4 ms·

I thought Japan was the most orderly place ever. The most clean, orderly, mindnumbingly elegant country ever. Their literature and media, though, is a complet

I thought Japan was the most orderly place ever. The most clean, orderly, mindnumbingly elegant country ever. Their literature and media, though, is a complete contrast. Their TV shows are loud (visually), with many overlays, graphics, transitions, etc. Their print media is the poster boy for chaos. Their information density is so huge, I wonder if anyone even reads 10% of what is on the page. edit: I guess the insane information density in their language and printed media is perhaps an outcome of obsession with conciseness.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Miller's Japan's Modern Myth, though published in the 1970s, is still relevant in this regard. He wrote of how it is odd how Japan has managed to export a reputation of being a country of peace and contemplation when it likes its loudspeakers (another poster already mentioned the election-season cars with loudspeakers, goddamn) and you can find them even in some Zen rock gardens.
- azernik 6y ago
  Part of it is a reaction - Japanese pop culture starting in the 60s and 70s included a strong element of youth rebellion against parentally-mandated elegance and minimalism. Similar to how European and European-derived cultures adopted a very traditional clean Japanese aesthetic in rebellion against a baroque tradition.
  - ahartmetz 6y ago
    Just in case somebody thinks that European minimalism started with Apple or Braun or whatever: it started much earlier in the 1910s latest, with Neues Bauen, De Stijl, Bauhaus etc. I'm a bit of a fan of these movements and the things they produced.
    - azernik 6y ago
      Yup! My UI class, at the height of the flatness craze, started with a review of post-WWI German typography.
monadic2 6y ago
As someone who pored over magazines, book art, user manuals as a kid, i guarantee you some kid out there is slowly absorbing every detail.
bitwize 6y ago
Japanese people, operating according to their culture's very stringent rules of etiquette, are so demure and polite at work and in public that it stresses them out. They need a release and a chance to go nuts. That release seeps through in places like their anime, game shows, and the behavior of bar patrons on a Friday night. As for Japanese print media -- there seems to be a prevailing culture of space economy. Maybe paper was expensive to get/import at one time and that had a lasting effect on how Japanese laid out printed matter. It's bled through to their web sites too, which are very dense and "busy" compared to Western web sites, in which the trend seems to be to make a statement with white space to the detriment of available space for text.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  > They need a release and a chance to go nuts. That release seeps through in places like their anime, game shows, and the behavior of bar patrons on a Friday night. Not to mention the deranged stuff I remember watching on Japanese TV at 4am while jet lagged.
- rurban 6y ago
  Germany has a similar concept in Winter, it's called Fasching. From 11.11 on everything absurd and stupid is allowed. But different to Japan it's not much needed anymore. Germany is an extremely liberal country now (after WW1) and Japan still one of the most illiberal and strict. It got a big better in the 90ies in the labor market, but it's still extreme.
  - java-man 6y ago
    surely, you meant WWII?
    - rurban 6y ago
      No, WW1 explicitly. The society totally opened up after, with all its social reforms. Even if military pressed for "total war" (ie civilian support as in the USA), society largely liberalized in the golden 20ies. And if you look at culture, the 20-40ies were THE golden age. (much more golden than the 60/70ies)
christiansakai 6y ago
The Japanese love love love love social media. It's an outlet. Don't believe me? Go to Twitter and Youtube and see how outspoken they are.
9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
...and just wait 'til you see their web pages! http://www.hm.aitai.ne.jp/~naitonet/ http://www.hm.aitai.ne.jp/~naitonet/ (Yes, this is completely non-ironic and kept updated in 2020, it's a local pharmacy...)
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  What is with the Portuguese-language text at the bottom? Is this an attempt to advertise to people coming back to Japan from the Japanese diaspora in Brazil?
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
    Yes. The pharmacy in question is in Toyota City in central Japan, and the car industry has quite a few Brazilian returnees working in it.
porknubbins 6y ago
I’ve noticed many Japanese homes and apartments are either museum perfect, or borderline hoarder chaos. I’d guess one reason for the focus on order and cleanliness is thats its actually kind of hard to maintain with so little space and so much packaging, plastic and consumer junk around so there are many bad counterexamples. In America you can be kind of lazy without your living space becoming unvisitable.
ahartmetz 6y ago
City planning and architecture (facades) are generally not orderly and elegant either. The practical benefits of the Japanese approach have been discussed on HN before, but they don't produce the most pretty looking results. The cities are very clean, though.
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  It's a culture and people rooted in efficiency. For them, function comes light years ahead of form. For example, I remember reading an article, a few years ago, about the cup holders in Honda / Toyota cars sold in America. The author noticed a small, hinged notch, deep inside the cup holder. Initially thinking it was some loose part. But then he realized it's function is to automatically drop when the car is on an upward slope and hold the cup in place. The notch automatically retracts (due to gravity) when the car is on normal roads. The attention to detail, at such a small level, is prevalent at every level in their society.
  - ahartmetz 6y ago
    I think a better explanation is that buildings have traditionally been seen as temporary in Japan because of earthquakes and wood construction. There is actually a lot of inefficiency, like people standing there waving batons to warn about construction sites. In other countries you'd have signs. But it's debatable if that is plain inefficiency - maybe it gives people with no other abilities something to do, which can be positive. No argument about attention to detail and especially customer service - it feels like the Japanese wouldn't even know how to do bad customer service or a bad product. (You can find examples of both if you go looking, though.)
Youden 6y ago
> Their TV shows are loud (visually), with many overlays, graphics, transitions, etc. Their print media is the poster boy for chaos. Their information density is so huge, I wonder if anyone even reads 10% of what is on the page. It's not just media, it's everything. Most horizontal surfaces in a train will be filled with colourful advertisements [0], many major city streets have bright attention-grabbing signs not only at street level but at every level of every building [1], stores will have visual noise everywhere too [2]. And it's not just visual noise either. Indoors, trains have numerous announcements, elevators tell you when the doors are opening and closing and most shops have some music playing, sometimes quiet, sometimes blaring and obnoxious. Outside it's not uncommon to see giant TV's mounted on buildings (complete with audio) or to loud music or people yelling advertisements for their store. Though that was mostly my experience in some of the more active parts of Tokyo. Smaller cities and quieter reasons are less noisy. [0]: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/tokyo-japan-january-16-2017-inside-591778742 https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/tokyo-japan-january... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabukich%C5%8D,_Tokyo#/media/File:Kabukicho_red_gate_and_colorful_neon_street_signs_at_night,_Shinjuku,_Tokyo,_Japan.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabukich%C5%8D,_Tokyo#/media/F... [2]: https://www.maximimages.com/image/MXI25982/stock-photo-of-people-at-yodobashi-camera-electronics-store https://www.maximimages.com/image/MXI25982/stock-photo-of-pe...

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

Miller's Japan's Modern Myth, though published in the 1970s, is still relevant in this regard. He wrote of how it is odd how Japan has managed to export a reputation of being a country of peace and contemplation when it likes its loudspeakers (another poster already mentioned the election-season cars with loudspeakers, goddamn) and you can find them even in some Zen rock gardens.

azernik 6y ago
Part of it is a reaction - Japanese pop culture starting in the 60s and 70s included a strong element of youth rebellion against parentally-mandated elegance and minimalism. Similar to how European and European-derived cultures adopted a very traditional clean Japanese aesthetic in rebellion against a baroque tradition.
- ahartmetz 6y ago
  Just in case somebody thinks that European minimalism started with Apple or Braun or whatever: it started much earlier in the 1910s latest, with Neues Bauen, De Stijl, Bauhaus etc. I'm a bit of a fan of these movements and the things they produced.
  - azernik 6y ago
    Yup! My UI class, at the height of the flatness craze, started with a review of post-WWI German typography.

monadic2 6y ago

As someone who pored over magazines, book art, user manuals as a kid, i guarantee you some kid out there is slowly absorbing every detail.

bitwize 6y ago

Japanese people, operating according to their culture's very stringent rules of etiquette, are so demure and polite at work and in public that it stresses them out. They need a release and a chance to go nuts. That release seeps through in places like their anime, game shows, and the behavior of bar patrons on a Friday night. As for Japanese print media -- there seems to be a prevailing culture of space economy. Maybe paper was expensive to get/import at one time and that had a lasting effect on how Japanese laid out printed matter. It's bled through to their web sites too, which are very dense and "busy" compared to Western web sites, in which the trend seems to be to make a statement with white space to the detriment of available space for text.

Gibbon1 6y ago
> They need a release and a chance to go nuts. That release seeps through in places like their anime, game shows, and the behavior of bar patrons on a Friday night. Not to mention the deranged stuff I remember watching on Japanese TV at 4am while jet lagged.
rurban 6y ago
Germany has a similar concept in Winter, it's called Fasching. From 11.11 on everything absurd and stupid is allowed. But different to Japan it's not much needed anymore. Germany is an extremely liberal country now (after WW1) and Japan still one of the most illiberal and strict. It got a big better in the 90ies in the labor market, but it's still extreme.
- java-man 6y ago
  surely, you meant WWII?
  - rurban 6y ago
    No, WW1 explicitly. The society totally opened up after, with all its social reforms. Even if military pressed for "total war" (ie civilian support as in the USA), society largely liberalized in the golden 20ies. And if you look at culture, the 20-40ies were THE golden age. (much more golden than the 60/70ies)

christiansakai 6y ago

The Japanese love love love love social media. It's an outlet. Don't believe me? Go to Twitter and Youtube and see how outspoken they are.

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago

...and just wait 'til you see their web pages! http://www.hm.aitai.ne.jp/~naitonet/ http://www.hm.aitai.ne.jp/~naitonet/ (Yes, this is completely non-ironic and kept updated in 2020, it's a local pharmacy...)

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
What is with the Portuguese-language text at the bottom? Is this an attempt to advertise to people coming back to Japan from the Japanese diaspora in Brazil?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  Yes. The pharmacy in question is in Toyota City in central Japan, and the car industry has quite a few Brazilian returnees working in it.

porknubbins 6y ago

I’ve noticed many Japanese homes and apartments are either museum perfect, or borderline hoarder chaos. I’d guess one reason for the focus on order and cleanliness is thats its actually kind of hard to maintain with so little space and so much packaging, plastic and consumer junk around so there are many bad counterexamples. In America you can be kind of lazy without your living space becoming unvisitable.

ahartmetz 6y ago

City planning and architecture (facades) are generally not orderly and elegant either. The practical benefits of the Japanese approach have been discussed on HN before, but they don't produce the most pretty looking results. The cities are very clean, though.

kumarvvr 6y ago
It's a culture and people rooted in efficiency. For them, function comes light years ahead of form. For example, I remember reading an article, a few years ago, about the cup holders in Honda / Toyota cars sold in America. The author noticed a small, hinged notch, deep inside the cup holder. Initially thinking it was some loose part. But then he realized it's function is to automatically drop when the car is on an upward slope and hold the cup in place. The notch automatically retracts (due to gravity) when the car is on normal roads. The attention to detail, at such a small level, is prevalent at every level in their society.
- ahartmetz 6y ago
  I think a better explanation is that buildings have traditionally been seen as temporary in Japan because of earthquakes and wood construction. There is actually a lot of inefficiency, like people standing there waving batons to warn about construction sites. In other countries you'd have signs. But it's debatable if that is plain inefficiency - maybe it gives people with no other abilities something to do, which can be positive. No argument about attention to detail and especially customer service - it feels like the Japanese wouldn't even know how to do bad customer service or a bad product. (You can find examples of both if you go looking, though.)

Youden 6y ago

> Their TV shows are loud (visually), with many overlays, graphics, transitions, etc. Their print media is the poster boy for chaos. Their information density is so huge, I wonder if anyone even reads 10% of what is on the page. It's not just media, it's everything. Most horizontal surfaces in a train will be filled with colourful advertisements [0], many major city streets have bright attention-grabbing signs not only at street level but at every level of every building [1], stores will have visual noise everywhere too [2]. And it's not just visual noise either. Indoors, trains have numerous announcements, elevators tell you when the doors are opening and closing and most shops have some music playing, sometimes quiet, sometimes blaring and obnoxious. Outside it's not uncommon to see giant TV's mounted on buildings (complete with audio) or to loud music or people yelling advertisements for their store. Though that was mostly my experience in some of the more active parts of Tokyo. Smaller cities and quieter reasons are less noisy. [0]: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/tokyo-japan-january-16-2017-inside-591778742 https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/tokyo-japan-january... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabukich%C5%8D,_Tokyo#/media/File:Kabukicho_red_gate_and_colorful_neon_street_signs_at_night,_Shinjuku,_Tokyo,_Japan.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabukich%C5%8D,_Tokyo#/media/F... [2]: https://www.maximimages.com/image/MXI25982/stock-photo-of-people-at-yodobashi-camera-electronics-store https://www.maximimages.com/image/MXI25982/stock-photo-of-pe...