On March 28, 2024, Japan once again reported two cases of death caused by taking Kobayashi Pharmaceutical's products containing red yeast rice.
So far, four victims have passed away, and more than 100 victims are still hospitalized.
According to media reports, the situation of hospitalized patients is not optimistic.
As more and more negative news breaks out, on the surface, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical is facing a serious public relations crisis, as an industry giant with a history of more than 100 years, the current situation can easily put the company in a place of no return.
However, judging from the company's response, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical does not seem to have taken this matter to heart.
Looking back at the ins and outs of the incident, we can see some clues:
First of all, on March 25, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical's stock price plunged 16.51% intraday, which attracted the attention of all sectors of society.
On the same day, the company announced that 33 people used a certain health care product containing red yeast rice produced by the company, resulting in kidney lesions, and 26 people were hospitalized for serious illness, which caused the company's stock price to move.
From this response, it can be seen that the situation of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical's red yeast rice health products causing disability has actually appeared from a very early age.
As early as early January, the company received a report from a partner hospital that at least six patients were abnormally admitted, and according to the test results, it may be related to red yeast rice health products.
However, at that time, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical replied to the hospital, saying that it could not ensure the reasonableness of the report, and at the same time secretly used its own energy to silence the major hospitals, covering the incident for 2 months!
It wasn't until he encountered a greater capital force and showed his original shape in the stock market that he had to admit his mistakes, which is a real deception!
It is worth mentioning that although Kobayashi Pharmaceutical's red yeast rice health products have overseas sales channels, most of them are still used to supply their own countries, which shows that they do not bother to grade customers at all, but despise and harm them equally.
In this state of mind, it is reasonable for the products it produces to have various abnormalities.
As a mature company, since product problems are unavoidable, public relations is also an important means to save its image.
After all, huge compensation problems cannot be avoided, and in this process, a positive attitude, friendly words, and self-blame will help to re-establish the company's image, and if handled properly, the company's image will even be higher than when there was no problem.
Unfortunately, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical's behavior fully proves its lack of social responsibility!
After identifying the product problem, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical could only give a far-fetched explanation, claiming that 6.9 tons of raw materials in the red zone were mixed with anomalous substances.
This statement is very worthy of scrutiny, Kobayashi Group believes that it is also a victim, and the so-called abnormal substances may be external input, bacterial species mutation, and competitor framing, anyway, the specific reason is unknown.
And these reasons, in the final analysis, are uncontrollable!
In other words, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical's controllable quality control link is not a problem at all!
In addition, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical also said that as of now, there is no conclusion on whether there is a correlation between this unknown ingredient and consumers' illness, and it fully puts on a pitiful face for unknown reasons.
However, in the market, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical not only frantically recalled the products in circulation, but also strongly urged consumers to stop taking these products immediately.
Of course, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical has not forgotten its traditional skills - the spirit of craftsmanship!
Akihiro Kobayashi, president of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical, bowed frantically and apologized at the press conference, and vowed to find out the cause, stop the situation from deteriorating, and actively fulfill his mission to protect the health of the medical environment in Japanese society.
Looking at his impassioned appearance of talking about corporate responsibility, people who don't know still think that Kobayashi Pharmaceutical is a victim.
Although the fatal casualties of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical Health Products appeared unexpectedly, it was not completely untraceable.
In fact, in the past two decades, Japanese companies, many of which are world-renowned large enterprises, have frequently broken out of quality problems, data fraud, and inconsistent recall labeling.
Scandals such as bowing, apologizing, resigning, and recalling have appeared one after another, and this has cast a heavy shadow on the "halo" of "Made in Japan."
Many scholars say that the superficial reason behind the frequent scandals in Japan, from Japan's steel, automobiles, and food processing to the pharmaceutical industry this time, may be that there are serious problems in the production and management system of enterprises, but the deeper problem is that Japanese manufacturing has gradually lost its competitiveness.
As we all know, as a defeated country in World War II, Japan's rapid rise in the 70s of the last century was entirely due to the support of the United States.
Through the colonial model, a relatively complete production line was acquired and upgraded, and it successfully entered the Western market.
This prosperity almost makes people forget that Japan's industry started entirely on copycats, and can only rely on labor-intensive industries, sacrificing the lives of entire generations in exchange for the country's development.
It is undeniable that Japan has taken a certain lead in the fields of pharmaceuticals, automobiles, software, semiconductors and other fields with the help of this wave of political dividends, but when China has started round after round of industrial upgrading, we have shown a latecomer trend.
On the other hand, Japan, because it has chosen a direction contrary to the mainstream of the world in the wave of Industry 4.0, its industrial upgrading is extremely difficult, which in turn leads to a decline in product competitiveness and a gradual decline in market competition.
In Japan's industrial system, the most competitive products are intermediate products such as semiconductors, carbon fibers, synthetic biologics, and chemical raw materials, rather than final products that are directly put on the market.
Even if the production requirements are lowered, it is not easy to be directly exposed, and it is difficult for consumers to find out directly.
The weakening of this external constraint has "encouraged" the "flower of evil" in the hearts of production enterprises to sprout and sprout, making some people take risks.
The problem of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical once again confirms this statement, and it also perfectly explains why there have been many scandals in Japanese manufacturing in recent years, and they have been losing one after another.
This incident is not so much a scandal of the Kobayashi Group, but rather a normalized reflection of the decline of Japanese manufacturing.
On the one hand, Japanese manufacturing is notorious, and on the other hand, various production management loopholes have always been hidden.
It's just that Japanese society has always been "ashamed" to expose its own scandals, and in the period of rapid economic development, the media will not exaggerate corporate scandals and pour cold water on the economy!
This creates a false impression that Japanese companies are excellent.
As the world enters an era of barrier-free information interaction, it is becoming easier and easier to expose these issues as Japanese society changes, and people realize that Japanese companies are no different from other companies, but they are obscured by their halo and reputation.
Although these capital giants have had a good relationship with the government for many years and monopolized the market and public opinion, the crackdown on the group should not be underestimated, and the quantitative change will cause qualitative change, which may eventually collapse the Japanese industrial and economic system.
Resources
Part of this article about the Made in Japan scandal is referenced from the BBC's "Most of Japan's cmopetitors sold far more EVs in 2020", published on March 6, 2021
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