5:
David Keohane in Tokyo, Kana Inagaki in Toyota city, and Peter Campbell in Gothenburg
Toyota’s battle to catch up with Tesla in a new era of electric vehicles is playing out in one of the oldest parts of the carmaking business: the assembly line.
The Japanese carmaker has been claiming technology breakthroughs in solid-state batteries and last week placed an $8bn bet on the US electric vehicle market as it tries to persuade investors of its ability to compete with Tesla.
But Toyota is also being challenged by Tesla on the factory floor, where the world’s most valuable carmaker is pioneering a fundamental change to the way cars are made. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk argues that legacy assembly processes need to be changed for battery-powered vehicles, simplifying and speeding up carmaking with fewer suppliers and vehicle models.
Some car executives and analysts expect Tesla’s process — which Musk calls “gigacasting” — to set a new benchmark for building vehicles, replacing the vaunted Toyota Production System based on just-in-time manufacturing efficiency.
“The way Toyota builds cars has been considered the standard but it’s extremely shocking to think that what Tesla is proposing is likely to become the standard for producing EVs. The impact on Japan’s car manufacturing will be monumental,” said Takaki Nakanishi, a veteran automotive analyst who runs his own research group.It leaves Koji Sato, Toyota’s new 54-year-old president, fighting to show that his company’s well-honed methods for producing millions of vehicles each year in multiple configurations will remain a competitive advantage in the electric vehicle era.
The way Tesla is making cars “is quickly moving to become an industry standard”, said one senior executive at a European automaker....
....MUCH MORE
We have been following Mr. Keohane's travels and travails for years, from the RBI's currency switcheroo in India to bicycling his way around the gilets jaunes protests in Paris to Dublin where we didn't see his byline during his editorship, and now Tokyo.
Looking forward to the Japanese currency reform bringing out Mrs.Watanabe in her new protest vest.
