A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

I had written a sarcastic response, but I'll be nice instead. Don't you think two people could independently see that you missed a joke and come up with the very generically phrased response of "isn't it a joke?" to point this out? I mean it's four words. It's certainly a more plausible explanation than being some sort of grand conspiracy involving sockpuppet accounts.

Xerox's PARC has to be the biggest example of a company not capturing the value of its inventions.

Yes. Also France made a real big effort to protect its agriculture, wine and luxury industry.

LVHM grew and flourished, but there was no love for the software industry. I kinda think there was no alternative scenario where it would have worked out, culturally most people really don't give a damn.

Also having a smaller internal market makes it harder to bootstrap new ideas to a decent size before getting it out. Even now successful startups might target France and Spain, but going beyond seems to be a very hard sell while the EU is supposed to make it easier in theory.

> Windows and Mac dominate the world's computer systems, and the development tools for those environments are English-centric. The translations are lacking or no existent. The struggle of a Japanese developer to make an app is greater than that of a primarily English-speaking developer.

The lack of translations is true for almost every country and culture apart from the natively English-speaking ones. Some western languages such as German or French might get more in terms of translated (or natively written) documentation and teaching materials but many smaller ones have next to none. I've also seen software development materials with translations to Japanese or Chinese and nothing else (beside English).

I can't remember the last time I read any software development material or used software development tools in my native language.

There may still be some cultural differences that could lead to there being more or less of a language barrier, of course. Other languages may be closer to English, at least in terms of the writing system. In some cultures people might be less inclined to learn English as a second language well enough to be comfortable than in other cultures. Japan, having a large economy with a large domestic market as well as a strong language identity and a relatively homogeneous culture, might be one of those. (I seem to remember that, anecdotally, some highly educated Japanese people I met in the past were surprisingly uncomfortable speaking English, but I'm not sure how much of that was due to actual skill and how much it was about confidence or a lack of experience.)

But the anglocentrism of development tools and culture alone isn't enough to explain a difference between Japan and many other countries.

What this comes down to is simply economics and incentives, and how those economics and incentives are changed within and from outside by other forces. That is it.

even the concept of "Galapagos effect"is easily explained by government created market distortions.

1. Japan was a closed country for~250 years, until the US "Gunboats of democracy" opened up Japan under Commodore Perry threatening to flatten Japanese cities. Prior to that there was restricted trade/trading posts with the Dutch, Portuguese, and then Germans.

2. With the US military threats, Japan side the treaty with the US and realized pandora's box was open, they say the Western operations, war and colonies and said, time to get moving. Thus, German and Prussia in particular suited Japan well culturally and in many aspects - so this tight tie up, creating or promoting trading companies or families (Zaibatsu) & forming their own colonies, China, Taiwan, Korea, etc.

3. There are many other factors within the run up to WWII and after but Japan was a major innovator, especially after WWII as central control imploded - think Honda, Sony, etc. the issue is that as PCs came into play Japan was highly centralized again & there were numerous issues of lacking vc or risk capital, social risks, financial risk, labor mobility ,etc. And even today most software devs cannot hardcore sell - imagine 1970, 1980, 1990s.

4. The native ERP market was highly customized (mostly SAP) using SIer's and they wanted it specific to their unique workflows - the old 80% of what I want is not enough - funny enough that is a competitive advantage again.

5. At same time, most of foreign program work was either L10N or integration ,sintalls, support/maintenance for the foreign software vendor - Oracle, SAP, MSFT, etc.

6. Btw the time we got to 1990s, Japan had many innovations in software, BUT this ran into a wall - it had a horrible startup ecosystem and so it was occupied by ossified rent-seeking incumbents like Sony, who fought their own engineers. Sony was the original Apple, Akio Morita the original Steve Jobs, including taking the most important case, Sony vs Universal Studios to the US supreme court and winning. Ipod, imac, etc. are simply the 2.0 or 3.0 version of the sony innovation products. I have interviewed a dozen of these engineers and managers going back to 2006. And also other interviews state side of how products like Slingbox/Slingmedia were just sony products and so on.

7. At this point the social risk, the financial risk, the career risks and labor mobility of joining a startup or high grow firm in nascent industry are greatly reduced, more programming resources than ever, smart hard workers, it is just the opportunities -- opportunities that were artificially restricted by ossified rent seeking incumbents using regulator capture.