the fact that Japan has wallowed in the backwaters since the 1980s is endlessly fascinating to me. Can't think of another country that had so much potential just voluntarily squander it away because of.. bad culture?
From a wider perspective, individuals and countries alike are subject to economic forces that sometimes are beyond their control. The American cultural habit of attributing, without rest, ill fate to moral failing, lacks in nuance. Possibly a byproduct of the historically unique wealth of opportunity bestowed onto the post-war generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades
Japan does do very well on some metrics, but there's also ones where they do pretty badly. For example, they do badly on measures of gender equality IIRC.
but primarily thinking of:
- nikkei/real estate not past its dotcom peak
- telecoms/internet infra generally 1 generation behind most other developed countries
- anecdotally seemingly very hostile/unstable politics especially to women and immigrants
- i vaguely remember some revisionist history around their ww2 atrocities?
On the telecom side, as with so many others, Japan squandered their early lead by being extremely inward-focused, as usual. Despite their export-oriented economy and a few giants like Toyota and Sony, most Japanese companies are rarely interested in looking beyond their (shrinking) domestic market, resulting in "Galapagos syndrome", where diverse and sophisticated domestic technologies evolve in isolation from the rest of the world, only to eventually be crushed when global competitors catch up and subsequently pass them.
2. Not true. Fiber is so ubiquitous unlike the US and maybe Germany?
3. For woman, it's changing but it takes long time to be applied to real world.
4. Such people exists of course. A problem is that a part of long running ruling party is linked to such people.
Ukraine?
Belarus?
Brasil?
Russia?
Turkey?
The Balkans?
Yeah it doesn't rule the waves and 1/3 of the planet anymore like in the "glory days" of the empire but maybe that's for the better.
Then I suggest you move somewhere in the south of Europe like Italy, Greece, or the Balkans, get a job and rent there, interact with the government bureaucracy and make use of public services, just to get a perspective on what a sad hopeless economic situation and badly managed government that doesn't do anything for you, actually looks like.
There's a reason miles more young people move for work from the South of Europe to the UK and the only thing moving from the UK to the South of Europe are financially stable retirees for the food and the weather, not for work.
As you have kindly suggested I have been working for companies based here for several years. It's true that the average wages here are poor and that some people move in the direction opposite to my one, but I find your generalisation to be inaccurate and unreasonable.
Canada’s economy has tripled in size since 1995. Japan’s economy is smaller than it was in 1995.
Neither one is long-term sustainable. Eventually, the oil will be dug out of the ground, and eventually, it won't be able to endlessly generate paper value by trading rat-infested outhouses in Vancouver back-and-forth for 5 million/pop.
It has other exports[1], but they aren't the engine of Canadian economic growth.
[1] (Insert lame joke about how its biggest export is SWEs to the United States.)