Hacker News Reader

Comment by telchior | Hacker News Reader

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 the countries are described like Japan. "Look at these weirdos, they insist on ______!" A tourist going from France to Italy would be constantly amazed, offended and puzzled. No longer.

It's a weird thought for me to have. I'm not a conservative; I view xenophobia, fear of change, and cultural/economic death grips by an older generation as negatives. But it feels like most of the world that doesn't have those things is increasingly homogeneous, in a way that's also uncomfortable to see.

View on HN

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 change, and cultural/economic death grips by an older generation as negatives

Japan has also changed a LOT demographically over the past 20-30 years - before foreigners were mostly Zainichi or Taiwanese plus a smattering of Chinese illegals, but now you have 2-3% of the population from ASEAN, China across all economic stratas, Koreans from Korea, etc but they all look "Japanese"

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"

coke and pepsi NYSE and nasdaq google and bing lowes and home depot democrat and republican fedex and UPS boing and airbus uber and lift rettardit and twitter

tho how much is corporate shenanigans and how much is power law of company size, idk

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 and later others. The Sony walkman was a cultural phenomenon - as ubiquitous and valued as mobile phones are now for 1980s teenagers. Manga comics started appearing in western comic book shops and Kurosawa movies in arthouse cinemas. Japanese branded VCRs represented a revolution - the earliest on-demand system for consuming movie/TV media - and was embraced by the youth of the time.

And that's just then influence on the kids, in the adult world, Japanese car brands destroyed the US and Euro competition, home consumer electronics were almost exclusively Japanese. Japanese massive positive trade balance of payments meant they were forced to invest outside of Japan which resulted in a massive buying spree.

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.

I'd rather live in a culturally diverse world that either learns to get along or perishes than one that defeated racism and prejudice through creating a singular global culture and race.

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).

I enjoy reading old travel books, too. Hundreds, maybe thousands, are available at the Internet Archive. A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about some of them:

https://blog.archive.org/2019/01/28/the-world-as-they-saw-it...

I mean, it's basically inevitable, isn't it? Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation. If two groups of people are in constant contact, they'll never ever stop speaking the same language and having the same traditions. Conversely, if two originally distinct cultures start to interact regularly (even more so if closely) they'll eventually merge into one. People are more willing to give up on traditions and cultural norms than to have constant friction with their neighbors.

> Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation.

What level of "isolation" forms that threshold though? We're nowhere near a single worldwide religion, for example, which is odd because it's the most existential of cultural beliefs.

> We're nowhere near a single worldwide religion, for example, which is odd because it's the most existential of cultural beliefs.

We have neoliberalism, at least

No level. It's a continuum. The more isolated, the faster the cultures will diverge.

At least in the West, we have a lot more secularism than ever before.

> I mean, it's basically inevitable, isn't it? Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation.

When thinking about this cynically, I feel like this has some depressing ramifications. Cultural differences (and isolation) are often born from financial disparities as well. Does this mean that the path to global cultural homogeneity is basically just gentrification on a massive scale where economic -> cultural minorities get more and more ostracized?

Trickle down globalism. I think you're onto something.

>People are more willing to give up on traditions and cultural norms than to have constant friction with their neighbors

Toshi would tear down his local shrine and import the third world because it's better than having some Judeo-Christian reporters call them names?

The cultural and ethnic shifts happening are happening because banks, governments, and CEOs see it as being in their own interest. More working hands, more mouths to feed, more votes for their party. None of it has ever been natural and none of it is to our benefit

>Toshi would tear down his local shrine and import the third world because it's better than having some Judeo-Christian reporters call them names?

He would have if those foreigners were similar in numbers to the Japanese, rather than being a minute minority.

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

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.

It's not that simple. People in constant contact have in fact maintained separate cultures in some instances.

I think what makes it different this time is that we are using science to find the best culture. "How should we behave towards each other for the best possible outcome?" If a certain culture is clearly and demonstrably better, then that will lead to everyone adopting it.

Democracy might also be part of it, as in authoritarian states the person in power wield such a an outsized influence that their personal whims and fancies can turn into culture.

Even separate cultures have converged to a massive degree.

For example, most people in the world, nowadays, send their kids to school and use smartphones. And even though Putin, Xi and Western leaders may not be friends, they wear basically the same professional attire.

200 years ago, there would be much fewer common cultural traits.

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 modernity) a specific culture's media successfully and pervasively inserts itself between people and local/inherited traditions.

>(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.

> These all reflect essentially distinct cultural communities in constant trade and travel for hundreds and hundreds of years

Most people didn't leave their local area, the need for a unified language was extremely limited compared to modern society. Dialects developed because interaction was so low, so you could easily hear which part everyone came from, today all of that is evening out over time. Go a few hundred miles and people use different words even if it is the same language and people would have a hard time understanding each other.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com