Shadows of Asia (SoA) is one of the few sourcebooks I was involved. Prior to that, I only wrote in Shadows of Europe (SoE). Comparing SoE to its predecessor Shadows of North America (SoNA), I thought the part I wrote on corporations from a continenal point of view (rather than a global one) had a real value. Especially, it allowed to use the sourcebook alone, without having to check Corporate Download. In SoNA's case, I found this part was lacking so much I finally wrote it myself. I think it shows the amount of information missing without it.

With the SoA? the hard part rather was to have all the already existing information on corporations fitting in, rather than adding new elements on top of that. In Europe, I already had to describe Saeder-Krupp in two or three paragraphes. In Asia, there was MCT, Renraku, Shiawase, Yamatetsu and Wuxing, with even less wordcount allowed. I also wanted to describe the real nature of Japanese domination over Asia and Shadowrun world at large, and comes back on how the Pacific Prosperity Group worked. Several other authors also wanted to introduce new corporatio India, China and Arabia (KITT, Baihu and Sandstorm). The way I see it, the real added value was the choice and the description of the other Japanese corporations, all those that get ignored because authors and gamemasters always remember more easily about MCT, Renraku and Shiawase.

With Chrysler-Nissan came an opportunity to clarify things. In Shadowrun world, there was Renault-Fiat and Chrysler-Nissan. In the meantime, in real life, Renault-Nissan and Daimler-Chrysler. German authors took this into accountand retconned it by adding DaimlerBenz to the Chrysler-Nissan corporation. But this alliance did not last long and the two companies parted away. By 2010, there actually is now a Fiat-Chrysler alliance! I did myself tied Renault-Fiat and Chrysler-Nissan in SoE. The lesson I learned from this is existing corporations must be handled with care. It serves no real purpose to try to follow every changes happening in real life (as with Hoechst, who becomes Aventies, who become Sanofi-Aventis). However, authors, myself included, will always find usin an existing and well-known brand is the easiest and quickiest way to introduce a corporation so that the reader will know what it's dealing with. By luck, as Shadowrun line covered most of the world, and the authors may rely on already established fictitious corporations from now on.

As far as I'm concerned, I made up most of the subsdiaries first introduced in SoA, in a way that allowed to easily guess the business they're in and possibly the geographic area: Dowdell Water Technologies (water supplying), Geologis Development, (construction and mining), Crytec (security software), Mapen Technologies (navigation services), Agrex International (agriculture), Medican (medical services), TK Armors (armor) or Emeral Crisis Management (firefighting and industrial damage control).

Sony division names has a sens, but they're also in alphabetical order: Sony Automation, Sony Biotech, Sony Cybersystems, Sony Dataworks, et Sony Entertainment. A, B, C, D and E. I imagined the corpoation executives only refering to them with that first letter.

Daiatsu-Caterpillar and Yokogawa-Honeywell showed up in Native American Nations, back in the days when authors were often simply putting a Japenese corporation and an America brand together. The Yokogawa name was also showing up alone, and it seemed more logical to only kep the Japanese name. In real life, there is an automotive company called Daihatsu. As far as I understood, the missing -h- resulted in a different meaning, referring to steam power rather than fuel. So I tried to imagine a large corporation whose all business could stem from Carterpillar vehicles, with industrial activities, construction and infrastructre.

Komatsu is also an existing corporation, in the construction business. However, Aztlan described it as one of the biggest player in chemistry. I can't remember exactly why we didn't simply make Komatsu a corporation present in both the construction and chemistry sectors. In the same vein, Yakashima was supposed to be a corporation constantly betting on the rising markets, brutally restructuring its acquisitions and selling them back as soon as there no longer was a profit to make. In Dunkelzahn's Secrets: Portfolio of a dragon, in 2057, Yakashima main subsidiaries were a biotechnology company and whales herding. Ironically, the great dragon Dunkelzahn left Yakashima big money with the obligation to invest it in R&D. For Shadows of Asia, in 2064, I proposed that Yakashima became a construction focused company, since that should be a quite profitable market after the major earthquake of 2061. But a lot of people took it for granted Yakashima had to be a biotech company because of its mention in Man & Machine. In a way, Dunkelzahn succeded.

Another proposition I made was about the conflict between Shiawase and Wuxing in South China Sea. Shiawase was searching for manganese, and Wuxing wanted to protect environment to gather magical telesma in the area. I found it gave Wuxing the nice role. Overall, because of the way magic works, the normal practice implies some sort of ecological concern. That's why I suggested what Wuxing was collecting would be sea animals. The hunting and poaching taking place nowadays to supply the chinese market for some alledged effects should also happen in Shadowrun with awakened animals. The published version is quite neutral on the nature of the "alchemical materials" collected.

After providing one or two versions of my text, I had a some problem at work, greatly diminishing the amount of time I could devote to SoA. I chose to quit, instead of causing any delay (in the end, there always is someone to cause such delay). In the end, there weren't so much changes in the content, as opposed to the form: it had been nearly completely rewritten. Which proved if necessary that my English skill level was good enough to come up with a good text.