Japan comes up small beer when it comes to size -- in square mileage, it’s no larger than the state of California – and foreign coverage of this country is overwhelmingly concentrated in Tokyo. But even so, a single city does not a country make. There is no shortage of business stories playing out across the Japanese archipelago, which is why it was thrilling to hop a plane for the island of Shikoku, the “Tibet of Japan,” perhaps the last corner of Japan that is untamed and so draws intrepid young Japanese hankering after the slow life. Japan’s curmudgeonly and renowned critic, American intellectual Alex Kerr, chose the rustic charms of central Shikoku for his retreat, calling it the last bastion of Japanese tradition and unspoiled nature.

Our brief on this trip, of course, was (sadly) not to lose an axle and all sense of time on a Shinto shrine-studded mountain road, but spend two days in the quiet city of Tokushima, home for the remarkable company profiled in our story, Nichia.

Nichia is invariably portrayed unflatteringly in English reports as the heavy, the Goliath trying to squash David – in this case, its former engineer, Shuji Nakamura, inventor of the blue diode. The blue diode opened the way to practical use of those light-emitting diodes that are becoming so indispensable to daily life. In fact, in a landmark 2005 legal case, Nichia was forced to pay Nakamura $8 million for his breakthrough invention.

Nichia has since become synonymous with some of the worst of Japanese corporate management -- Japan Inc.’s refusal to recognize and properly compensate star employees

Problem is, talk to engineers around Tokushima -- including those with no financial tie to Nichia nor any particular incentive to take its side -- and the David vs. Goliath image proves to be, at the very least, a gross oversimplification of the facts.

The Nichia legal case was well beyond the scope of our reporting on the LED industry, but clearly is far more nuanced than a casual reading in English would indicate. Shiro Sakai, the esteemed Tokushima University professor who appears in our second story, also was instrumental in the pioneering work that made the blue diode a reality.

Perhaps one day a more even-handed treatment of the miraculous work that went into LEDs will be published -- but don’t expect it to come from Nichia, which is doing its best to blithely put the past behind it.