> If you quote William Gibson's analysis of Japanese society as authoritative or insightful, you already lose...In terms of tech adoption, Japan may have been ahead of the USA in some respects, but in terms of how their society is structured they're still a few decades behind. Their treatment of women, in particular, would strike an American as archaic and quaintly Mad Men at best, and at worst barbaric and abusive.

I am reminded of a recent discussion on 4chan of, amusingly enough, this very essay, where a 4channer reading the appendix noticed that I wrote "mediums" instead of "media", and outraged, wondered how anyone could take seriously anything I had ever written since I could not even use the word correctly.

At the risk of outraging you still further, can't it be true that "the future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed"? Can't it be possible that in some respects Japanese society is further ahead on a trend than the USA, and in other respect behind?

> Younger Japanese (age 40 and below) tend to be more worldly and cognizant of other cultures, and understand that the social structures which served their parents and grandparents are keeping Japan held back and isolated, economically and socially.

I wonder... Not very long ago, I finished reading my first 'visual novel', one called _Umineko_. The patriarch of the protagonist's family is what one might almost call a Western otaku - English-speaking, European-literature-loving, contemptuous of all things Japanese, and a few spoiler things as well - and the novels themselves are heavily influenced by Western murder mysteries & a bit of philosophy too. I was struck by how old-fashioned this preference seemed in the character. Similarly, I have spent a lot of time on Gainax & Hideaki Anno, and one thing that comes across is how much old Western SF and television Anno & other Gainaxers must have consumed, given the pervasiveness of the references in their work. But younger directors and anime industry figures seem to reference Western materials much less - I would be very surprised to see a _Babylon V_ or _Firefly_ reference in any anime I watched, whereas Anno would freely throw in allusions to Anderson's _Thunderbirds_ TV series and now-obscure Western works like that. I've also seen claims by occasional Japan-related writers that actual English proficiency has declined, which certainly might reduce Western exposure, given how much of it would be in English. All of which makes me wonder what objective metrics there could be for 'more worldly and cognizant of other cultures' and what they would show over the past 3 or 4 decades in Japan?