Japan Is What Late-Stage Capitalist Decline Looks Like | Hacker News Reader

Japan Is What Late-Stage Capitalist Decline Looks Like

oceandrops.substack.com

55 pointsolabolola61 comments

National cultures are less alike than we mostly prefer to think. Japan's present reflects upon Japan's past, which is long and deep and rich even if one would like to say that it went off the rails a century ago. America has no past for the present to reflect off. 250 years are nothing. We do not have traditions; we have defaults.

More like Japan is a nation of the Japanese people where maintaining national values and tradition comes first, while the US functions as the world's largest economic zone where making money any way you can get away with trumps any forms of culture or identity, so they each optimize for different things and get different outcomes.

There is a lot of money floating around major cities in the US. So many nonprofit entities are preserving some cultural niche thanks to their older patrons using their qualified minimum distribution to fund a long lasting endowment.

I feel like you see this less in other parts of the world where people don't have tens of thousands of dollars from their retirement savings that they have to take out each year, and they would rather give it tax free to their favorite nonprofit than take a haircut with taxes and then do nothing with the money

You might be surprised at how much other countries invest tax revenue into cultural projects

The difference is in other countries the government decides to invest their own citizens' tax revenue in whatever cultural projects they decide, versus in the US where individuals decide for themselves to do it.

> maintaining national values and tradition comes first

Japan's had a couple of major upheavals in their "national values" over the past 210-ish years, you might have heard of them.

What does that supposed to mean?

Consider the "national values" pre- and post-Meiji restoration, and pre- and post-WWII.

What exactly do you mean with all these dogwhistles? Just say it, don't beat it around the bush.

A country can have good values and moral and be peaceful high trust society with low crime, despite past atrocities.

Which country on this planet with a history of imperialism has NOT committed similar atrocities in the past? Does that invalidate their achievements?

So what's your argument here, except a cheap gotcha like you just found out something revolutionary in the history books, that invalidates the argument.

I'm saying your claim that "maintaining national values and tradition comes first' is completely ahistorical to the point of being "not even wrong". Let's take the Meiji restoration for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration#Destruction_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_tax_riots

Many western countries, even with longer histories, don't have a national identity that is that much older than the US. There was this 19th century idea of deliberately building a national identity that swept through the world, that in many ways superseded any prior identity that merely happened to exist. So even if buildings and ruins may be old, the identity itself is often surprisingly young. It may hark on events from the 18th or even 17th century, and tack on some fairy tales of brave knights or ferocious vikings, but it was more often than not penned about the same time the US national identity began to crystallize.

> America has no past for the present to reflect off.

Well, what do you mean by "past"?

European settlement in America has a very long history, which of course extends back to the 17th century. It has a rich intellectual tradition, in which respects it surpasses many European countries -- and many of the dominant strains of thought today have their roots in America. It has an exceptionally rich literary and artistic tradition, with numerous styles which are characteristically American. In scientific achievement, few countries can compete. It even has its own aesthetic, just as Japan does.

You could say that Japan is regressing from modernity into older ways of being, but this is far from true. Japan before Meiji was strictly aristocratic and feudal. The average Japanese family were tenant farmers with zero political power, economic power, and near-zero potential for advancement in society.

If anything, Japan is apparently regressing into an American-style older way of being. A pre-New-Deal manner, with big winners, bigger and more numerous losers, and increased social strife. Also, the atomization the article picks up on isn't a Ye Olde Japanese thing; it's very American.

> a very long history [...] back to the 17th century

I think you proved the point (about no history) without wanting to.

How large percentage of history lessions in Europe do you think is spent on the years after the 17th century?

A lot! The majority, surely. The period from the 18th through the close of the 20th centuries was a time of tremendous upheaval, where nations were forged. German students, for instance, don't spend all of their time on the HRE; they tend to focus more on the nation-forming events of the 18th and 19th centuries, and then of course the 20th.

Of course, students also learn ancient and ancient-adjacent history -- the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Charlemagne, etc. -- but this is general and isn't unique to any national tradition, but common to the entire continent.

A lot, the period from National Romanticism onward is the most relevant for any form of study of a "nation".

Before that you could only think in terms of loosely connected realms/kingdoms, before more in terms of tribes and some city-states. Those aren't that useful to study to understand the present, from the 17th century is where most of the current culture branched out from.

The historical connection to the land from the people/tribes living in territories of modern Europe from before the Middle Ages is more akin to studying Native Americans in the USA, they were the people inhabiting the land, they had their traditions, and some of those traditions were used to forge the national identity of present cultures but there's a lot of this national identity that was myth-making by National Romantics to generate a sense of unity needed for creating the nation and nation-states.

There's a joke in the race world that White Americans have no culture so they have to steal other people's culture.

This is relatively true and largely because the US has little history compared to other nations. That's part of why so many facets of American society and history are nonsense myths, such as the American West myth. So much of US culture and history is made up ego stuff.

It’s not true at all? The “white Americans” is a group formed by multiple diverse groups.

The history of “white america” didn’t start when they landed on the shores of America.

The history of white America starts when white Americans decided they were people and non-white people weren't and thus "their history" needed to be separated as "white history"

Such a naive take lol

Sounds like you are the one who has bought into myths created to fit a modern narrative.

Isn't the UKs historical 'shared identity' way more of a myth than the American west? I mean my grandmother from the midwest still had stories that would have fit any western novel, and her parents spoke German and were the 'poor midwest farm settler' family straight out of the west. My other grandmother has kachina dolls in her living room that her family was gifted for helping out a local village. My town has opium dens dug out next to the railroad from during it's construction. I have visited a ton of ghost towns.

The 'American West' isn't a myth, reality is just somewhat different then what actually happened. But the same can be said for any simplified history of any nations myths.

The British did not suddenly and instantaneously turn American in 1776, they had to already be culturally American for things to have wound up there.

What's more, the British didn't leave Britain so they could go be British overseas necessarily, but so they could go do un-British things, it could be argued.

On top of that, 250 years is both a very short time, but also a very long time. It's more than enough not to be hand-waved away, at least. In 250 years it went from a coastal breakaway to the sole hyperpower, slavery came and went, communism arrived and died out, the information age dawned, religion became more of a niche than a facet of everyday life... That's a lot of cultural upheaval.

Let's revisit where exactly it is that slavery went. It went into prisons, where it remains legal and used, with about a million people bound by it.

To make a long story short, in the US, you are and have always been one of two things: the exploited or the exploitor.

We spend substantially more on prisoners than they could ever hope to generate in labor.

After all, the average prisoner is not a diligent, sober, hardworking person trying to get ahead; how much economic value are you really likely to extract, even if you're evil?

Chattel slavery and prison labor may be distant relatives, but they're not siblings, and it's wrong (in a dozen different ways) to imply they are.

Is tomato sauce an Italian tradition? It's barely older than the US, tomatoes are a new-world crop.

I read these articles about the terrible shape a country, place, generation is in. Then I see real people out and about, of all ages, enjoying restaurants and spending money. Malls, parking lots, restaurants are always packed in my city. I speak to real families and we are growing together, and everything feels fine? Yeah, people are stretched in some ways, but they figure it out.

Is this a K-shaped economy thing? Am I simply surrounding myself and observing the people who "made it"? Is there truly a whole section of the population not leaving their homes and not having sex? I find it hard to believe it's the majority.

People don't like to read "everything is doing great" articles, they prefer to read "the world is going to end, here's how you can save yourself".

Even though things go better than before, we discuss history with my life a lot, there are things going worse than before. The spectrum is widening and better is better than before and worse is worse than before.

"People love hearing negative things" is something in our nature, that's correct. However, putting them aside and chalking this as "business as usual" is not the correct thing to do.

My grandma used to say "You assume some things do not exist just because you don't see", and "you assume nobody goes there because you don't visit there".

Just because we see people look healthy and smile around we assume everything is OK. No, not everyone is that happy. Most of them wear masks, or their bonds keep them alive. Every home is a different world, every person is a different universe.

I know people who'd commit suicide the moment they lose every connection they have. A cat, a single friend, an alive mother. Some of us are connected to life via thin strings.

It is just sensationalism. They find a picture of a salary man sleeping on the train (I saw maybe 1?) and act like everyone is a zombie or everyone is getting groped.

I mean, they need to wrap the statistics in a narrative. That's the medium of delivery. But the statistics don't lie: birthrates are well below replacement levels.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/05/japan-records-...

Would like to quote a line from Portlandia:

"Everyone on the Internet, they’re not having as great a time as you think they are."

followed by: "I guess people are just cropping out all the sadness."

> I speak to real families and we are growing together, and everything feels fine?

You're talking to the people that are there, not the people that can't be and want to be.

Locality also has a lot to do with things. Some metro areas are in a deep recession, others are not.

Lots of people putting that stuff on their credit cards. I personally know many people who are deeply struggling financially, and many more who have chosen not to have kids when they would liked to have.

And you'll see my struggling friends out and about town having fun; you might see them at restaurants and bars, but maybe that's happening once a month instead of once a week, or maybe I'm buying the rounds that day as I'm best positioned to afford it. Or maybe we're just wandering around the mall/park/city just window shopping and spending no money.

I do also know some people younger than me who've never lived without their parents, don't date, and are barely employed.

There's a lot of people in the world, 5% could lock themselves in their rooms forever and you genuinely wouldn't notice.

> Rapid growth and deregulation led to massive speculation in the stock market, and the Yen appreciated massively.

Should probably mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord

So safe, largely wealthy, homogeneous culture, clean cities and countryside, with good healthcare and flawless public transportation?

Sounds like a utopia to me.

If you read these blog posts you would think its hell. But everyone is out shopping, partying, drinking, eating out all the time. Onsens, arcades, karaokes, izakayas. Yes getting those services means someone has to work. It is very much a work hard play hard environment. Better then over here in the UK where every retail shop is being replaced by a charity shop and every restaurant is replaced by a fried chicken shop while high streets collapse and unemployment reaches new highs.

I am for work often in Japan and maintain a permanent residence there. I certainly think its a better place to live than Europe.

> But everyone is out shopping, partying, drinking, eating out all the time. Onsens, arcades, karaokes, izakayas. Yes getting those services means someone has to work.

Spot on.

I really like Substack as media and I think has been a great complementary in terms of depth; but this article does not have any difference of any slop from mainstream media.

Pick one topic, place some term (like late-stage capitalism, social-democracy, democracy), pick-up 2 or 3 bad poins, and build a narrative, and sprinkle some ~hyperlinks~ references that sustain and voilà: now you have some in-depth analysis with a audience craving for it even when everyone knows that is super simplistic and reductionist, does not converge on what books and history says, and with a politically charged piece.

All those articles you will never see any kind point of positivity being conceived; it sounds always written by some hypercritical, rational, politically charged, and hyper-contemporaneous in a sense that is not space for nuance and understanding that no simple thing per se can explain a very complex phenomena.

For God sake, those guys received 2 nukes 80 years ago and they managed to raise again, and in the meanwhile my country during this time only have 55% of people with sewage.

People were out drinking and dancing during WWII, no? I don't feel like "oh well I see people out drinking and dancing" doesn't rule out that potentially millions nationwide are unable to do that but would like to

"homogenous culture" is "utopia" ?

Why?

I like to live in places where Matsuris don't have to be protected by armed police and bollards.

I live in multi cultural place and this happens yearly:

https://www.lfk.ch/Bilder%20-%20Videos/Impressionen%20Fasnac...

The idea that only in 'uniform' cultures you have safty is not accurate.

Very relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34486824

Or the Japanese central bank did it on purpose and people should be asking why the princes of the yen did so.

This is someone trying to fit every problem into a single hole to make a sweeping claim that capitalism is bad. Nothing intellectual or academic about it.

You can easily attribute some of these issues to several different things.

But if you don't like X and think it is the source of all evil, it is very easy to bend your reality to actually believe it is.

Every societal issue around communist/socialist countries get's wrapped into those economic forms, but Capitalism is like the Tzar in Russia. Everything is 'wait until the Tzar hears about this' but the accountability never gets placed on the Tzar. Capitalism is never judged in the same way, everything is always 'external factors'.

What a tiresome brand of content. It's like thing, japan, but the inverse. I've found there's a whole subset of content creators that love to do this for asian countries. They find one really weird thing and then do some high school levels of sociology to explain it.

"high school levels of sociology"

Well, that's probably better than doctoral level...

touche

Japan's decline is not a result of late stage capitalism but their inability to adapt and change cultural expectations and norms.

It's decline stems from favoring bullshit work over efficiency, change and adaptation.

Are we not rapidly trending thither in the west as well?

Japan is only in economic decline, we in the west are in a societal decline, we just lie to ourselves that we're not, due to the fiscalisation tricks we employ to pump up bullshit metrics like GDP graph and the DOW(cough Pam Bondi cough), that only benefit the top 10% asset owners, as if that means anything to the average city worker who lives paycheck to paycheck, has six figure debt, lives surrounded by homeless people and hears gunshots at night in the background.

The economy != society.

I am eastern european and yes we do too but not to such extent.

>It's decline stems from favoring bullshit work over

Does Japan really stand out in this regard?

There are absolutely some (very) weird cultures/behaviours in the Japanese workplace that do set them apart from every other first-world country I've experienced (working in global organisations).

"Never nuke a country twice" for anyone who wants to know more.

Yes it does. Japan has a top down culture which does not see change as something useful.

Late-Stage capitalism is a term that socialist have been throwing around since 1960. Its completely meaningless, its just one of those terms that socialist use to throw literally anything into that they don't like. Because of course if you identified anything other then 'capitalism' as the problem, then anything other then 'socialism' could not be the solution. And its a-priority clear that socialism will be the solution. And using that terms also frees you from actually coming up with a solution other then then just talking about 'global revolution' or whatever socialist cliche you want to come up with.

Instead of getting your socialists credits up by calling anything that bad 'capitalism' we should be smart enough to understand that other technological and social factors are at play.

Then blaming everything, all the issues on some economic crisis rather then any long term forces is another typical lazy approach, ignoring trends that existed before the economic problems and persist long after the crash.

When we are talking about the nuclear family, lets be clear, it is the social state and government pensions that have a lot to do with that. And the availability of porn and other alternatives to getting married has a lot to do with the general liberalization of society and feminism. Giving everybody the freedom to pick their own partner when both partners are free of family requirements, free of economic pressure (woman can support their own lives) and with sex more available 'thanks' to dating app and general sexual liberation.

Of course on the far right they call all these things evil and wanting to go back to 'traditional values'. But even if we don't agree with the 'solution' it is true to some extent.

For example, in terms of how many kids woman have, if you only look at 'natives' and exclude immigrant backgrounds, the trend has been ongoing in a lot of places including in Europe (Italy or Spain). But in most Pop-Stars don't shave their heads, in the US its the opposite, a Pop-Star having a 'high-value' boyfriends (or many sexual partners) makes her more desirable. So example like this are always cherry-picked. I don't think Japan is showing the future here.

The overall drop in fertility in men is also universal, again something often cried about by right wing people. There are many other such trends that are global to some extend. And of course not sure how socialism would fix most of them.

> In late-stage capitalism these same milestones become financially punishing and logistically impossible.

Except of course that people used to be 10x poorer and did just fine in reproducing. The claim that 'late-stage capitalism' is so completely repressive that it is impossible and so much worse then the 1920 is just baseless nonsense. Coal minors in 1920 managed to have enough kids, do you want to switch with them?

PS:

> celebrity is necessarily a fictitious character in everyday life

Because celebrates in the past showed their true selves to people right? What even is this argument.

This behavior evolved from America's previous one where everything bad was called communism/socialism. Such as 'you don't like police violence, what are you, a socialist?'. Or just callie someone a commie. We just operate within the existing social framework/communication norms. The dominant Capitalist supporter created one in this case.

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