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Comment by PhasmaFelis | Hacker News Reader

> First, as the cold war heated up in the 40s and 50s, America’s idealistic vision for a democratic and progressive Japan took a back seat to the more practical and pressing need to develop Japan into a bulwark against Communism.

Funny how protecting the ideals of progressive democracy from Communism so often involved suppressing those ideals ourselves. Beat the Commies to the punch, I guess.

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Arguably it worked out pretty well for Japan, given where the rest of the post soviet countries are now.

Like post-Soviet Estonia, which is way more advanced than Japan when it comes to digitalization?

How do you measure "advanced"?

For example, being able to do online administrative procedures by using digital signatures, instead of doing them on paper with personal stamps.

How "advanced" is that? Considering myself quite immersed in tech world, I would prefer paper to digital signatures and alike.

Advanced doesn't mean putting tech everywhere regardless whether it improves life or not

But it does improve life. If you can't see the massive improvements in efficiency, or the benefit of doing any paperwork in 5 minutes from the comfort of your own house instead of wasting half a day or more going to whatever physical office, I don't know what to tell you.

Post-soviet Estonia si an exception rather than the rule, plus it has little industry other than digital services with next to no manufacturing compared to Japans which si at the cutting edge of manufacturing and little digitalization.

In General post-soviet countries have a larger focus on the digital industry as it was the lowest hanging fruit to build up the economy quickly as the other industries were not competitive after the fall of communism, too far behind the cutting edge west, and too expensive compared to the cheap east, so internet and software it is.

Japan was never Soviet, so I'm not seeing the connection.

I think the poster intended to make a contrast between US postwar vassals versus Soviet postwar vassals.

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