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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

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"

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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.

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

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