Japan pitches 'Society 5.0' to keep its edge in tech and science

I’m from Spain and I remember those transaction books from my childhood (I was born in 1991).

By the time I was old enough to get my first debit card they were long gone though.

It's fascinating and also kind of sad to me how much less relevant Japan today seems to be as far as consumer tech goes.

Looking back, I also think a big part of it was Tokyo as a city just being on a totally different scale than anything else I had experienced. In the 90's I don't think there was anywhere in the US remotely similar to a place like Shinjuku. Now days I think parts of midtown Manhattan or perhaps in other ways the Vegas strip might have a little bit of a similar energy, but I had never been to either of those as a child, and back then they were much different than they are today anyway.

The ease of getting around by fast, reliable trains (and especially bullet trains) also seemed super futuristic to me back then. Of course that part is still pretty far ahead of the US to this day.

You see it in the USA today too with their aging boomer ruling class, but since its not as bad as japan, they’re not staying as stuck in the past.

As walking around with a clipboard looks a lot more busy than typing.

I reckon it's more that initiative is not expected, or even discouraged. You will work on what the direct superior tells you, end of story. And the more people the boss can lord on, the bigger his empire looks like; so there is little incentive for middle-managers to pursue efficiency.

Japan is placed somewhere in the upper middle among OECD countries when it comes to average working hours per year and the percentage of workers working more than 60 hours per week.

If we tried to extrapolate that hypothesis, shouldn't it imply that countries with considerably lower averages (e.g.: Germany, France, Sweden) ought to be considerably further ahead in automation than they currently are?

Of course, with statistics like these one has to consider the fact that second-income earners working part-time jobs make the statistic skew low, which means that in countries where wages are high enough to feed a family with only one parent working, the numbers will skew higher despite less actual hours worked. I am note sure to what degree the statistics address this issue.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

The rep from a textbook company would go to the teacher's lounge every semester, bow to each of the teacher's one at a time in front of their desks, and ask them what they wanted to order from the catalog. The teacher's could've easily put in an order online or over the phone and I imagine the salesman had to go to each school in person.

Japanese use a lot of back-channel chatter when they talk to indicate that they are actively listening (Auzuchi). This includes saying "Yes" to indicate "Yes, I understand what you are saying" instead of "Yes, I agree that we should do as you are suggesting". They may not always indicate disagreement by saying "No" either, but simply by not committing to your suggestion when its their turn to talk (or some other, subtler expression than "No", such as a head tilt and an intake of breath)

This active listening behavior has apparently led to similar misunderstandings before.

Of course, if you made sure you actually came to a clear agreement with the execs, it's an entirely different story.

After the meeting the customer was very upbeat but in the end the supplier never did anything they had promised.

It was interesting to observe this as a somewhat independent outsider. I came away with the impression that the people at the supplier had some disdain for their customer.

There's this perception that "digital = better", but that's not always how it works. Actually, in quite a few cases the analogue solution was quite a bit better (analogue buttons, for example, but also just having some things on paper was a lot easier IMHO, like bus tickets and whatnot).

In Singapore we have the MC requirement but I’ve been with the company 9 years so I just tell my boss when I’m sick. Don’t bother seeing doctor. Unless I’m sick for a few days with no feeling of getting better than I go and take time off work at that point.

yes. people need to realize if they want to work/live in japan stuff like this comes with the territory.

It may be political though. As in Taiwan keeping up with the "true" Chinese tradition -- as opposed to post-Cultural-Revolution China.

I hear this a lot, but have difficulty squaring that with observational evidence:

France for instance great employment security but is hovering at similar fertility with the US and UK (1.88 births/woman vs 1.73 US and 1.68 UK). The nordic countries are around the same (1.76 Sweden, 1.41 Finland). Singapore has gone through great lengths to try to raise fertility, having affordable housing and various social programs and government cheerleading, and it's at 1.14.

Maybe each of these cases have other factors, and maybe observational evidence is not right way to look at this. Is there other evidence of this path leading to more fertility?

I don't disagree with you that we need rent and housing to come down, but people who live in section 8 housing in the US are not known for having few children and if you raise the minimum wage too much, you are going to increase the number of people who are unemployed.

[0]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

*recent president notwithstanding

There is little opposition to skilled (or educated) immigration in Europe.

pretty sure that is not true, unless you are of japanese descent. you can get permanent residency but not citizenship

Christianity and the two colonial powers it was most strongly associated with were seen as genuine threats by the Tokugawa bakuf... Religious challenges to central authority were taken seriously by the bakufu as ecclesiastical challenges by armed Buddhist monks were common during the sengoku period. The Empress Meishō (1624–96) also had grave doubts when she heard about how the Spanish and Portuguese were settling in the New World, and thought that Japan would soon become one of the many countries in their possession.

Protestant English and Dutch traders reinforced this perception by accusing the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries of spreading the religion systematically, as part of a claimed policy of culturally dominating and colonizing Asian countries. The Dutch and English were generally seen by the Japanese to be able to separate religion and trade, while their Iberian counterparts were looked upon with much suspicion. The Dutch, eager to take over trade from the Spanish and Portuguese, had no problems reinforcing this view. The number of Christians in Japan had been steadily rising due to the efforts of missionaries, such as Francis Xavier and daimyō converts. The direct trigger which is said to have spurred the imposition of sakoku was the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–38, an uprising of 40,000 mostly Christian peasants.

Michael Fay was an American who was sentenced to caning by the Singaporean court. The United States felt this practice archaic. One of Singapore's senior ministers responded: "If you like it this way, that is your problem. But, that is not the path we choose"

Essentially US cultural standards mark certain behaviors as horrible in the same way Muslim countries think women wearing a bikini is a crime. Very hard to change the way we think and arguably maybe we shouldn't change the way we think.

I've personally found the older people to be the most friendly. That was one of the biggest surprises. Not sure how much of that is older people just being happier in general. This could totally be biased as the older people I interact with are either in a service role, or a wealthier traveler, which may be more friendly than the general population.

It's refreshing to see other foreigners not feel bitter about Japan. The subreddit of foreigners in Japan feels like a cesspool of people with this dogmatic view that Japan isn't like their home country

On one hand, as you mention, we experienced lots of acts of politeness, as I would put it, e.g., being helped to find some location as in your example, being helped to understand some menu dishes when I couldn't decipher them (I had at most intermediate level of Japanese), being bowed to upon entering hotels, ryokans, etc.

On the other hand, we also experienced straight up nasty behaviour, e.g., someone standing up and leaving the train wagon when we sat next to him (and then reentering through the next door and sitting far away from us), being forbidden from entering a bar because of being foreigners (despite the fact I can speak Japanese, not great admittedly, but more than sufficient to order, pay, etc.).

When talking with people from my country settled there the common negative theme is "you'll never be accepted/treated as one of them".

For example, in a dispute with a Japanese person, the police are pretty famous for making foreigners second class citizens. I'm sure they're polite about it though.

Also a lot of casual disparaging remarks at Chinese and Koreans, along the lines of stereotypes in the US about people from Mexico, perhaps because a similar dynamic exists with illegal immigration.

Japan also still virtually has no legal protection against this kind of stuff, discrimination of that type is often not being prevented.

That said a lot of the younger Japanese don't share these attitudes. Large cities are more diverse than they were 20 years ago.

It seems that the tools dept and brand on Ryobi in Japan is sold to Kyocera.

China has a similar issue coming down the line. https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2019/

For reference, the U.S. population pyramid looks a bit "healthier" (more balanced), though the retirement of the boomer generation will still pose a challenge. https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...

Shrinking populations in particular puts a lot of strain on workers to support a larger elderly population. The more rapid the decline, the worse the strain is.

This is probably true, but the problem is that its logical conclusion is the literal death of everyone. Stop anywhere short of that, and people will return to the point where they're no longer too preoccupied with avoiding imminent death to compete for resources. At that point, the less fighting is unlikely to be less per capita, and the only good thing to say will be that technology will have regressed so far that we won't be able to fight and kill very efficiently.

This is getting into a whole other can of worms but I firmly believe the most moral path for the US to aim for is the latter.

Japan has one of the most educated populace.

> use the humans for higher economic value tasks

People are under-employed.

There is also the social expectation that people work hard, so it's not obvious to me if universal basic income would be well received, even by the people who would benefit from it.

> STEM could solve this problem if you could automate all the low value stuff

Japan has access to cheap labor in neighboring southeast asian countries. Many of the workers at the convenient store are from Vietnam, Philippines, Turkey.

And that's why I took a 60% salary cut to live in Japan.

> low unemployment

I don't think Japan having lower unemployment than other developed countries is an indicator that other countries are worst off. A part of the employment rate is due to cultural reasons. There are people who can afford not to work, but choose to work anyways.

> some of the top health metric on the planet

The Japanese eat less processed food, eat moderate portions, use public transportation which involves a fair amount of walking, and just take more sanitary measures such as wearing a mask and washing hands.

After a certain economic level, this is also a cultural phenomenon.

> A lot of places would be very happy to have that kind of "faltering"

It doesn't change the fact that Japan was going to be the global superpower, until it didn't. Deflation is a fact. A lot of places would be very happy to have the American standard of living even during 07-08 recession, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a setback.

It should go without saying, but I guess it needs to be explicitly stated here: it's good to have -qualified-, diverse candidates in leadership roles. Obviously just putting some underqualified person isn't going to work out and it's a bit tautological to state this. There's nothing about "young" that automatically means "lack of experience", or "old" that automatically means "experienced". There's nothing about "more diverse candidates" that means "not qualified"- that's your personal interpretation. It doesn't mean "more qualified" either.

Leadership (and really, all company roles) benefit from having different perspectives. When your perspective is from generally one group it's easy to be out of touch and just start missing the mark.