Japan is a place where change takes time. When work first took me there in the 1980s, I came across the suggestion that the way to learn perseverance was to sit on a rock for three years. Afterwards, so said the proverb, you would be able to warm the coldest stone.

Luckily, I was provided with more comfortable seating in the meetings I attended on behalf of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, but I had to display my fair share of patience. My mission was to open up the Tokyo Stock Exchange. I was initially successful, with the Japanese agreeing to change the rules to permit foreign securities firms to buy seats. It would, however, take another three years of passive resistance before three American and three British firms were actually able to take up their places at the exchange.

Yet something of a transformation seems to be under way in the boardrooms of Japan’s corporate giants. Following years of frustration at the disdain with which many senior Japanese executives viewed their shareholders, Shin-zo Abe, prime minister, has made corporate governance reform a pillar of his growth strategy. After a push from him, the Japanese Financial Services Agency and the TSE this year introduced a new corporate governance code. It instructs boards to appoint more outside directors to scrutinise management decisions. If they do not, they have to explain why to shareholders.