I asked this exact question in Japan. The usual answer was "because it is safer" - when I asked to elaborate what "safer" meant, I was met with annoyed stares.

I asked this exact question in Japan. The usual answer was "because it is safer" - when I asked to elaborate what "safer" meant, I was met with annoyed stares. Questioning things isn't really known in Japan, if someone sometime decided that it's safer, then that's what it is. Apart from some boutique startups, UX isn't even a thing in Japan. Similar to how it worked in the 80s in the US, UX is done by the same people who engineer the application who have no formal training or talent in UX.