The sharp downturn in business at McDonald’s — which has thrived for most of the past 44 years in Japan — has got everybody talking. This past January alone, revenues at existing outlets, the company announced, had fallen year-on-year by a whopping 38.6 percent, with losses for the 2014 business year projected to reach some ¥2.18 billion.

Writing in Shincho 45 magazine (April), Hosei University Business School professor Kosuke Ogawa asks, “Are we now on the verge of a ‘Post-McDonald’s Era?'”

In Ogawa’s view, McDonald’s followed the flag, achieving its global deployment on the heels of America’s projection of political and economic influence. In the wake of World War II, U.S.-style values had swept over the world in conquest, leading to an “over-concentration” of American influence. Now that this influence has begun to wane, he writes, a commensurate decline in its emblematic fast food brand is to be expected.

Ogawa offers a sharp contrast between the introduction of American brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, which arrived in Japan before the “Nixon Shock,” when the exchange rate was around ¥360 to $1, and more recent arrivals such as Apple and Starbucks Coffee, which came here following the 1986 Plaza Accords that set off the bubble economy. The former can be described as emulating the “Big America” formula; the latter, the “Smart America” formula.

In January 2010, McDonald’s Japan actually launched a sales campaign called “Big America,” featuring four types of hamburgers in the styles of New York, Texas, California and Hawaii. Daily turnover at McDonald’s outlets during the campaign soared to ¥2.811 billion, setting an all-time record.

But two subsequent “Big America” campaigns flopped, because by that time, Ogawa believes, Japanese consumers were no longer enchanted with the notion of a “Big America.”

“Because of insufficient adaptation to local preferences and innovation, the company’s business model already reached its ‘consume by’ date 10 years ago,” Ogawa asserts. Since the death in 2004 of Den Fujita, the colorful entrepreneur who founded McDonald’s Japan, the company’s has lost its compass, leaving it adrift.

Weekly Playboy (May 18) took a look at how McDonald’s foreign and domestic rivals appear to be gearing up to exploit the chinks in its armor and carve out larger niches for themselves.

The most recent new arrival — well, not exactly new as it had briefly tried before and failed a couple of decades ago — is Taco Bell, which on April 21 opened a branch on Dogenzaka Street in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. Before its doors opened for business at 10 a.m., some 200 customers were already lined up outside.

This time, Taco Bell has done its homework, putting together a menu more closely attuned to Japanese tastes. With a “Two Tacos Supreme” set priced at ¥790, and other menu items offered only in Japan, such as “taco rice” (¥530), the U.S.-based chain seems determined to get things right on its second time around.

The slack is also being picked up by companies like Mos Burger and fried chicken specialist KFC, which has no real rival in Japan. To reassure cautious consumers, KFC now indicates the sources of ingredients used in its products.

“Everybody is aware that McDonald’s is slumping, but the reason, more than the media exposes over expired chicken and foreign objects in the food, is that consumers don’t sense any value in patronizing it any more,” food analyst Takao Shigemori tells the magazine. “A lot of Japanese may be thinking, ‘For the same outlay I can buy something tastier’ or ‘McDonald’s isn’t very tasty.'”

Within 2015, the fifth-largest U.S. hamburger chain, Carl’s Jr., plans to open its first branch in Tokyo. The company projects 150 outlets within the next decade. Next February, New York-based Shake Shack is planning to open its first outlet in Japan, with a target of 10 outlets in operation by the time of the 2020 Olympic Games.

This raises the question: Should the new upscale burger chains do well here, what influence will they have on existing chains?

“McDonald’s may come to the conclusion that ¥1,000 hamburgers are the way to go, and introduce a completely different menu,” the aforementioned Shigemori suggests.

To give a picture of what it’s like to toil beneath the golden arches, earlier this year a reporter for Flash (Mar. 3) went undercover, infiltrating an unnamed branch in Tokyo for a two-week stint as a “crew member” (as McDonald’s Japan calls its part-timers).

“As they were short-handed, it was decided that I should come for an interview the day after I applied,” she wrote. “The manager’s face bore a woebegone expression, as if he were tired from so many customer complaints.”

She then completed a standard five-minute paper test of 45 questions administered to applicants, of which eight must be correctly answered to ensure a job position. She was hired at a starting wage of ¥950 per hour.

Training was perfunctory: a 30-something part-timer gave her a brief session on what duties were expected of her. She was reminded that arriving customers are to be greeted with a smile and “Welcome. Will you eat here or take out?”

One thing that annoyed the writer was the company rule prohibiting the carrying of cell phones at the workplace, as this, it was claimed, “might result in foreign objects winding up in the food.” None of the “crew” members were inclined to accept such an explanation at face value, but they nonetheless complied.