According to staff and wire reports as reported in the Baltimore SUN newspaper on April 2, 1998 verbatim:

"Business confidence at Japanese companies took a nose-dive in December [1997] and there's no sign of recovery anytime soon, a major business survey said today."

"One day after the government implemented its 'Big Bang' financial market reforms, the Bank of Japan said in its quarterly survey that companies blame the government for not implementing effective economic stimulus measures."

"As expected, the closely watch survey of 9,308 companies [including Shimadzu Corporation] found growing concern over sluggish economic growth at home [in Japan] and worries about the impact of the financial crisis in neighboring Asian nations."

n.b. Sounds like they are playing the blame game in Japan! Everybody is pointing the finger at someone else. Where's the fall guy.... who's the fall guy?

n.b. Shimadzu Corporation exports it's products (if you can call it that) to six of the 7 major continents. Considering all the malcontent running around in Japan, do you suppose that they are also exporting some of this malcontent in the form of defective/antiquated/inferior analytical instruments to their wholly-owned subsidiaries around the world? (Shimadzu Scientific Instruments imports most GC, GC-MS, AA, TOC, UV-Vis & HPLC products directly from Japan for sale in the US. Do you know what potential problems you might be importing to your lab from Shimadzu?)

n.b. With all this turmoil swirling around Japan, will their wholly-owned subsidiaries be around tomorrow? What are the chances of buying equipment that may not be supported or serviced locally? Could it happen to you? (It's better to seek these answers NOW!)

n.b. Considering the devalued Japanese yen (which reached a high of 135 against the American dollar in April 1998), what kind of price cut did you get? If you recently bought Shimadzu equipment imported from Japan, you should have received a significant price discount in the double-digit range? (If not, you may have been taken for a ride by Shimadzu without your knowledge or consent!)

n.b. How much money do you think that Shimadzu Corporation has devoted to new products/technologies during the past five years? What does their R & D pipeline look like? What cutting-edge innovations is Shimadzu known for? (We'll say it again.... Shimadzu is more of a follower than a leader in the field of analytical instrumentation!)

n.b. What are the long-term prospects of this company? Where is the Shimadzu Financial Summary for the year ending March 31, 1997? (that's right, we said 1997.... the last summary published was for the period ending 31 March 1996 --- what gives?) Is Shimadzu hiding something else again? What other info are they NOT volunteering?