4 ms·

Orthogonally, I've always wondered, why are geeks so into Japan? Slashdot and all of it's children, like HN, are always full of posts by Westerners about Japane

Orthogonally, I've always wondered, why are geeks so into Japan? Slashdot and all of it's children, like HN, are always full of posts by Westerners about Japanese culture, language, etc, but pretty much lacking in any interest for any other foreign lands. Is it solely an anime thing?

showerst 10y ago
The real answer is of course "it's complicated", but i'll take a shot: Since the 80s, Japan has been seen as very 'futuristic' in the west. Some combo of extreme density and a high percent of the economy being manufacturing makes people more comfortable with technology, and that's reflected in their pop art and music, on top of the normal exoticism of a non-western language and culture. Aside from this, their (extra future-y) nerd culture is more accessible to westerners through manga, anime, and video games than countries like China or India. They also have fewer taboos about mixing sex and digital entertainment, so things like dating sims and porn games probably draw a segment of the particularly digitally comfortable into Japanese culture.
- SerLava 10y ago
  I'll add to this. Every place has its ups and downs, and the cultural distance allows Westerners to completely miss the negatives. Normally this is canceled out because the majority of nonwestern nations are visibly poor. That means it can just seem incredibly cool and fun, while it's actually a relatively boring country in the scheme of things
  - tingol 10y ago
    Boring compared to what?
    - krapp 10y ago
      Possibly the "weird, perverted, hyper-futuristic" image of Japan that gets conveyed through memes and anime.
- buster 10y ago
  Since i visited Japan (and some other asian countries) i will try to explain my own fascination of the coutry: It's the fascinating mix of high-tech and tradition. Japan is very high tech, but remained relatively closed to other countries for a long time. They have their own religion (Shinto). Their own alphabet. Compared to other asian countries (like indonesia) people have a different mindset. All in all, it fits the right amount of familiar-but-different for me. For comparison: Singapore is just familiar-with-an-asian-touch to a westerner.
dwg 10y ago
Anime is a big part of it but I think if you look deeper there is a sense of respect for a culture which can produce something like that—a place where dedicating oneself to something is respected in a way that isn't just about getting rich. Anime is a manifestation of that culture but there is much more to it.
drdaeman 10y ago
If so, more likely to me a cultural thing as it's most certainly not limited to animation/comics. Among the popular things there's also at least video games, music and, to some extent, cinematography ("live action" movies) and literature. Some may also start to get interested through history, mythology or games (Go, Shogi, Mahjong, Hanafuda, etc.). Or martial arts. Source: initially I got hooked on Japanese music (then anime and the rest followed)
nikofeyn 10y ago
the pull for me to japanese culture is their culture of design. people like sou fujimoto and fumito ueda are very inspirational in their wholly unique approach to design in their respective fields. i feel design in japan is such because of their tendency to be fascinated by futuristic ideas but at the same time have a wealth of history and mythology to draw from. i am not into anime or other such things but have recently picked up my first manga: all you need is kill, solanin, and pink. but i would say i am interested in other cultures just as much. it typically revolves around design though. haha. and i a not even a designer in occupation.
- vram22 10y ago
  Re. "their culture of design", this might of interest - a post by me about Muji: http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/05/muji-simplicity-is-deceptively-complex.html http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/05/muji-simplicity-is-decepti...
vram22 10y ago
> Is it solely an anime thing? Maybe also a bit due to interest in Zen, is my guess. E.g. See ESR writings, etc.
- vram22 10y ago
  See his writings on his site about his visits to Japan, Zen temples, etc.
IkmoIkmo 10y ago
Well, consider that Japan has been the nr 2 economy for many decades, having been overtaken only as recently as 2010 by China. That's not nr 2 of Asian countries, nr 2 of all countries. All the more special is that it's also the nr 1 non-western economy, i.e. not the US or Canada or Australia or Europe, which will feel familiar to anyone living in those countries. Even irrespective of it being an economic powerhouse, it feels culturally more differentiated from the west, than say South-America is from North-America, or Eastern-Europe is from Western-Europe. Combine that with a long history of civilisation, and you've got THE major (economic) superpower with its own distinct culture. There's no such story in the rest of Asia, Africa or South America. All other countries are either economically struggling, or are culturally/historically insignificant, or are simply too small like Singapore. I don't think we even have to fully explore the interesting relationship Japan has with technology as part of its post-war economic and cultural story and many other such facets like it, to answer the question. None of the interest in Japan feels at all illogical to me.
GuiA 10y ago
There are general trends, but I think you'll find as many reasons as there are Japanophiles. On my end, what fascinates me with Japan is how they developed in relative isolation for such a long time. My ultimate dream would be to explore and learn about alien cultures and languages; in the meantime, I feel that the closest I can get to that is Japan.
verisimilidude 10y ago
I'll throw some pasta at the wall. The answer to why geeks love Japan is probably going to vary by geek. Japanese culture is broad and full of deep practice. It offers many obsessive exports, any one of which could fully consume someone with the geek mindset, from ikebana and origami to J-RPGs and painting Gundam figurines. It only takes one of those hooks to grab a Westerner and steer his/her interest toward the rest of Japan. Anime is just one possibility on a long list. It's worth keeping in mind that Japan was ascendant during the formative years of many of the geeks here. We all rode to school in Japanese cars, played games on Japanese consoles, took pictures with Japanese cameras, studied Japanese in school so we could be future masters of the universe, and so on. Many geeks on the academic fast-track got a lot of exposure to Japan from a young age, and it still holds our interest. Japan is a modern country with a modern economy, so I'd bet you'll find a lot of folks on these tech forums who've lived and/or worked there. I worked over there myself. Finally, interest in Japan is not limited to Westerners. Some of my best friends when I lived in Tokyo were from places like Ghana, Bangladesh, Brazil, etc. Everyone is intrigued by that weird country, not just white people. Many are going to say something like "Japan is a hyper-modern country set against ancient traditions, which is so neat" or "Japan is historically X so Y happened after Z and therefore we've been interested since year NNNN". That's all fine and probably indirectly, abstractly correct. But I don't think it captures the more visceral and immediate reasons that so many geeks personally take interest.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
bitwize 10y ago
Japan has been captivating to Westerners since at least the days of Commodore Perry. But in this era, the "hook" was probably some form of anime, video game, or manga. In the 1980s, most television animation was utter crap, churned out by studios like Hanna-Barbera and intended to sell toys and keep the kiddos busy on weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings. Very little thought was given to story or characterization, and episodes were always self-vontained half hours (if that). To a kid growing up in this time, Robotech (with its long-form structure, complex characters, and real death of major, beloved characters) was fucking Game of Thrones. This same generation would grow up with Nintendo and Sega, and all the Japanese-originated games on those platforms. So it's not surprising that as young adults we would becone attached to the culture which produced all this stuff.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Bingo. One thing to consider is that many of most praised anime of the 80s were not released for TV, but OVA (Original Video Anime). This allowed them to do stories and themes that western animations could not touch, because they where expected to be broadcast for kids. Perhaps the best example could be Legend of the Galactic Heroes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Galactic_Heroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Galactic_Heroes You are looking at 110 episodes, each 25 minutes long, covering what is effectively a naval war in the stars. But with it you have intrigues of all stripes, and no real good guys.
- btown 10y ago
  It's interesting to hear Robotech mentioned on a site where intellectual property law is often discussed, without mention of the controversy surrounding its IP. When Harmony Gold USA created Robotech, it did so using exclusively licensed footage from a Japanese multimedia franchise called Macross. In the 30 years since, many new Macross works, including anime representing some of the most innovative uses of music-in-film-as-a-critical-plot-point (of great interest to a musical theater listener like myself!), have been produced in Japan to great critical acclaim, but their legal import and streaming into the US has been consistently suppressed by Harmony Gold, which maintains that it has the exclusive rights to the Macross trademark in the US [2]. From one perspective, Harmony Gold USA played a pivotal role in bringing anime to the US, and it's only rational that they be allowed to harvest from their Robotech brand without diluting it with Macross competitors. But it's a frustrating situation for Macross fans. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diegesis#Film_sound_and_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diegesis#Film_sound_and_music [2] http://kotaku.com/5990702/why-you-havent-seen-any-new-macross-in-the-west-for-nearly-15-years http://kotaku.com/5990702/why-you-havent-seen-any-new-macros...
yomly 10y ago
A lot of valuable points have already been made, but I think it is as much a chance of timing. I think the main factor is economics: post-war Japan was well placed to export its culture. Around the 70s/80s Japan, in being the most economically developed of the East Asian countries, was trading the most with the West. At the time, China was still on lock down for example, and Korea's growth curve was later and smaller than Japan's. This period coincided with TVs becoming more common in the household, and later came VHS and consoles, and Japan was able to cement a position of exotic appeal in pop/alt culture as access to and variety of media increased. In the mainstream you had things like Karate Kid, Ninja Turtles and Mario. Slightly less mainstream you had things like DBZ, Sailor Moon and Akira. It probably also helps that Japan feels more "familiar" to the west: Japan has democracy and homosexuality is not illegal, for example. I would hazard that factors like this make Japanese culture somewhat less foreign to follow than say Chinese culture which may be smeared by anti-communist sentiment.
jcranmer 10y ago
Japan was the first Asian country to "westernize", having done so in the Meiji period (~1870s). Particularly after WWII, Japan tried very hard at catch-up growth, to the point that by the late 80s, there was consternation about the US being eclipsed by Japan (in 1991, Japan's economic bubble burst, and it hasn't recovered as of 25 years later). Part of the appeal of Japan is that it has a very visible cultural export market (anime/manga/video games), and that is driven in part by the fact that Japan is a very populous country: it's the second largest "rich" country (loosely defined here as OECD sans Turkey and Mexico). Japan's history also helps in this regard. Its relative isolation kept its history from being the more-or-less samey nature that, say, European history. The samurai, while being almost a carbon copy of the western knight, is just different enough (the vastly different roots helps obfuscate the similarities) that you can pretend that samurais aren't knights, and it's not hard to make media that focuses on them in this light. This makes it easy to sell Japanese history as "cool."

showerst 10y ago

The real answer is of course "it's complicated", but i'll take a shot: Since the 80s, Japan has been seen as very 'futuristic' in the west. Some combo of extreme density and a high percent of the economy being manufacturing makes people more comfortable with technology, and that's reflected in their pop art and music, on top of the normal exoticism of a non-western language and culture. Aside from this, their (extra future-y) nerd culture is more accessible to westerners through manga, anime, and video games than countries like China or India. They also have fewer taboos about mixing sex and digital entertainment, so things like dating sims and porn games probably draw a segment of the particularly digitally comfortable into Japanese culture.

SerLava 10y ago
I'll add to this. Every place has its ups and downs, and the cultural distance allows Westerners to completely miss the negatives. Normally this is canceled out because the majority of nonwestern nations are visibly poor. That means it can just seem incredibly cool and fun, while it's actually a relatively boring country in the scheme of things
- tingol 10y ago
  Boring compared to what?
  - krapp 10y ago
    Possibly the "weird, perverted, hyper-futuristic" image of Japan that gets conveyed through memes and anime.
buster 10y ago
Since i visited Japan (and some other asian countries) i will try to explain my own fascination of the coutry: It's the fascinating mix of high-tech and tradition. Japan is very high tech, but remained relatively closed to other countries for a long time. They have their own religion (Shinto). Their own alphabet. Compared to other asian countries (like indonesia) people have a different mindset. All in all, it fits the right amount of familiar-but-different for me. For comparison: Singapore is just familiar-with-an-asian-touch to a westerner.

dwg 10y ago

Anime is a big part of it but I think if you look deeper there is a sense of respect for a culture which can produce something like that—a place where dedicating oneself to something is respected in a way that isn't just about getting rich. Anime is a manifestation of that culture but there is much more to it.

drdaeman 10y ago

If so, more likely to me a cultural thing as it's most certainly not limited to animation/comics. Among the popular things there's also at least video games, music and, to some extent, cinematography ("live action" movies) and literature. Some may also start to get interested through history, mythology or games (Go, Shogi, Mahjong, Hanafuda, etc.). Or martial arts. Source: initially I got hooked on Japanese music (then anime and the rest followed)

nikofeyn 10y ago

the pull for me to japanese culture is their culture of design. people like sou fujimoto and fumito ueda are very inspirational in their wholly unique approach to design in their respective fields. i feel design in japan is such because of their tendency to be fascinated by futuristic ideas but at the same time have a wealth of history and mythology to draw from. i am not into anime or other such things but have recently picked up my first manga: all you need is kill, solanin, and pink. but i would say i am interested in other cultures just as much. it typically revolves around design though. haha. and i a not even a designer in occupation.

vram22 10y ago
Re. "their culture of design", this might of interest - a post by me about Muji: http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/05/muji-simplicity-is-deceptively-complex.html http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/05/muji-simplicity-is-decepti...

vram22 10y ago

> Is it solely an anime thing? Maybe also a bit due to interest in Zen, is my guess. E.g. See ESR writings, etc.

vram22 10y ago
See his writings on his site about his visits to Japan, Zen temples, etc.

IkmoIkmo 10y ago

Well, consider that Japan has been the nr 2 economy for many decades, having been overtaken only as recently as 2010 by China. That's not nr 2 of Asian countries, nr 2 of all countries. All the more special is that it's also the nr 1 non-western economy, i.e. not the US or Canada or Australia or Europe, which will feel familiar to anyone living in those countries. Even irrespective of it being an economic powerhouse, it feels culturally more differentiated from the west, than say South-America is from North-America, or Eastern-Europe is from Western-Europe. Combine that with a long history of civilisation, and you've got THE major (economic) superpower with its own distinct culture. There's no such story in the rest of Asia, Africa or South America. All other countries are either economically struggling, or are culturally/historically insignificant, or are simply too small like Singapore. I don't think we even have to fully explore the interesting relationship Japan has with technology as part of its post-war economic and cultural story and many other such facets like it, to answer the question. None of the interest in Japan feels at all illogical to me.

GuiA 10y ago

There are general trends, but I think you'll find as many reasons as there are Japanophiles. On my end, what fascinates me with Japan is how they developed in relative isolation for such a long time. My ultimate dream would be to explore and learn about alien cultures and languages; in the meantime, I feel that the closest I can get to that is Japan.

verisimilidude 10y ago

I'll throw some pasta at the wall. The answer to why geeks love Japan is probably going to vary by geek. Japanese culture is broad and full of deep practice. It offers many obsessive exports, any one of which could fully consume someone with the geek mindset, from ikebana and origami to J-RPGs and painting Gundam figurines. It only takes one of those hooks to grab a Westerner and steer his/her interest toward the rest of Japan. Anime is just one possibility on a long list. It's worth keeping in mind that Japan was ascendant during the formative years of many of the geeks here. We all rode to school in Japanese cars, played games on Japanese consoles, took pictures with Japanese cameras, studied Japanese in school so we could be future masters of the universe, and so on. Many geeks on the academic fast-track got a lot of exposure to Japan from a young age, and it still holds our interest. Japan is a modern country with a modern economy, so I'd bet you'll find a lot of folks on these tech forums who've lived and/or worked there. I worked over there myself. Finally, interest in Japan is not limited to Westerners. Some of my best friends when I lived in Tokyo were from places like Ghana, Bangladesh, Brazil, etc. Everyone is intrigued by that weird country, not just white people. Many are going to say something like "Japan is a hyper-modern country set against ancient traditions, which is so neat" or "Japan is historically X so Y happened after Z and therefore we've been interested since year NNNN". That's all fine and probably indirectly, abstractly correct. But I don't think it captures the more visceral and immediate reasons that so many geeks personally take interest.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

bitwize 10y ago

Japan has been captivating to Westerners since at least the days of Commodore Perry. But in this era, the "hook" was probably some form of anime, video game, or manga. In the 1980s, most television animation was utter crap, churned out by studios like Hanna-Barbera and intended to sell toys and keep the kiddos busy on weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings. Very little thought was given to story or characterization, and episodes were always self-vontained half hours (if that). To a kid growing up in this time, Robotech (with its long-form structure, complex characters, and real death of major, beloved characters) was fucking Game of Thrones. This same generation would grow up with Nintendo and Sega, and all the Japanese-originated games on those platforms. So it's not surprising that as young adults we would becone attached to the culture which produced all this stuff.

digi_owl 10y ago
Bingo. One thing to consider is that many of most praised anime of the 80s were not released for TV, but OVA (Original Video Anime). This allowed them to do stories and themes that western animations could not touch, because they where expected to be broadcast for kids. Perhaps the best example could be Legend of the Galactic Heroes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Galactic_Heroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Galactic_Heroes You are looking at 110 episodes, each 25 minutes long, covering what is effectively a naval war in the stars. But with it you have intrigues of all stripes, and no real good guys.
btown 10y ago
It's interesting to hear Robotech mentioned on a site where intellectual property law is often discussed, without mention of the controversy surrounding its IP. When Harmony Gold USA created Robotech, it did so using exclusively licensed footage from a Japanese multimedia franchise called Macross. In the 30 years since, many new Macross works, including anime representing some of the most innovative uses of music-in-film-as-a-critical-plot-point (of great interest to a musical theater listener like myself!), have been produced in Japan to great critical acclaim, but their legal import and streaming into the US has been consistently suppressed by Harmony Gold, which maintains that it has the exclusive rights to the Macross trademark in the US [2]. From one perspective, Harmony Gold USA played a pivotal role in bringing anime to the US, and it's only rational that they be allowed to harvest from their Robotech brand without diluting it with Macross competitors. But it's a frustrating situation for Macross fans. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diegesis#Film_sound_and_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diegesis#Film_sound_and_music [2] http://kotaku.com/5990702/why-you-havent-seen-any-new-macross-in-the-west-for-nearly-15-years http://kotaku.com/5990702/why-you-havent-seen-any-new-macros...

yomly 10y ago

A lot of valuable points have already been made, but I think it is as much a chance of timing. I think the main factor is economics: post-war Japan was well placed to export its culture. Around the 70s/80s Japan, in being the most economically developed of the East Asian countries, was trading the most with the West. At the time, China was still on lock down for example, and Korea's growth curve was later and smaller than Japan's. This period coincided with TVs becoming more common in the household, and later came VHS and consoles, and Japan was able to cement a position of exotic appeal in pop/alt culture as access to and variety of media increased. In the mainstream you had things like Karate Kid, Ninja Turtles and Mario. Slightly less mainstream you had things like DBZ, Sailor Moon and Akira. It probably also helps that Japan feels more "familiar" to the west: Japan has democracy and homosexuality is not illegal, for example. I would hazard that factors like this make Japanese culture somewhat less foreign to follow than say Chinese culture which may be smeared by anti-communist sentiment.

jcranmer 10y ago

Japan was the first Asian country to "westernize", having done so in the Meiji period (~1870s). Particularly after WWII, Japan tried very hard at catch-up growth, to the point that by the late 80s, there was consternation about the US being eclipsed by Japan (in 1991, Japan's economic bubble burst, and it hasn't recovered as of 25 years later). Part of the appeal of Japan is that it has a very visible cultural export market (anime/manga/video games), and that is driven in part by the fact that Japan is a very populous country: it's the second largest "rich" country (loosely defined here as OECD sans Turkey and Mexico). Japan's history also helps in this regard. Its relative isolation kept its history from being the more-or-less samey nature that, say, European history. The samurai, while being almost a carbon copy of the western knight, is just different enough (the vastly different roots helps obfuscate the similarities) that you can pretend that samurais aren't knights, and it's not hard to make media that focuses on them in this light. This makes it easy to sell Japanese history as "cool."