Definitely. Though I admit I prefer automation or red tape where possible. What you can say about Japan, is that since technology-wise it tends to be behind th

Definitely. Though I admit I prefer automation or red tape where possible. What you can say about Japan, is that since technology-wise it tends to be behind the US (of course this too is a gross generalization), you can expect most non-startups to use bureaucracy over automation (and modern DevOps practices in general) to regulate production operation quality. The unfortunate side here is that bureaucracy is much more fragile and when it fails, it tends to fail spectacularly.