Most of the major Japanese corporations have released their earnings results for the latest business year ended in March. Many of them reported brisk earnings, including Toyota Motor Corp., whose net profit topped 1 trillion yen for the first time. According to the Bank of Japan's "tankan" survey and other estimates, Japanese businesses as a whole rang up higher profits for the second year in a row.

These brisk earnings are attributed not only to external factors, such as the upward trend in the global economy, but also to internal ones, such as each company's progress in executing management reforms. For a long time now, the main agenda of corporate Japan has been to eliminate excess labor, plants and equipment, and debt. In the 1990s, many companies spent their time executing restructuring of a "defensive" sort of nature, and market watchers hailed their efforts. In many cases, share prices would actually rise when a company announced layoffs.

However, the results of a recent Keidanren survey on management strategies at blue-chip manufacturers like Toyota Motor Corp., Canon Inc. and Takeda Chemical Industries Ltd., indicates that many of the firms doing well are engaged not just in "defensive" restructuring, but in "offensive" efforts designed to expand their business. In fact, many of the surveyed companies were found to be investing more in research and development, beefing up sales capabilities, aggressively pursuing overseas operations, and hiring and developing more human resources.