Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63830490

by amichail • 2 years ago

73 83 2 years ago

billy99k2• 2 years ago

I traveled to Japan and Vietnam last year. I got far faster Internet speeds in Vietnam. Sometimes double or triple the speed.

alexott• 2 years ago

I was in Thailand in 2017th - mobile internet with 4g was almost everywhere, including small islands. It was a huge contrast to Germany where you need to get 15 minutes drive from most of cities to get only Edge at best, or no mobile coverage at all

alephnerd5• 2 years ago

Interesting. Where in Japan and where in Vietnam?

And when in Vietnam was it via Vintel [EDIT: Viettel - doh I need my noon coffee]?

billy99k2• 2 years ago

Japan: Tokyo Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh city

Vintel, yes. I also noticed free wifi at restaurant and cafes were much faster in Vietnam as well.

huy773• 2 years ago

it's Viettel not Vintel

jamesfmilne• 2 years ago

My colleague in Tokyo has 10Gb internet in his apartment.

The future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed

lhl• 2 years ago

For mobile coverage and speed, I've found Japan (I've been from Ishigaki to Shiretoko in the past few years) to be pretty world class (assuming your device supports the proper bands - for anyone visiting, refer to https://www.frequencycheck.com/countries/japan ). For wired connections, almost every new building in Tokyo has fiber, and 10Gbps support is pretty common (NTT, Sony, Softbank and others all offer it) while I don't believe it's widely available at all in Vietnam.

Anyway, everyone will have their own experience, and I haven't been in Vietnam since before the pandemic, but last time I was there (4 cities and a few out of town trips), while I had OK connectivity, I wasn't blown away by it vs Japan or other places. I'd take Japanese traffic safety and street sanitation over Vietnam every day of the year though.

huy773• 2 years ago

not true, im vietnamese and the internet in the us is faster in many regions

mdp2021• 2 years ago

Very good recent (Aug 12, 2024) exposition from Economic's Help (Tejvan Pettinger, Oxford):

# The Rise and Fall of Japan's Economy - Can it Recover?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNYMNzdSQwc

nextworddev• 2 years ago

Lived in Japan. I think world will come to realize that Japan's past is also the world's future.

jbm2• 2 years ago

Came to say the same thing. The supposed backwards parts are seeming charming the longer I live in Canada.

Having a sovereign language has allowed it to avoid so much brainrot in our culture today.

jperras2• 2 years ago

Québecois here. We've been trying to tell the rest of Canada this for _decades_.

ben_w2• 2 years ago

Having a sovereign language has allowed it to avoid so much brainrot in our culture today.

それは、翻訳行為が高価である限りにおいてのみ機能します。

(That 'free' is also 'mediocre quality' does not help when the problem is 'brain rot': viral memes still be viral)

cbsmith• 2 years ago

If having one is good, having two must be better!

doctorpangloss• 2 years ago

This plays out in every community, at every scale. What communities are other communities' futures and never pasts?

California & San Francisco: All of their problems are foreshadowing what is going to happen in other parts of the US; all of their strengths are also coming to other places.

Even within San Francisco, is Valencia St the future or past of tony Chestnut St?

When you think about bad shit happening, and then how we only seem capable of reactive, rather than proactive politics, seems obvious. Problems have to become catastrophic before anyone deals with them, and all the problems left are the ones are small, but growing.

moandcompany2• 2 years ago

Agreed. Japan's "lost decade" started 10-20 years before the rest of many Western (e.g. United States) and non-Western nations (e.g. People's Republic of China, Republic of Korea, etc).

alephnerd5• 2 years ago

The US had a lost decade similar to Japan in the 90s during the 1970s-80s with similar convos of a rapidly aging and backwards society (https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/24/us/rise-of-elderly-popula... // "malaise forever" - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=czfKPaypNsU)

The biggest difference was the US was able to leverage white collar immigration to develop a substantial lead in the computing industry by the mid-90s.

SK is probably going to hit a similar bust like Japan's soon (they're basically following the same cycle as Japan except with a 25-30 years lag)

armchairhacker• 2 years ago

As someone who hasn't lived in Japan, what do you mean by this?

sgu9992• 2 years ago

Likely referring to urbanism, public transports, collective mindset of the average Japanese, cleanliness, safety, maybe some of their spirituality. As a tourist, everything seems at its place in Japan. Yes, you come across a lot of CRT monitors even in Tokyo, but who gives a damn really when your train is on time to the nearest second and you can sleep in it without being worried for your belongings.

labster• 2 years ago

As economies fully industrialize and embrace computerization, they’ll face the same problems as Japan: long lifetimes and low birth rates upend demographics, meaning economies can’t rely on population for growth. Large swathes of rural areas are abandoned as urbanization increases and agriculture centralizes and mechanizes. Women in the out-of-home workforce means child care is hard to secure. The rest of the world is already facing these problems, just not yet at the scale Japan does. Yet.

keikobadthebad• 2 years ago

From Jan 2023

alephnerd5• 2 years ago

Ehn, Japan doesn't have the same zeitgeist as it did in the 1980s-early 2000s, but it is still cool and imo forward facing - just different and more self assured.

The kind of guy who enjoyed Japan in the 80s or 90s probably isn't the kind of guy listening to modern J-Wave, watching Anime, or digging into METI and the ADB's Flock of Geese strategy.

Instead of mimicking and pastiching western culture like back in the 80s and 90s, Japanese subcultures now merge the west and Japan in a more imo mature and self assured manner.

Also, Japan has absolutely become more diverse compared to 20 years ago - before the foreign population was fraction of a percent, but now it's reached 2-3% - most of whom are from all across Eastern and Southeast Asia.

Japan has been developed now for a generation, so there isn't much of a pull to leave Japan and evangelize within America - especially when Japanese firms have a much stronger market position in ASEAN and India. Same thing will happen to Korea in 10-15 years.

garou• 2 years ago

US tried very hard after ww2 to make japan to be "the future" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle). But as it is said in this article (not with these words), the neoliberalism is not compatible. The youngs are literaly dying of too much work and what it wants to summarize is 'the old are still in power', 'samurais that surrended'. It all is just neoliberal ideology. All these contradictions are roting its society.

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

(2023)

Lots of discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34475915

akimbostrawman2• 2 years ago

"Well, you would need to learn our way of life. It wouldn't be easy." The village was on the path to extinction, yet the thought of it being invaded by "outsiders" was somehow worse.

throwing foreign people into a country without them adaption the culture is not reviving that country but changing it which on a longer time scale is the same as that country (read culture) dying. nobody would claim old empire are still alive because on there rubble a country stands today.

mcguire2• 2 years ago

Allowing the country to die of senescence is also not reviving that country.

akimbostrawman2• 2 years ago

japans problems aren't biological but social. they require social change not hereditary change

nothercastle• 2 years ago

The Japanese central bank doomed their economy to 20+ years of stagnation. Instead of allowing prices of assets to crash after the big bubble they locked interest rates at 0 and prevented a recession and repricing of assets but at the cost of future

mcguire2• 2 years ago

Japan had more structural problems than that. For one thing, at the time it was reported that wealthy, powerful people could not be allowed to lose money in the stock market; the broker would make them whole, until the day that they couldn't anymore.

akira25012• 2 years ago

they locked interest rates at 0

"How to destroy innovation and ensure monopolies take over your economy."

amai• 2 years ago

Wasn’t that the case for a long time in the US an the EU, too? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest-rate_policy

telchior3• 2 years ago

It's interesting to consider that these "Japan is backwards" takes might persist in part simply because it hasn't melded with the global first world culture. I can go to various countries and very similar experiences at an electronics store, a hotel and a gas station. In Japan all of those (and many others) are distinctively Japanese.

I've read travelogues from the 17th-19th centuries, and in a lot of them, all of the countries are described like Japan. "Look at these weirdos, they insist on ______!" A tourist going from France to Italy would be constantly amazed, offended and puzzled. No longer.

It's a weird thought for me to have. I'm not a conservative; I view xenophobia, fear of change, and cultural/economic death grips by an older generation as negatives. But it feels like most of the world that doesn't have those things is increasingly homogeneous, in a way that's also uncomfortable to see.

alephnerd5• 2 years ago

Most writers who give this "Japan is backwards" spiel all seem to have lived in the 80s or 90s.

I'm much younger than these Gen Xers and Millenials, but it feels like Japanese style cultural impact is much larger now than "western style".

Heck, KWave, KDramas, and Manhwa are heavily based on Japanese JPop, JDramas (the GOTO back in the 2000s before Sony made licensing expensive), and Manga.

view xenophobia, fear of change, and cultural/economic death grips by an older generation as negatives

Japan has also changed a LOT demographically over the past 20-30 years - before foreigners were mostly Zainichi or Taiwanese plus a smattering of Chinese illegals, but now you have 2-3% of the population from ASEAN, China across all economic stratas, Koreans from Korea, etc but they all look "Japanese"

telchior3• 2 years ago

To be fair, sometimes the "Japan is backwards" spiel is focused solely on their technology. And I don't think that one is wrong, even today. The keiretsus have continued to do a very poor job at innovating.

derriz• 2 years ago

Nah. Japanese global cultural impact probably peaked in the 1980s or early 1990s. To the extent that it was "common knowledge" at the time that Japan would become the dominant global power.

Particularly for young people - Japanese cultural impact at the time was intense. Arcade gaming basically emerged from Japan - 8 of the top 10 biggest arcade games ever were Japanese. Then home video gaming - first with Nintendo and later others. The Sony walkman was a cultural phenomenon - as ubiquitous and valued as mobile phones are now for 1980s teenagers. Manga comics started appearing in western comic book shops and Kurosawa movies in arthouse cinemas. Japanese branded VCRs represented a revolution - the earliest on-demand system for consuming movie/TV media - and was embraced by the youth of the time.

And that's just then influence on the kids, in the adult world, Japanese car brands destroyed the US and Euro competition, home consumer electronics were almost exclusively Japanese. Japanese massive positive trade balance of payments meant they were forced to invest outside of Japan which resulted in a massive buying spree.

fluoridation6• 2 years ago

I mean, it's basically inevitable, isn't it? Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation. If two groups of people are in constant contact, they'll never ever stop speaking the same language and having the same traditions. Conversely, if two originally distinct cultures start to interact regularly (even more so if closely) they'll eventually merge into one. People are more willing to give up on traditions and cultural norms than to have constant friction with their neighbors.

akira25012• 2 years ago

Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation.

What level of "isolation" forms that threshold though? We're nowhere near a single worldwide religion, for example, which is odd because it's the most existential of cultural beliefs.

davidsgk2• 2 years ago

I mean, it's basically inevitable, isn't it? Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation.

When thinking about this cynically, I feel like this has some depressing ramifications. Cultural differences (and isolation) are often born from financial disparities as well. Does this mean that the path to global cultural homogeneity is basically just gentrification on a massive scale where economic -> cultural minorities get more and more ostracized?

woodPurchase4• 2 years ago

People are more willing to give up on traditions and cultural norms than to have constant friction with their neighbors

Toshi would tear down his local shrine and import the third world because it's better than having some Judeo-Christian reporters call them names?

The cultural and ethnic shifts happening are happening because banks, governments, and CEOs see it as being in their own interest. More working hands, more mouths to feed, more votes for their party. None of it has ever been natural and none of it is to our benefit

im3w1l• 2 years ago

It's not that simple. People in constant contact have in fact maintained separate cultures in some instances.

I think what makes it different this time is that we are using science to find the best culture. "How should we behave towards each other for the best possible outcome?" If a certain culture is clearly and demonstrably better, then that will lead to everyone adopting it.

Democracy might also be part of it, as in authoritarian states the person in power wield such a an outsized influence that their personal whims and fancies can turn into culture.

swatcoder3• 2 years ago

Millenia of stubbornly cosmopolitan cities suggests it's not so inevitable, as does all but the most modern history of Europe, India, and East Asia. These all reflect essentially distinct cultural communities in constant trade and travel for hundreds and hundreds of years. Contact alone isn't enough.

Homogenization doesn't seem to happen until either some sweeping administrative body insists on it, or (unique to modernity) a specific culture's media successfully and pervasively inserts itself between people and local/inherited traditions.

cm11• 2 years ago

This is interesting, do you have any reading suggestions along these themes? It could be those travelogues, which I assume describe firsthand experiences, or maybe authors generalizing it from distance.

telchior3• 2 years ago

I think what I'm probably dimly remembering is Arthur Young's "Travels in France" (a Brit crossing the channel). There are various others out there, a lot focused on criticizing the cultures they're visiting; if you want the opposite check out Goethe's "Italian Journey" (a German going to Italy).

tkgally• 2 years ago

I enjoy reading old travel books, too. Hundreds, maybe thousands, are available at the Internet Archive. A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about some of them:

https://blog.archive.org/2019/01/28/the-world-as-they-saw-it...

Unbefleckt• 2 years ago

I'd rather live in a culturally diverse world that either learns to get along or perishes than one that defeated racism and prejudice through creating a singular global culture and race.

Xcelerate• 2 years ago

I’ve lived in many parts of the U.S.—from major cities to the rural countryside. I’ve also lived outside the U.S. And without fail, every time I visit other developed countries, I become so confused about how our economy is apparently one of the strongest, and yet the U.S. just feels behind a lot of other places.

A friend was telling me the first time they moved to the U.S. to work in Silicon Valley, they were expecting some sort of high tech glassy utopia. “It’s just suburbs” they said with a frown, “and San Francisco was a grimy disappointment as well.”

Most of the U.S. doesn’t even look as nice as the Bay Area. It’s mostly the same suburbs minus the wealth, nature, and sunshine. The buildings and infrastructure and in many cities are decades old by now. What exactly does it mean to have the highest GDP if it doesn’t reflect in your daily life and surroundings?

I read that people in Japan tend to travel some of the least in the world outside their own country despite their amazing passports, and most will say it’s because they’ve got everything they need right there. Perhaps relentless economic growth shouldn’t be the goal—rather, building something nice for the society you live in and keeping that way should be.

huy773• 2 years ago

us is the strongest in arm not civil

lannisterstark2• 2 years ago

us is the strongest in arm not civil

the US economy is one of the (if not the, depending on who you ask) strongest economy in the world - and we're not talking military economy.

To pretend otherwise is simply naive. Mississippi, the poorest US state, has both higher GDP Per Capita and GDP PPP Per Capita than most of Europe, much less the world.

oezi2• 2 years ago

Too much wealth is privatized in the US so there isn't much left for ensuring the public spaces are nice.

Next, the relentless capitalism has squeezed every last penny from every inch of life (for the good and bad). Parking 20 Dollars an hour, concert tickets 400 bucks, hospital visit 100k. You need a lot of GDP to keep up.

hackeraccount• 2 years ago

Total aside.

In Neal Stephenson book Seveneves the technology of a future is in a few small ways described as weirdly un-advanced compared to the present. I wouldn't describe it as the focus of the book but it still seemed particularly implausible to me but ... I hadn't really thought about Japan. I've never been but I've read that in a few ways technology (fax machines were (are?) still popular just a few years ago) is weirdly retrograde.

That said for potential readers of Seveneves - as with all Stephenson's book it needed an editor to keep him in line. The second half was no where near as good as the first. There were plausibility problems with the technology used throughout the book. Also it was really a lot of fun and I have to admit that I enjoyed reading it.

davidsgk2• 2 years ago

Bandwagoning onto this aside, I had really similar thoughts on both fronts. Are things really "retrograde" in Japan because they hang onto older technologies faster, or do they hang around longer because they make sense for their circumstances and needs? We don't say walkie-talkies on security guards are retrograde (not a perfect analogy, I know).

And yep, I like to think of Seveneves as 3 books in a big trench coat where the first 2 are fantastic and I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone that likes some solid sci-fi.

moandcompany2• 2 years ago

Agree with your question...

"Older" is a relative measurement of time, but doesn't say anything about the marginal benefit or cost.

An example of your question I see from Japan relates to payment systems. People often critique Japan for its cash-oriented systems and have also observed the difficulty that digital payment systems have had in gaining traction in Japan... an example for why digital payment systems have had poor adoption is the existence of earlier, well-adopted solutions that provide many of the same benefits in the majority of practical scenarios (i.e. stored value IC cards: Suica/Pasmo/etc.). In cases like this, the "newer" and supposedly better technology doesn't provide as large of a marginal benefit. They already solved much of the problem.

lxgr• 2 years ago

On the other hand, Japan is currently rolling out a digital ID scheme which is probably years ahead of the US.

I don't think the fax machine or floppy disk anecdotes are by themselves evidence of any larger trend – most countries I'm familiar with have both systems firmly stuck in the past as well as those that have kept up with time.

A good part of the "stuck in the past" technologies are probably nothing much other than "first-mover disadvantage" (where organizations just stick with the first iteration/solution to a given problem and grow so used to that specific implementation that it's never quite worth it to adopt what would now be state of the art).

woodPurchase4• 2 years ago

Nations are not made from dirt. National character wont seep into any group that wonders in. Replacement of the Japanese means the death of Japan, just as much as it does to any other country and has caused so many issues in the west

Economic stagnation is preferable (and has better solutions anyway), the only ones to gain from immigration are foreigners that hate you, your way of life, and some fat cats that hate you ten times more

worstspotgain• 2 years ago

There are two entangled curves: the demographic shift and the urban real estate pyramidization game.

The demographic "leveling off" is inevitable. Until that point is reached, however, favorable demographics can partially offset pyramidization. The US population is still growing (largely through immigration) so it has not reached the endgame stage like Japan and parts of Europe have.

The pyramidization game works by artificially restricting urban housing supply more and more over time. If everyone reacted by buying instead of renting, the game would always end in a 2008-style crash, when the pyramid's bottom-most layer finds itself under water with no further buyers to push it up.

Instead, with renters in the picture, housing prices rise until rents equal the maximum amount of income that can be extracted from renters. This keeps the bottom-most pyramid layer just afloat.

At the equilibrium point, economic growth is stunted. The "working segment" of the population is trapped by rents and mortgages, and cannot take chances. The "housing baron segment" tends to underfund productive investments like the stock market, with real estate looming large on their books. The government has to allocate a lot of resources to the budget effects and stabilization requirements caused by the real estate system, including indirectly via the banking system.

erie• 2 years ago

Perhaps a look at Japanese software development will give an interesting look into the subject, not sure how accurate this one is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky1nGQhHTso Then there is politics and a controversial one is mentioned here. ''US spy agencies began recruiting former fascists and Nazi collaborators. US officials freed Class A Japanese war criminals from prison, some of whom went on to lead the government in Tokyo.Many of these figures were involved in founding the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has essentially run Japan as a one-party state since 1955 (excluding a mere five years of opposition rule).A textbook example of this was Nobusuke Kishi, a notorious war criminal who ran the Japanese empire’s Manchukuo puppet regime and oversaw genocidal atrocities in collaboration with the Nazis. He was briefly imprisoned, but later pardoned by US authorities and, with Washington’s support, rose to become prime minister of Japan in the 1950s.Kishi’s fascist-linked family still commands significant control over Japanese politics. His grandson, Shinzo Abe, was the longest-serving prime minister in the East Asian nation’s history. https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/08/07/atomic-bombing-ja...

Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

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