Hi. Tim here. I find the "it's just Japanese culture" explanations to be weak sauce. Examining the market and political forces at play will usually get you clo

Hi. Tim here. I find the "it's just Japanese culture" explanations to be weak sauce. Examining the market and political forces at play will usually get you closer to the truth. The fact is, Japanese companies have taken big, creative, successful risks in many industries. If you look at the developers who work in console gaming, they find ways to push those machines far beyond what they were designed to do. If you've been in Japan for a while, I'm sure you've seen the amazing levels of creativity that exist here in both engineering and the arts. It's not that Japanese are more risk-averse than Americans. It's that the risk-reward equation is different in Japan. On average, people are behaving rationally in both places. If you want to change the "culture", change the risk-reward balance. That's why I find it more productive to look at market forces and game theory than attribute things to "Japanese culture:".