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I read this article and it was interesting. Sony can still make some beautifully designed products and even beat Apple in certain ways, the Vaio X had similar

by flocial 15y ago

I read this article and it was interesting. Sony can still make some beautifully designed products and even beat Apple in certain ways, the Vaio X had similar capabilities to the MacBook Air and still much lighter and well-designed. However, the greater issue is not the "design by committee" problem but the fact that the entire country is simply lost and headless. It's not only business but politics and society in general. The reason why companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google inspire is because they do things with conviction. They are executing on vision. They don't let internal processes become ritualized. Key executives don't stick around long when the fire goes out in their soul, they move on. In Japan, nobody knows what they want to do. Japanese manufacturers feel the heat from Apple AND Samsung, they're scared of China's growing clout yet they can't figure out what they want to do. They can't race to the bottom with an aging population with an acquired taste for high median salaries. They've lost the drive and intellectual fortitude to innovate in all but very limited areas. They don't want to relinquish the "made in Japan" brand, even though the Chinese have shown that with the right management in place, they can make products better and cheaper. I don't know where this paralysis comes from. Maybe the Japanese think all their woes stem from some economic missteps from the bubble era and once these are righted they can happily resume their old formula for success. Maybe over two decades of stagnation and slow decline lead to a death by a thousand cuts along with the false security of high savings. For whatever reason, Japan is simply ill-prepared to compete on any level in the global economy. Perhaps the greatest Achilles heel for Japanese manufacturers is not so much the core hardware technology but their utter disregard for the software that drives so many electronics. If you go to any electronics store in Japan you'd be amazed by the utterly useless features manufacturers try to differentiate themselves with (this camera can take pictures in the dark while shaken vigorously, this one makes your face look pretty, etc.). When the iPhone came out I was one of the skeptics who thought the lack of things like TV reception, RFID cards (used for train passes), the lack of emoji (back then), or the ability to render ketai/mobile web sites wouldn't go down well with customers. However, in the greater scheme of things it didn't matter. Now all the feature phone manufacturers are scuttling decades worth of in-house code to work on Android.

shioyama 15y ago
I'm the author/translator of this article. Thanks for your thoughts, which I agree with entirely. I actually think that although the post I translated is interesting, it is in fact missing the point, in a sense. There's a deeper malaise in this country, and although there are bright spots - I'd point to home-grown companies like Cookpad, for example - the overall picture is bleak. However, Japan has a track record of suddenly changing directions when nobody expects it. Many people thought that 3/11 would trigger a change, and were disappointed when it didn't, or at least not to a significant degree. But if you look deeper, things are changing. I'm cautiously optimistic. You really have to be. But it will get worse before it gets better.
- rubashov 15y ago
  The "overall picture is bleak" if you measure societies by flashy, marketable headline developments and gadgets. It is rather good if you more soberly consider household incomes and trade figures. Japan continues to dominate many high tech industries. Look at the 787; over a third of it is made in Japan and it's all the key hi tech bits like the carbon fiber wings. Japan may indeed be in some sort of withdrawn middle-class ennui. They're still doing better than the US or Europe in most ways that count. http://www.fingleton.net/?p=919 http://www.fingleton.net/?p=919
  - shioyama 15y ago
    The malaise comes not from the absolute position of Japanese companies in the world, but from the direction they're headed in. There was a great article in the Economist a while back about this: http://www.economist.com/node/14793432 http://www.economist.com/node/14793432 Since this article was published, the situation has gotten worse. The earthquake sure didn't help, but the situation wasn't good even before that. Sure, 10% or something of the parts that go into the iPhone are developed by Japanese specialized parts manufacturers, who have skills that no-one else in the world can match. But if you look more closely, you'll see that these industries are hollowing out -- there isn't enough interest from younger generations to keep the mom&pop shops going in the long run. The problem which many have mentioned here and elsewhere is that while Japan is unrivalled in craftsmanship ("monozukuri") -- making physical things -- exactly the opposite is true when it comes to "unphysical" things like software. That's why Japanese mobile phones have such utterly terrible interfaces, as someone else pointed out here. There is very little respect given to that side of the design process, and that's not going to change without a major shift of consciousness.

by flocial 15y ago

shioyama 15y ago

I'm the author/translator of this article. Thanks for your thoughts, which I agree with entirely. I actually think that although the post I translated is interesting, it is in fact missing the point, in a sense. There's a deeper malaise in this country, and although there are bright spots - I'd point to home-grown companies like Cookpad, for example - the overall picture is bleak. However, Japan has a track record of suddenly changing directions when nobody expects it. Many people thought that 3/11 would trigger a change, and were disappointed when it didn't, or at least not to a significant degree. But if you look deeper, things are changing. I'm cautiously optimistic. You really have to be. But it will get worse before it gets better.

rubashov 15y ago
The "overall picture is bleak" if you measure societies by flashy, marketable headline developments and gadgets. It is rather good if you more soberly consider household incomes and trade figures. Japan continues to dominate many high tech industries. Look at the 787; over a third of it is made in Japan and it's all the key hi tech bits like the carbon fiber wings. Japan may indeed be in some sort of withdrawn middle-class ennui. They're still doing better than the US or Europe in most ways that count. http://www.fingleton.net/?p=919 http://www.fingleton.net/?p=919
- shioyama 15y ago
  The malaise comes not from the absolute position of Japanese companies in the world, but from the direction they're headed in. There was a great article in the Economist a while back about this: http://www.economist.com/node/14793432 http://www.economist.com/node/14793432 Since this article was published, the situation has gotten worse. The earthquake sure didn't help, but the situation wasn't good even before that. Sure, 10% or something of the parts that go into the iPhone are developed by Japanese specialized parts manufacturers, who have skills that no-one else in the world can match. But if you look more closely, you'll see that these industries are hollowing out -- there isn't enough interest from younger generations to keep the mom&pop shops going in the long run. The problem which many have mentioned here and elsewhere is that while Japan is unrivalled in craftsmanship ("monozukuri") -- making physical things -- exactly the opposite is true when it comes to "unphysical" things like software. That's why Japanese mobile phones have such utterly terrible interfaces, as someone else pointed out here. There is very little respect given to that side of the design process, and that's not going to change without a major shift of consciousness.