Spot on. The creative/disruptive spirit is next to non-existent in this country. Conformism and herd behavior seem to be the national past time.
One such company that can truly change the world as opposed to creating another chat app is euglena: http://www.euglena.jp/en/
The conformism, herd and inflexibility of generations helped the downward spiral of Japan. Which is really such a shame from such a beautiful country.
It's not like their society became more conformist all of a sudden. In fact it was probably even more so a couple of years/decades earlier.
Look at the manga industry: there are mangas that touch on virtually any genre. That is a testament to the creativity of some of the people in this land.
I am not saying they will become as creative as the people in SV but I believe they definitely have the potential to bring innovative concepts to life.
TVs, mobile phones (before the iPhone came out in Japan), voltage aren't available to be used overseas.
View my comments here from a previous thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6717211
Still, there is room for innovation in new product categories. And technology is changing fast enough that new categories appear every few years. Take mobile gaming, for instance. And it comes as no surprise to me that the Number 1 Bitcoin exchange is Japanese. They have to deal in Bitcoins because the rest of the financial sector is locked down so tight that even Paypal can barely operate here.
MtGox's not Japanese, really. It was founded by Jed McCaleb (American) who may have been living in NYC when he started it, and was bought out by, I think, some Europeans. It may now be located in Japan and have some Japanese employees, but in a way, it is an exception that proves the rule.
Why is Mt. Gox in Japan at all, then? Is it simply because of the popularity of trading card games in Japan?