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

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

#71

Post by woodPurchase »

fluoridation wrote: post #64
woodPurchase wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were similar in numbers why would it be the Japanese ceding instead of the foreigners? Even if so, it's all the more reason to not let them in in the first place. Keep Japan Japanese for the Japanese

It's not a battle, where one side decisively wins over the other. Both cultures cede a bit towards common ground.

I'm not going to say that's untrue, it obviously isn't. But friction, distance, and drift are going to work in the opposite direction

The result depends on the ratio. I don't see why we can't have trade and relations with other countries without also assimilating eachother

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

#72

Post by swatcoder »

fluoridation wrote: post #67
swatcoder wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mode…

>(unique to modernity) a specific culture's media successfully and pervasively inserts itself between people and local/inherited traditions. So, when there's more cultural exchange and less isolation?

I wouldn't call that inevitable, historically precedented, or an exchange. And I don't think the state of cultural interaction in any of those places was meaningfully more isolated before 20th century media arrived. So no.

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

#73

Post by akimbostrawman »

mcguire wrote: post #31
akimbostrawman wrote: post #18

>"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…

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

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

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

#74

Post by lxgr »

hackeraccount wrote: post #38

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)…

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).

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

#75

Post by doublerabbit »

telchior wrote: post #37
alephnerd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

> The keiretsus have continued to do a very poor job at innovating.

It's the same everywhere. We are now stuck in the world where the formula is of A or B.

Android vs Apple

Intel vs AMD

Sony vs Nintendo

Microsoft vs Linux

Firefox vs Chrome

For any technology that has a third party has a very little mindshare.

Not only does this make innovation hard. How? When only the same two contenders continue to dominate the market and have newr-infinite resources.

"let us buy you out, or we'll make our own"

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

#76

Post by cm11 »

telchior wrote: post #23

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 th…

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.

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

#77

Post by fluoridation »

woodPurchase wrote: post #71
fluoridation wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a battle, where one side decisively wins over the other. Both cultures cede a bit towards common ground.

I'm not going to say that's untrue, it obviously isn't. But friction, distance, and drift are going to work in the opposite direction The result depends on the ratio. I don't see why we can't have trade and relations with other countries without also assimilating eachother

I don't think trade and diplomatic relations is enough. Most people are neither international traders nor diplomats. You need constant cultural exchange by a large sections of the populations for the cultures to drift towards each other.

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

#78

Post by telchior »

cm11 wrote: post #76
telchior wrote: post #23

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 th…

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.

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).

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

#79

Post by jonhohle »

derriz wrote: post #56
alephnerd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 a…

I’m curious what list of arcade games you’re looking at and what metric for biggest. Atari and Midway appear to have 4 of the top grossing arcade games (Ms. Pac Man was made by a US company for Midway). Not to diminish Japan’s influence on arcade games. Obviously they were a powerhouse and produced the most successful arcade hardware in aggregate.

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

#80

Post by hollerith »

somenameforme wrote: post #55
lannisterstark wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It's not really the economy so much as international economics. The term to look up here is 'exporting inflation.' [1] Historically the US was able to engage in what would be unsustainable economic policy for most nations, but kept it going by exporting the normal consequences (inflation) of such. There's a lot of nuanced reasons for this but one of the most simple is that we were the largest consumer economy by an e…

You've successfully argued that the effect is real, but not that the effect is so large that

>If we're not able to export inflation and demand/dominance of the dollar starts to slide, then things are going to get rocky, fast.

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