A fascinating talk held during the recent History of Games 2024 Conference was by Doctor Letícia Perani on Taito's subsidiary in Brazil; we ran a feature on the extortion and attempted kidnapping of its chairman, Abraham Kogan, but that was just a small anecdote right at the end. For your author, this talk was enthralling because while the Japanese branch of Taito is thoroughly understood, the fact there was a Brazilian branch was a hitherto unknown revelation. Be honest, were you aware of Taito in South America?
It also brought up an interesting point: Taito is not a Japanese company. Its founder, Michael Kogan, was a foreigner (Ukrainian), putting it alongside other famous companies, like Sega (American), BPS (Dutch), and SoftBank (Korean), which had a profound impact on the Japanese games industry despite their originators being from outside Japan.
Dr Perani also gave a fascinating statement on discoveries regarding Taito's international nature. As Dr Perani explained: "Professor Melanie Swalwell and I came up with the hypothesis that Taito was one of the first multinational companies specialising in games, or maybe even the first! As Pr Swalwell reports in her paper Heterodoxy in Game History: Towards More 'Connected Histories' (2021), we uncover a Taito advert in Cash Box magazine (5 July 1975, p.10) with contact addresses and phone numbers for the main offices in Japan and four other branches: Brazil, Australia, USA, and Europe (Belgium). We also know about Taito New Zealand and a mysterious 1980s UK branch: Taitel - we didn't find much about the company itself, only about their machines."
Much of the talk was about the challenges of delineating between personal memories of events, and objective facts. A lot of the documented history of Taito Brazil is based on unsubstantiated oral histories, or official statements likely made to capitalise on certain laws. So, in many ways, the talk was like a detective story, trying to find the facts. Much of the methodology involved doing searches in primary printed sources, then cross-referencing these with online information or statements from enthusiasts.
Despite conjecture that a lot of the companies pinball and arcade machines were unlicensed copies, there's some evidence that actually, they might have been manufactured due to its parent company, Taito Corporation, having official distribution deals. Two examples being Catch Match and Time Fighter - the latter of which is actually a license of Konami's Time Pilot, with Dr Perani showing official Taito advertising posters for it.
There are unsubstantiated oral accounts of EPROMs made in New Zealand being shipped to Brazil, though they're still searching for evidence. Newspaper claims of Taito Brazil exporting machines to Japan and Latin America have been debunked as extremely unlikely, and the official statements were possibly fabricated for the press to capitalise on government tax subsidies for companies exporting goods - two contradictory press statements were held up regarding this.
One nice aspect was the exploration of amusement games, such as pinball, prior to the company making traditional CPU based arcade games. This dovetails with Tomohiro Nishikado developing Space Invaders, one of Japan's earliest CP-based arcade games, and also another talk on Bally's arcade games in Ireland, long before Bally-Midway would produce Mortal Kombat. There's not a lot of coverage on pre-CPU games, but it's worth knowing how these developers started out.
The presentation culminated with your author asking: why not just interview Abba Kogan? Which resulted in the revelation and later verification of certain unpleasant events he encountered.
Comments 6
Interesting!
I'm not sure I agree with your criteria for a company being Japanese or not. For me, if the company was first registered in Japan then it's Japanese. The nationality of the owner is irrelevant, surely?
@gingerbeardman
A valid statement. However, for me, it's interesting because of how the Japanese do business. There's a lot of etiquette and expectations unique to Japan, which foreigners can struggle with. Certainly with Henk Rogers he described a mild resistance to foreigners.
Japan was very insular; during the Tokugawa period; pre-WWII (even post WWII; English language signs for tourists were only added post Millennium with the world cup; seeing another gaijin was rare generally). It was also a mono-ethnic nation. You rarely saw foreigners if at all. Other East Asian nations like China and Korea also have a troubled history with Japan, so you didn't see them overtly.
I'm generalising, obviously. Based on personal observation, interviews, and what I recall ftom my Understanding Japan module from uni.
But broadly - Japan was very much for the Japanese. They exported or imported, sure, but modified to suit their tastes.
Random aside: JP doctors used to tell patients not to buy medicine abroad because JP medicine was specially catered to JP bodies.
You read interviews about Yamauchi, and he was mildly hostile to foreigners. Rogers earned his respect playing Igo.
Obviously foreigners were able to start companies in Japan, but they faced a set of unique local challenges in gaining acceptance from Japanese colleagues and consumers.
This is less to do with the games industry and more business in general.
For one thing, can you imagine starting a company and having to know Japanese or use a hotshot interpretor because so few JP businessmen spoke English? It's different to a foreigner going to America, where the language of business is English and everyone learns it.
I find foreigners staking a claim in Japan and succeeding to be unusual and fascinating (at least up until after the Millennium).
@Diogmites
Thanks! That statement needed expanding really, since both before and after WWII there were different scenarios.
After the Admiral Perry incident the country did open up. And send delegates abroad to study how foreign countries operated. There was even consideration to adopting English. And they were part of the League of Nations, etc.
But when you look at all the sources for the last 200 years, there is a recurring feeling of otherness.
Random example: the term "Galapagos Syndrome" originates from Japan. It applies to phones and computers. JP phones and PCs were wholly unlike any others until later standardisation. Take computers for example. Americans, Brits, French, East Bloc, there was to a degree common overlap. A Yugoslavian could move to the UK and do well coding Speccy games (it happened). Japan? That's a whole other ballgame with different rules and set-up.
I don't want any of this to sound negative or xenophobic. The Japanese are very warm and kind to foreigners. They're a wonderful and creative nation I'm enamoured with. But being successful there, in business, having come from outside the culture, requires special fortitude.
For concrete specific examples I'd cite interviews with: Jeremy Blaustein, Victor Ireland, Ted Woolsey, Joseph Redon, Henk Rogers, Jez San. Game Over by David Sheff. Possibly Kalinsky of Sega, in terms of how US/JP staff handle things - though Sega is kinda odd, given the huge infighting between depts.
@Sketcz You’re welcome. I checked back and noticed you made the correction with no reply, and so i deleted my own correction reply. I thought it would be our secret, though i should have known there was an extensive reply incoming and left it lol.
I actually was really into Japanese history long ago, for a time, and my two main foci were the Pacific theatre in WW2 and also Tokugawa Ieyesu’s reign, as well as the resulting period. Interesting stuff.
Commodore Perry was, in my limited estimation, an ass, as drunk on ideas of manifest destiny as he was on the grog that fatally scarred his liver.
I imagine his blowhard tactics did little for the already failing health of the then-current Tokugawa, Ieyoshi, who died of heart failure a month after Perry’s initial visit. Ieyoshi was a virile man who sired a total of 24 children, only one of which survived past the age of 20. This is telling of the hardships Japan was facing at the time, particularly the Great Tenpo Famine, whose wake saw governmental reform and lean times.
I’ve never heard of “Galapagos Syndrome”, and knowing what i do of the Galapagos Islands as well as Japan, the phrase seems an apt title for numerous possible examples of ‘the otherness’ of the Japanese, as you describe it. Interesting that it pertains to cell phone and PC technology and i thank you for sharing!
I did not take your comments as xenophobic. My current partner is half-Japanese, her mother and family are from there, so along with that, my reading of some Japanese history, watching of films and playing of games, has granted me some perspective on them, though without actually having ever visited (yet) , i rely on others to strengthen the veracity of that perspective.
Thank you for the suggested interviews and food for thought!
One interesting anomaly is the Iranian-American programmer Nasir Gebelli who "infiltrated" Japan during those Galapagos years, doing great things at SquareSoft.
@gingerbeardman
Yes! Nasir. In interviews he said Square knew him already from his Apple II games. So that was a good avenue in. I would rank that alongside Henk Rogers as a fascinating example of gaijin doing well in JP during those times.
@Diogmites
Cool reply. I didn't think highly of Perry either. He basically rocked up with cannons blazing and demanded entry. Galapagos Syndrome is a fascinating rabbit hole to go down. I like to apply it to the Japanese FPS, was doing its own funky thing in isolation while the rest of the world was building up to Doom.
Tap here to load 6 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...