Something must give

Horie goes down in style

MORE than 100 days after the earthquake that hit Japan in March, 30,000 survivors still huddle in shelters, politicians have returned to their bickering and Japan Inc to business as usual. Two of Japan's most prominent entrepreneurs think this is not good enough.

The quake caused a nuclear disaster. So Masayoshi Son, the boss of Softbank, a big mobile operator, believes it is time to rethink Japan's dependence on nuclear power. He is talking to around 20 prefectures about building ten solar-power plants. Converting one-fifth of Japan's unused farmland to solar would generate 50 gigawatts, he says, which is equivalent to the peak output of TEPCO, Japan's largest electricity firm (and a quasi-monopoly).

Japan's old-guard businesses think this would be unnecessarily disruptive. And Mr Son's brashness annoys many. One boss calls him a “parasite” who must be eliminated.

Another young tech mogul has ruffled even more feathers. Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder of Rakuten, an online shopping mall that handles almost a third of Japanese e-commerce transactions, on June 23rd formally quit Keidanren, the club for big Japanese businesses. His gripe is that it opposes economic reforms, such as energy deregulation. “They want to protect old Japan,” he says. This public snub undermines Keidanren's claim to speak for Japanese business with one voice. The old guard are spitting out their tea with fury.

Both men feel brave enough to stick their heads up because, as technology bosses, they do not rely on TEPCO the way other industrialists do. Mr Son also sniffs a commercial opportunity. He has always been bold and decisive: he took on the former telecoms monopoly and bought a bank during Japan's banking crisis a decade ago (though the business floundered). Mr Mikitani wants to reform Japan. “Most businesspeople fundamentally agree with me,” he says, but they are afraid to say so publicly.

Yet the old Japan still has teeth. On June 20th Takafumi Horie, a young internet entrepreneur, was led away to serve a stiff prison sentence for accounting fraud. The founder of Livedoor, a web portal, was known for snubbing authority, making a hostile bid for a national broadcaster and standing for public office. Some fear that his sentence reflects his effrontery as well as his crime.