James Abegglen, 81; management consultant wrote 9 books on Japan

James Abegglen, 81, a management consultant and author who helped U.S. companies break into the Japanese market and warned in the 1960s and ‘70s that corporate America should take Japanese industry more seriously, died May 2 in Tokyo.

Abegglen started the Boston Consulting Group’s Tokyo office in 1967 and later launched his own consulting firm, Asia Advisory Service K.K.

A Wisconsin native who served in the Marine Corps in the Pacific during World War II, Abegglen first visited Japan at the end of the war when he was on the team that assessed the effect of U.S. strategic bombing.

Abegglen, who earned a doctorate in anthropology and clinical psychology at the University of Chicago, returned to Japan on a Ford Foundation fellowship in 1955 and spent two years studying the organizational differences between U.S. and Japanese businesses.

His first book, “The Japanese Factory” (1958), is considered a pioneering look at Japanese business culture.

His ninth book, “21st-Century Japanese Management,” was published in 2006.

Abegglen, who served on the faculty at the University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sophia University in Tokyo, became a Japanese citizen in 1997.