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>If you spent so much time at the workplace like the Japanese you end up with a low producivity on paper pretty much by definition, because it's simply output divided by amount of time worked.

It is not as simple as that: in general, more developed countries tend to have higher labor productivity. Japan has been historically low for several decades.

I'm no specialist of labor statistics, but note that Japan actaually worked fewers hours than Italy , accoding to OECD anyaway: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS. I am pretty sure that most people unfamiliar w/ Japan would not place its productivity as low as it is, close to countries like Turkey or Slovakia.

>Here in Germany we have a similar paper culture (although not quite as extreme) but very high labour productivity

I am familiar with both countries, worked in both, and it is nowhere near comparable. But paper is only part of it. The overtime culture is quite intense. I still vividly remember my first work experience in Japan > 15 years ago, with 3-4 hours-long meetings where half the members, including the lab's head, were sleeping.

The BBC also has an article on this topic of sleeping in the office.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190809-why-overtired-...

For work hours, maybe because many Japanese women works as "part time job" due to discrimination and some tax/insurance system. Statistics by gender maybe reflects it.

Over 40 years as a professional I have worked in tech companies in countries around the world, including Germany and Japan, and now in Austria - where the reduced work week is not only a cultural norm, but rather supported by the bureaucratic classes as their right and obligation. Kafka and Vienna, mmkay...

My anecdotal experience is that I think the most fun, and therefore most productive place to work in the Western world so far, for me anyway - was the good ol' USA.

Sure, the 80 hour work weeks were killer. But, the camaraderie, coordination, and just fun getting-shit-done'ness of the average American company exceeds most others.

But only if there was no daily commute, because a daily commute in America is a sheer kind of hell that nobody should tolerate - in which case, Japan or Austria are definitely the lifestyle/work balance leaders, even though they are far lazier cultures - Germany too, to some extent, but I could generalise about Germany until my holzhacker is burned to a crisp, and it'd still taste great.

Anyway, the reduced work week culture can be observed around the world. I think, the efficacy of the culture matters too, though. Germans admire rigor, Austrians reward laziness - Japanese, duplicity - and America, getting things done no matter what.

One major issue with paper vs digital is that paper scales really, really badly. IIRC (I can't find the article) there was a marked difference between how easy it was to access COVID benefits in Korea (where the process was entirely digital) vs Japan (where you had to show up to an office and fill out paperwork)

You didn't have to go to an office to get your COVID benefits. They mailed a brief, mostly prefilled form to your home and you put in your bank details and a copy of your ID to mail back.

You may be thinking of people rushing to get their applications in for their NFC-capable "My Number" cards, which haven't been very popular... that was entirely optional and gave you access to a digital version of the same thing.