Nissan's Carlos Ghosn Becomes Unlikely Star of Japanese Comic
By Todd Zaun
The Wall Street Journal
December 27, 2001

TOKYO -- At first glance, he's a typical comic-book hero: He comes from a faraway place, has unusual powers and is dedicated to setting things right. But Japan's latest cartoon sensation wears a business suit instead of a cape.

Meet Carlos Ghosn, the non-Japanese chief executive officer, and savior, of Nissan Motor Corp. -- and the current star of "Big Comic Superior," a biweekly Japanese comic book that began serializing his life story last month.

The first panels of "The True Life of Carlos Ghosn" (rhymes with phone) show the CEO as a boy sitting near a fence on his school playground. Arms crossed and eyes closed in deep concentration, he listens to cars passing by out of sight on the other side of the fence. A companion who can see the cars going by says, "Here comes another one."

Young Carlos, eyes still closed, listens to the sound of the motor, then announces: "Cadillac Eldorado."

"Bingo!" exclaims his friend.

The next cartoon panels flash ahead to 1999: Inside Nissan's boardroom, Mr. Ghosn is presenting his plans to rescue the car maker, which is on the brink of collapse after years of losses. He vows to the nervous Japanese managers to return Nissan to profitability by March 2001, or resign. One executive, beads of sweat running from his brow, stammers, "Th-th-this guy really believes he can change Nissan."

And so he did -- in a most un-Japanese way, as might be expected of a man who was born in Brazil, raised in Beirut, Lebanon, and is a citizen of France.

Nissan's chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, has become the subject of a Japanese comic-book series aimed chiefly at adult readers.

Mr. Ghosn is 47 years old. His Japanese adventure began two years ago, when France's Renault SA, having bought 36.8% of Nissan, sent him here to lead Nissan's restructuring -- a process that entailed closing factories, axing thousands of jobs and cutting off small, money-losing affiliates. As Mr. Ghosn had promised, Nissan, which had been near bankruptcy, posted a profit for the year ended this past March.

Japan takes two things very seriously: business and comic books, which, if not highbrow, are considered respectable reading material among young salarymen. At Shokgakukan, the publisher of "Big Comic Superior," "The True Life of Carlos Ghosn" seemed an idea whose time had come.

"Ghosn-san has reformed the company and achieved a result that didn't seem possible in a Japanese framework," says Akihiro Yoshino, an editor in the adult-comic division at Shokgakukan. "He has a message of hope that has woken people up to new possibilities and we wanted to convey that message."

Big Comic Superior is targeted squarely at the salaryman set: 90% of its readers are men, and most are between the ages of 25 and 40, says Mr. Yoshino. The comic book, sold mostly at newsstands in subway stations, normally has a circulation of about 500,000. But the publisher is printing extra copies of the six editions that will carry the Ghosn series.

The Nissan turnaround saga is resonating loudly here because it comes at a time when the Japanese economy is distressed and managers are debating how far they can go in adopting Ghosn-like Western management practices, including layoffs and drastic cost-cutting. Japan still cherishes the ideal of lifetime job security and loyalty to suppliers and other longtime business partners.

"It's questionable if his way will work in all industries," says Kiyoshi Fukuda, who works for a company that manufactures heavy machinery. Toyota Motor Corp., he says, "is more impressive than Nissan, because it retains workers while generating bigger profits."

Ken Tanaka, a 59-year-old owner of a pottery company in Ishikawa prefecture, was so taken by Mr. Ghosn that he says he recently bought a Nissan car after driving Toyotas most of his life. "He has a great ability to implement plans," Mr. Tanaka says of Mr. Ghosn. "As the owner of a company, there are a lot of things I can learn from him about management. But I couldn't lay off people like he has."

Mamoru Daido, an assemblyman in the city of Oomiya, Kyoto prefecture, saw the management-style debate up close when Nissan cut production at a factory in Kyoto last year. Mr. Daido says most people in his town supported the move despite the pain it caused to local suppliers and contractors. "If Nissan had postponed scaling down the factory, it might have ended up being closed completely," he says. "I praise [Mr. Ghosn] because he has carried out reform quickly. Reform requires speed."

Fueling the discussion is a firestorm of publicity. Mr. Ghosn's face regularly appears on the covers of the country's top business magazines. Half a dozen books about him crowd the shelves of bookstores. His autobiography arrived in stores at the end of October and sold 150,000 copies in the first month -- just shy of the total attained by the first volume of Jack Welch's autobiography, in Japanese translation, which went on sale at about the same time.

And for the time being, there are the comics. By now, comic-book readers have learned that Mr. Ghosn was a bright but sometimes rebellious teen. He swiped the keys to the family sedan for a late-night joyride but spent most of his nights studying after setting his sights on getting into a prestigious French university. Future installments promise to reveal more on Mr. Ghosn's university days and his stints as a manager in South America and the U.S. for Michelin SA before telling the tale of how he put Nissan on track to recovery.

In telling the Ghosn saga, the comic's creators are relying on an expert -- the hero himself. A Nissan spokesman says Mr. Ghosn sat through eight hours of interviews with the comic's creators and has seen and approved the story line.

-- Miho Inada contributed to this article.