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Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

bbc.com

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Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#111

Post by adrianN »

varjag wrote: post #106
adrianN wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not read that comment in that way. But I think you'd need to explain for a pretty long time to get engineers to believe your story of nuclear fission power plants. In 1912 we didn't even know about neutrons and protons.

We knew about radioactivity then, and Radium-powered superdevices were just entering science fiction.

I mean with just a few semesters of physics education you can bring people who don't know anything about physics at all to a Bachelor's degree. So in principle you can explain basically anything to an intelligent person of any time period if you put sufficient effort into it.

But to me that feels different than saying that inventions where sufficiently small steps away from a general engineer's education that you could "simply" explain them and not be met with wonder.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#112

Post by raxxorrax »

Danieru wrote: post #6

Do you remember Ship of Theseus? The thought experiment about if a ship which has been fully rebuilt bit by bit is it still the same thing? Japan appears consistent in saying, yes, rebuilding or swapping out components keeps the identity. You see this attitude in "Japan's oldest temple, burned to the ground and rebuilt every 20 years". In the west we might argue that burning a building and rebuilding, would count as…

I think western cultures would also consider it the same business. There are a lot of family owned companies, but to customers that fact doesn't matter that much.

To be honest, I dearly prefer their model of slow incremental adaptation compared to a gig economy, that is sadly established in many western nations to a larger degree. I would even go so far as to say that it could severely limit long term prosperity growth.

Some say Japan has some problems on that account. I think we should look at it 50 years later an see who is laughing.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#113

Post by taejo »

brazzy wrote: post #102
Danieru wrote: post #6

Do you remember Ship of Theseus? The thought experiment about if a ship which has been fully rebuilt bit by bit is it still the same thing? Japan appears consistent in saying, yes, rebuilding or swapping out components keeps the identity. You see this attitude in "Japan's oldest temple, burned to the ground and rebuilt every 20 years". In the west we might argue that burning a building and rebuilding, would count as…

> Japan's oldest temple, burned to the ground and rebuilt every 20 years It's a shrine, not a temple, it's torn down, not burned down, and whether it's the oldest is a matter of whether you believe the legends.

Radio Yerevan was asked: "Is it correct that Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev won a luxury car at the All-Union Championship in Moscow?"

Radio Yerevan answered: "In principle, yes. But first of all it was not Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev, but Vassili Vassilievich Vassiliev; second, it was not at the All-Union Championship in Moscow, but at a Collective Farm Sports Festival in Smolensk; third, it was not a car, but a bicycle; and fourth he didn't win it, but rather it was stolen from him."

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#114

Post by bmsleight_ »

GreeniFi wrote: post #13
Danieru wrote: post #6

Do you remember Ship of Theseus? The thought experiment about if a ship which has been fully rebuilt bit by bit is it still the same thing? Japan appears consistent in saying, yes, rebuilding or swapping out components keeps the identity. You see this attitude in "Japan's oldest temple, burned to the ground and rebuilt every 20 years". In the west we might argue that burning a building and rebuilding, would count as…

Bit random, but your post reminded me of this moment of British comedy: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BUl6PooveJE

Was thinking of posting this as well. I have used "Triggers Broom" example in a contract negotiation involving spares.

Classic comedy works on so many levels.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#115

Post by namdnay »

easytiger wrote: post #107
Danieru wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the business would continue. The issue is that in the west business owners would not see the merit in just giving a business away for the sake of the age ticking up. In the west the business would get sold and merged. Only in Japan does the adoption make it a family or lineage thing.

The relentless attack on the family in the West may also be related

Huh?

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#116

Post by saltcured »

bane wrote: post #18

It's interesting about growing older. I don't know if this is a function of aging or a change in how humanity recons time. When I was younger, a century seemed like forever. Now it's just 1920 and we have film, music, audio, books and so on from that time period readily available. In many ways 1920 doesn't really seem all that far away to me while 1860, 1870, 1880 (a century from when I was a child) seemed to be fore…

I think there is certainly an effect of aging and your changing perspective. I have noticed similar shifts in my thoughts, even about shorter time spans. As a child I remember feeling that there was a huge chasm between the WWII era and the jet/space age. Now, I can contemplate my parents' early lives of roughly 1940-1985 versus my own of roughly 1975-2020.

I can imagine how the transitions they experienced through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s may have seemed to them much like how my world evolved in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. While I can surely find some milestone events in my personal life, I do not see stark boundaries I would consider truly different ages/eras for society as a whole. I remember how every recent transition took years and perhaps never completed.

I wonder if certain cultural artifacts and stories in history and pop culture give us a more consistent sense of past eras/ages prior to our own experiences. Things like railroads, electrification, automobiles, film, the great depression, airplanes, films with sound, color film, TV, antibiotics... they all were smeared over many years but we can easily ignore that when talking about the past.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#117

Post by jacquesm »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #82
Danieru wrote: post #6

Do you remember Ship of Theseus? The thought experiment about if a ship which has been fully rebuilt bit by bit is it still the same thing? Japan appears consistent in saying, yes, rebuilding or swapping out components keeps the identity. You see this attitude in "Japan's oldest temple, burned to the ground and rebuilt every 20 years". In the west we might argue that burning a building and rebuilding, would count as…

One of my favorite YouTube channels, Sampson Boat Co, is doing just that: a young shipwright is rebuilding the classic sailing yacht Tally Ho piece by piece, in a modest workshop by the sea up in Oregon. It will be all new by the time he’s done, minus some hardware, but he has never lost continuity with the original hull. This is just how wooden boats are, whether you do it bit by bit, or as a big project, eventually…

That is one absolutely amazing job. Wonder what his timetable looks like.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#118

Post by OJFord »

swampthing wrote: post #11
Danieru wrote: post #6

Do you remember Ship of Theseus? The thought experiment about if a ship which has been fully rebuilt bit by bit is it still the same thing? Japan appears consistent in saying, yes, rebuilding or swapping out components keeps the identity. You see this attitude in "Japan's oldest temple, burned to the ground and rebuilt every 20 years". In the west we might argue that burning a building and rebuilding, would count as…

But in the West, even if you just gave your business away to another person who continued to run it, we would still consider that the same business.

Not always though, sometimes we say they've 'sold out' or are 'not the same'.

E.g. Fuller's (London brewer) now owned by Japanese conglomerate, Church (Northampton shoes, was still in the family) bought by Prada.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#119

Post by pawelk »

rorykoehler wrote: post #76
egypturnash wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born in the seventies, and have looked at a lot of cartoons from the 1920s over the course of my life, what with ending up being in the animation industry for a while. Read a lot of comics from around then too as part of surveying the history of that medium, To me the 1920s always felt like the Remote Past. I wonder what someone born now will feel about the 1920s once they are old enough to communicate their op…

My 8 year old nephew told me my techno playlist sounded like old people's music...

To my daughter "The Fat of the Land" album by The Prodigy is exactly as old as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" by The Beatles to me (number of years between respective album releases and our birth years).

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#120

Post by PinguTS »

Danieru wrote: post #6

Do you remember Ship of Theseus? The thought experiment about if a ship which has been fully rebuilt bit by bit is it still the same thing? Japan appears consistent in saying, yes, rebuilding or swapping out components keeps the identity. You see this attitude in "Japan's oldest temple, burned to the ground and rebuilt every 20 years". In the west we might argue that burning a building and rebuilding, would count as…

> Japan appears consistent in saying, yes, rebuilding or swapping out components keeps the identity. You see this attitude in "Japan's oldest temple, burned to the ground and rebuilt every 20 years". In the west we might argue that burning a building and rebuilding, would count as a new building.

That is a wrong example/comparison. Even in the west rebuilding an heritage is not considered as a new building.

In Europe rebuilding after a catastrophic event like fire is sometimes a requirement. Would you consider restoring Notre Dame as new building? I would not think so. What about Sagrada Familia? They are still not finished with the building. What about the Cologne dom? They are still not finished with the building.

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