13 ms·

Japan: the harbinger state

147 points by akg_67 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hourago 4y ago
> I argue that Japan is a harbinger state, which experiences many challenges before others in the international system. A good example is housing. Japan had a gigantic housing bubble a decade in advance than the USA and Europe. It is also interesting to see that meanwhile declining population has not reduced price of houses in the city, it has made many town houses almost free. I would expect this to be replicated elsewhere. Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change. Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population grows older? Again, it is to be expected. Japan is not the world, but it seems reasonable that can give a heads up for many problems that other places will experience in the future.
- tjpnz 4y ago
  >Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change. Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population grows older? Again, it is to be expected. I've lived in Japan for eight years and the only time I've ever been asked to fax something was by an American company. I told them no.
  - pigsty 4y ago
    I recently (months ago)left a company where everything was faxed. All records were typed on computers, printed, and faxed to companies. Orders as well.
    - LeanderK 4y ago
      japan, us or somewhere else?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      printed, and faxed Perplexed that they weren't faxed directly from computers. Are the records not considered 'real' until they exist in paper form, for which there are well-established storage/ retrieval/ relocation standards?
  - freetime2 4y ago
    A few months ago when applying for internet service from NTT they required me to fax a copy of my residence card. I ended up going with KDDI (for that and other reasons).
  - ne0flex 4y ago
    I work for a Japanese bank in NYC. Up until COVID, when we had documents that had to be signed by the Tokyo team, we'd overnight it to them via DHL.
  - pezezin 4y ago
    I've only had to sent two faxes in my whole life, and both have been in the last four years while living in Japan. One was for Amazon, and the other for the Sapporo police.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - aikinai 4y ago
    It’s not imposed on consumers as much anymore, but in business, it’s still huge. There are plenty of articles about it even locally in Japanese.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  Situation in Germany: House prices are going down the last few months, but much more slowly than they consistently rose during the preceding 15 years. At the same time interest has sharply risen. Compared to prices there's a much bigger decrease in new construction, which I'd interpret as people increasingly not pursuing houses and instead piling onto the rent market. Urban/suburban/"sprawl" houses were basically a DI(preferably-NK-and-wealthy-parents-chipping-in) and beyond thing before, I'd suspect houses will continue to shrink while drifting even further up the income distribution and everyone else must rent for life - at an average rent/income ratio of around one third which has only ever been going up, and is of course much higher for non-DI households. Home ownership rate has always been falling and continues to do so (fell below 50 % in 2022). It'll get a lot lower when boomers start leaving their houses (feet first most likely), because baby boomers have far high home ownership rate than following generations. And with recent changes to the way houses are legally valuated and inheritance taxation I'd suspect many kids of baby boomers can't actually afford to inherit their parents houses and will have to sell. I dunno where this is supposed to converge to. Everyone renting at >50 % of net income (which is already not at all uncommon, especially for singles in cities) from huge housing companies?
  - MarkPNeyer 4y ago
    Hi, thanks for sharing - do you mind explaining what DI and NK mean? Thank you :)
    - Terretta 4y ago
      DINK == Dual Income No Kids
    - TacticalCoder 4y ago
      DINK means "Double Income No Kids".
  - dzonga 4y ago
    I think for you - Germany might be an anomaly since in Germany you guys have strong rental protections. and rentals can have long leases i.e 3+ years. whereas in the UK / US a lease usually last a year. in london with average leases being 6 months to a year. in the UK new builds are inflated due to gvt shenanigans
- zeroCalories 4y ago
  Declining population isn't entirely relevant. Japan's major cities still continue to grow, and western countries will probably continue to grow as a whole due to immigration. I still suspect that we will see housing bubbles pop in some major western cities, but many will fight it to the death. I predict that whole industries moving to areas with more reasonable housing policy will be the cause. We already see it in cases with investment in Eastern Europe (especially Ukraine until a year ago), and southern U.S states. Part of me hopes that these cities with horribly selfish housing policy end up like the declining western cities that lost out when manufacturing went overseas.
- rwmj 4y ago
  Housing in Japan is so peculiar that it seems difficult to draw global lessons from it. Are there any other countries in the world where a perfectly servicable house that is over 30 years old is literally worth less than nothing (because it "must" be demolished before the land can be reused)?
  - alangibson 4y ago
    I've never heard this before. Any insight into why values so quickly drop to 0?
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      Building codes changing and earthquake resistant construction: plumbing is more flexible and less durable, shake resistance technology evolves enough to make old building deprecated (or the house is straight build with light wood with a set life expectancy)
      - rwmj 4y ago
        This is the reason often stated, but I don't think it's always the true reason. I think people just don't want to live in a house that another family lived in if they have the choice (rental apartments seem to be different). Also if it was true then people wouldn't be living in any house older than 30 years since they'd fear death by earthquake. But that's not true - I know loads of Japanese people who have lived in their house for more than 30 years. It's only when the land changes hands that it suddenly becomes vitally important to implement this rule.
        numpad0 4y ago
        It's not just regulations and earthquake resistance, thermal and noise insulation too improve over time, following economic growth.
        pezezin 4y ago
- gkanai 4y ago
  > A good example is housing. I think housing is a bad example to use wrt Japan. Japan is one of the few markets in the world where, for the most part, only land has value. Buildings LOSE value over time. This is for multiple reasons but mostly due to ever-changing earthquake-related construction regulations such that it's almost always cheaper to rebuild from scratch than keep an edifice and retrofit to regulations. This is also why Japan has more architects than any other country- if buildings are not kept and are almost always destroyed after a 30 year mortgage, the owner can build whatever they want and not have to be concerned about resale value- so lots of unique residential architecture. Alastair Townsend first covered this in ArchDaily years ago and it went on to be covered extensively by NPR and other outlets. https://www.archdaily.com/450212/why-japan-is-crazy-about-housing https://www.archdaily.com/450212/why-japan-is-crazy-about-ho...
  - zurn 4y ago
    Buildings lose value over time in most places. And in many places where they don't, including renovation investments in the picture results shows declining value.
    - dr-detroit 4y ago
      [dead]
    - imtringued 4y ago
      The only places where buildings go up in value is where the building has been grandfathered in and is no longer able to be built in accordance with modern zoning rules.
      - ryukafalz 4y ago
        Which is rather common in my experience. The town adjacent to the one I just moved to has a bunch of duplexes, but if you look at the current zoning it's all single-family-only. You couldn't build much of the town as it is today, which is a shame as it's very nice. As you might expect given this, the town has steadily lost population.
- steveBK123 4y ago
  Europe - sure US has mostly solved our population aging problem with having fairly open immigration and high immigration numbers relative to the rest of the developed/rich world.. Now if politics change that, it's another story.
  - zirgs 4y ago
    High immigration numbers are fine for countries like the USA. But for many small countries it's a death sentence.
    - ericmay 4y ago
      Why? And do you mean small geographically or small population-wise? Perhaps both/neither?
      - zirgs 4y ago
        Population wise. Imagine 500k immigrants a year. It would be nothing for a country like India. But it would be a death sentence for Iceland.
        ericmay 4y ago
        Death sentence in that you envision the services and economy can’t handle that many new immigrants?
        zirgs 4y ago
        Iceland with 80% of immigrants would not be Iceland any more. Its language and culture would be completely marginalised and replaced with something else.
        steveBK123 4y ago
        No one is saying Iceland should take 80% immigrants. A rational conversation is that US takes a higher % of immigrants than most of the developed world. No one sane is comparing notional numbers comparing a 330M country & small 5M countries. Talking % terms means it doesn't matter the base size.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  > Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population grows older? Again, it is to be expected. You already see it in some countries that just skipped cable TV, desktop PCs and wired internet, and that went straight to smartphones with mobile internet (or wifi). These are countries where you can do everything with your phone, whereas here some (e.g. government, banking organizations) are still trying to catch up and adjust.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    But is this MORE technological? Using smartphones imparts way less tech capabilities on the user than does using PCs, and definitely doesn't push users to learning new things (how many people are discovering IDEs on their phone and learning development as a hobby?).
- gonzo41 4y ago
  Old people love buttons. I don't say this disparagingly. I too long for my feature phone days. Things were simpler.
  - Mumps 4y ago
    Typed from a Cherry MX "keeb".
- ehnto 4y ago
  > Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population grows older? Again, it is to be expected. I think they may have escaped to evergreen technology for consumer electronics, but one might argue America is equally as trapped by historical infrastructure. Japan's infrastructure is interesting as it's clear much of it was built in the 80s and 90s, but it's still serviceable and their big bets on trains turned out to be rather future proof. When walking the streets, especially somewhere like Osaka, you can see much of the signage, bridges, pedestrian crossing buttons are very old indeed. You do often feel like you are in a future-past of some kind. None of these statements apply universally across both countries mind you, there is good rail in the US and modern infra in Japan as well.
- wheelerof4te 4y ago
  "Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change." I believe that their mindset and stance towards technology is simply different. Japan had a history of "gadget technology", which was revolutional in the 90's before the Internet became ubiquious. I am guessing that they (myself included) were dissapointed in the direction technological advances went. Their vision maybe didn't happen, but that doesn't make it wrong, or that the current technological trends are right.
  - quartesixte 4y ago
    >Their vision maybe didn't happen, but that doesn't make it wrong, or that the current technological trends are right. Nicely put. Perhaps the smartphone era will be seen as a odd blip in a long history of gadgets. Who knows what the future might bring?
- x98asfd 4y ago
  >Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change. Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population grows older? Again, it is to be expected. Would beg to differ. Japan is one those nation with extremely advanced space, robotic and nuclear tech. They can be a nuclear power over night if they are allowed to legally. Far as space, they landed probe on asteroid for space mining (https://www.space.com/41898-hayabusa2-deploys-hopping-robots-asteroid-ryugu.html https://www.space.com/41898-hayabusa2-deploys-hopping-robots... ).
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Yeah, this is a very narrow HN definition of “technology”—I.e. web technology. And even then it overlooks the hardware side, since Japan has among the fastest broadband speeds, Japanese companies are leaders in cellular and fiber communications technology, etc. In terms of “core industrial competencies”—ability to design and build a nuke, ability to make advanced materials, ability to design and build a competitive microprocessor, ability to put things in space, etc.—Japan is still the second most technologically advanced country in the world.
    - JamesBarney 4y ago
      And weirdly enough making high quality ball bearings.
      - lovemenot 4y ago
        I heard that the pachinko industry got its head start from the post-war surplus production of ball bearings. Perhaps the quality you mention is now feasible as a result of the scale economics from pachinko ball production.
      - loeg 4y ago
        Yep: NSK, NTN.
- retrac 4y ago
  > Japan got trapped in the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change The fax machine in Japan is always treated like it's proof they're stuck in a timewarp, an earlier age, and just haven't moved on. But I think it makes sense. Japan was introduced to fax technology early on. Japanese is traditionally written vertically. It is written with Chinese characters. In handwritten Japanese, people actually invent/modify characters on the spot. (Much as how Engl. text might be littered with randomly-invented abbr'vns.) They're not going to be able to enter those into a computer easily. Some Japanese newspapers were using traditional typesetting techniques right into the 21st century because vertical text support was, and largely still is, an afterthought in most publishing software. Software has only recently gotten to the point where it can replace a fax machine and handwriting, for reproducing Japanese texts in the manner the Japanese expect. Besides scanning/taking a photo of a page and emailing it, which isn't enough of an improvement to motivate the change. (Particularly as business faxes just end up digitized and emailed anyway.)
- wk_end 4y ago
  > declining population has not reduced price of houses in the city Despite overall declining population, Japan's major urban centres are actually increasing their population. Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Sendai, and more are all growing cities.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  People like Peter Zeihan argue that the USA seems like it will have a large replacement population just because they had a large population to begin with (boomers -> Millenials -> Gen Alpha). There are things that can blunt this (Millenials can't afford to have kids) but so far it seems like it is holding fairly steady. Given this it would be difficult to argue for them getting stuck in some specific technological era.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  Considering older people tend to use computers and be more tech savvy while younger generations only interact with tech on their phones it will be interesting how this turns out.
- tudorizer 4y ago
  People do like to mention those faxes a lot, don't they? Or pocket translators. I think there are other uses of tech far beyond it that are far better integrated in the Japanese society that in the western world.
looseyesterday 4y ago
Japan has too many socio-political peculiarities for lessons to be translatable to other democracies. Especially when it comes to politics, its nearly a one party state with LDP having governed more than 50% of the time since the founding of the democracy.
- karaokeyoga 4y ago
  "The LDP has been in power almost continuously since its foundation in 1955—a period called the 1955 System—except between 1993 and 1994, and again from 2009 to 2012. In the 2012 election, it regained control of the government." – Wikipedia
- krapp 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - unity1001 4y ago
    Hard to understand why the parent comment was downvoted. This is precisely the interpretation of the US system in political science: A one party oligarchy with two factions that slightly differ in issues that are non-critical to the oligarchy's interests. They clash wildly on identity issues, but when it comes to feeding the military-industry complex, the stock market and keeping their own taxes low, they are always 'bipartisan'. A recent Princeton study confirmed this: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-... Actually, the above study is just a confirmation of what was known a long time ago as outlined in one of the most famous and biggest study of the US system and social dynamics: https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/class_domination.html https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/class_domination.html This famous UCSC study found out that ~30,000 people (including women, children) constitute the American elite class and they are extremely class conscious and exclusive. They hold balls to introduce their children into their own society for coming of age, they intermarry within themselves, they monopolize all positions of power among themselves. The study found out that they monopolize everywhere from governors' seats to senate to corporate boards among themselves.
abudabi123 4y ago
At least Japan has the capacity to launch satellites whereas the Brits failed to launch a small batch from an out of production Virgin Boeing 747 shortly after SpaceX had launched over 50 then 100 satellites in one go. Although Jaxa's last attempt was a fail consistent with the Brits. What I couldn't understand was why Sony couldn't keep up with Apple's stellar hockey stick growth when it had the talent in hardware. Don't know about the software because Microsoft.
- gkanai 4y ago
  > What I couldn't understand was why Sony couldn't keep up with Apple's stellar hockey stick growth Apple's strength is it's software. Sony lost out because it could not compete with Apple's software.
  - m0llusk 4y ago
    Apple started it's recent strong of successes with the iPod. That was a device built around a cutting edge hard drive. Apple did well at choosing features, but iPod software was all contracted out. The hard drive was it's most important feature and Apple locked that on by buying all of the units Toshiba could produce before most had even heard about it.
- drumhead 4y ago
  Britain gave up it's independent launch system program partly because it was part of the ESA and partly because it bought Polaris/Trident from the US. Virgin Space is actually a US company not a British one, but their launch system is cheap and definitely worth persevering with.
- smcl 4y ago
  This isn’t an article saying “Japan sucks, Britain is the best!”. It is saying that Japan appears to have encountered some social and economic problems a few years ahead of the rest of the developed world.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  All of the tech in (say) the iPhone was already in use elsewhere. Apple's great success was (1) bringing it all together and (2) selling consumers on one great leap forwards. That's where Apple beats the likes of Sony: Not in incremental improvements but in creating new product categories and marketing them so that 100m+ consumers want one on launch day.
srvmshr 4y ago
There was an article on New Yorker a few years ago. They illustrated that the US is usually at the kind of crossroads where Japan was two decades ago: Link: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-united-states-of-japan https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-united-st...
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  On my second corporate trip to Japan I mentioned to one of my Japanese counterparts that I enjoy visiting Tokyo because it is like visiting the future. I wasn't referring to some futuristic veneer like Akihabara, but overall the way a society can function with the density that is Tokyo.
csomar 4y ago
It's important to note (for those who didn't read the article) is that this article is not about why and how Japan is a Harbinger state but rather why scholars study Japan.
- specialist 4y ago
  Yes and: I'm more interested in comparisons than trends, which often just feels like punditry. Like how misc constitutions effect democratic participation. Like how misc court arrangements and criminal law impact policing. Like how land use impacts public health. Etc, etc.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Once you start reading about history you will laugh at the challenges of today. Like it literally couldn't get worse for the Netherlands than 1672 and we got through that (in fact look at the mighty France and England today who's laughing now).
- eternalban 4y ago
  I had to look that up: https://www.aronson.com/the-disaster-year/ https://www.aronson.com/the-disaster-year/
justin66 4y ago
"Harbinger" is an unusual word, and it's interesting the way the paper distinguishes between "leader," "bellwether," and "harbinger." In Japanese politics during the nineties there were a couple of parties whose names were commonly translated as "Harbinger Party" (Sakigake) and "New Harbinger Party" (Shintō Sakigake). (Or maybe these names referred to the same party?)
cdiddy2 4y ago
Fitting day for this to be posted given this article https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64373950 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64373950 "Japan's prime minister says his country is on the brink of not being able to function as a society because of its falling birth rate." How Japan handles this will either tell the rest of the world how to do it or how not to do it. Lets hope they figure it out
fomine3 4y ago
> I argue that Japan is a harbinger state, which experiences many challenges before others in the international system. This is often called "課題先進国" in Japanese discussion, translated like as "Pioneer in Taking on Challenges" or "developed country facing challenges"
up2isomorphism 4y ago
It is extremely funny that many people believe that Japanese “trapped” in 90s technology and they don’t have access to the shiny new things we have in US. In fact they have better access than us. Some people just choose not to, because not all new technologies are created to improve lives of normal people.
alexanderglenda 4y ago
[flagged]

147 points by akg_67 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

> I argue that Japan is a harbinger state, which experiences many challenges before others in the international system. A good example is housing. Japan had a gigantic housing bubble a decade in advance than the USA and Europe. It is also interesting to see that meanwhile declining population has not reduced price of houses in the city, it has made many town houses almost free. I would expect this to be replicated elsewhere. Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change. Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population grows older? Again, it is to be expected. Japan is not the world, but it seems reasonable that can give a heads up for many problems that other places will experience in the future.

tjpnz 4y ago
>Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change. Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population grows older? Again, it is to be expected. I've lived in Japan for eight years and the only time I've ever been asked to fax something was by an American company. I told them no.
- pigsty 4y ago
  I recently (months ago)left a company where everything was faxed. All records were typed on computers, printed, and faxed to companies. Orders as well.
  - LeanderK 4y ago
    japan, us or somewhere else?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    printed, and faxed Perplexed that they weren't faxed directly from computers. Are the records not considered 'real' until they exist in paper form, for which there are well-established storage/ retrieval/ relocation standards?
- freetime2 4y ago
  A few months ago when applying for internet service from NTT they required me to fax a copy of my residence card. I ended up going with KDDI (for that and other reasons).
- ne0flex 4y ago
  I work for a Japanese bank in NYC. Up until COVID, when we had documents that had to be signed by the Tokyo team, we'd overnight it to them via DHL.
- pezezin 4y ago
  I've only had to sent two faxes in my whole life, and both have been in the last four years while living in Japan. One was for Amazon, and the other for the Sapporo police.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- aikinai 4y ago
  It’s not imposed on consumers as much anymore, but in business, it’s still huge. There are plenty of articles about it even locally in Japanese.
formerly_proven 4y ago
Situation in Germany: House prices are going down the last few months, but much more slowly than they consistently rose during the preceding 15 years. At the same time interest has sharply risen. Compared to prices there's a much bigger decrease in new construction, which I'd interpret as people increasingly not pursuing houses and instead piling onto the rent market. Urban/suburban/"sprawl" houses were basically a DI(preferably-NK-and-wealthy-parents-chipping-in) and beyond thing before, I'd suspect houses will continue to shrink while drifting even further up the income distribution and everyone else must rent for life - at an average rent/income ratio of around one third which has only ever been going up, and is of course much higher for non-DI households. Home ownership rate has always been falling and continues to do so (fell below 50 % in 2022). It'll get a lot lower when boomers start leaving their houses (feet first most likely), because baby boomers have far high home ownership rate than following generations. And with recent changes to the way houses are legally valuated and inheritance taxation I'd suspect many kids of baby boomers can't actually afford to inherit their parents houses and will have to sell. I dunno where this is supposed to converge to. Everyone renting at >50 % of net income (which is already not at all uncommon, especially for singles in cities) from huge housing companies?
- MarkPNeyer 4y ago
  Hi, thanks for sharing - do you mind explaining what DI and NK mean? Thank you :)
  - Terretta 4y ago
    DINK == Dual Income No Kids
  - TacticalCoder 4y ago
    DINK means "Double Income No Kids".
- dzonga 4y ago
  I think for you - Germany might be an anomaly since in Germany you guys have strong rental protections. and rentals can have long leases i.e 3+ years. whereas in the UK / US a lease usually last a year. in london with average leases being 6 months to a year. in the UK new builds are inflated due to gvt shenanigans
zeroCalories 4y ago
Declining population isn't entirely relevant. Japan's major cities still continue to grow, and western countries will probably continue to grow as a whole due to immigration. I still suspect that we will see housing bubbles pop in some major western cities, but many will fight it to the death. I predict that whole industries moving to areas with more reasonable housing policy will be the cause. We already see it in cases with investment in Eastern Europe (especially Ukraine until a year ago), and southern U.S states. Part of me hopes that these cities with horribly selfish housing policy end up like the declining western cities that lost out when manufacturing went overseas.
rwmj 4y ago
Housing in Japan is so peculiar that it seems difficult to draw global lessons from it. Are there any other countries in the world where a perfectly servicable house that is over 30 years old is literally worth less than nothing (because it "must" be demolished before the land can be reused)?
- alangibson 4y ago
  I've never heard this before. Any insight into why values so quickly drop to 0?
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    Building codes changing and earthquake resistant construction: plumbing is more flexible and less durable, shake resistance technology evolves enough to make old building deprecated (or the house is straight build with light wood with a set life expectancy)
    - rwmj 4y ago
      This is the reason often stated, but I don't think it's always the true reason. I think people just don't want to live in a house that another family lived in if they have the choice (rental apartments seem to be different). Also if it was true then people wouldn't be living in any house older than 30 years since they'd fear death by earthquake. But that's not true - I know loads of Japanese people who have lived in their house for more than 30 years. It's only when the land changes hands that it suddenly becomes vitally important to implement this rule.
      - numpad0 4y ago
        It's not just regulations and earthquake resistance, thermal and noise insulation too improve over time, following economic growth.
        pezezin 4y ago
gkanai 4y ago
> A good example is housing. I think housing is a bad example to use wrt Japan. Japan is one of the few markets in the world where, for the most part, only land has value. Buildings LOSE value over time. This is for multiple reasons but mostly due to ever-changing earthquake-related construction regulations such that it's almost always cheaper to rebuild from scratch than keep an edifice and retrofit to regulations. This is also why Japan has more architects than any other country- if buildings are not kept and are almost always destroyed after a 30 year mortgage, the owner can build whatever they want and not have to be concerned about resale value- so lots of unique residential architecture. Alastair Townsend first covered this in ArchDaily years ago and it went on to be covered extensively by NPR and other outlets. https://www.archdaily.com/450212/why-japan-is-crazy-about-housing https://www.archdaily.com/450212/why-japan-is-crazy-about-ho...
- zurn 4y ago
  Buildings lose value over time in most places. And in many places where they don't, including renovation investments in the picture results shows declining value.
  - dr-detroit 4y ago
    [dead]
  - imtringued 4y ago
    The only places where buildings go up in value is where the building has been grandfathered in and is no longer able to be built in accordance with modern zoning rules.
    - ryukafalz 4y ago
      Which is rather common in my experience. The town adjacent to the one I just moved to has a bunch of duplexes, but if you look at the current zoning it's all single-family-only. You couldn't build much of the town as it is today, which is a shame as it's very nice. As you might expect given this, the town has steadily lost population.
steveBK123 4y ago
Europe - sure US has mostly solved our population aging problem with having fairly open immigration and high immigration numbers relative to the rest of the developed/rich world.. Now if politics change that, it's another story.
- zirgs 4y ago
  High immigration numbers are fine for countries like the USA. But for many small countries it's a death sentence.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    Why? And do you mean small geographically or small population-wise? Perhaps both/neither?
    - zirgs 4y ago
      Population wise. Imagine 500k immigrants a year. It would be nothing for a country like India. But it would be a death sentence for Iceland.
      - ericmay 4y ago
        Death sentence in that you envision the services and economy can’t handle that many new immigrants?
        zirgs 4y ago
        Iceland with 80% of immigrants would not be Iceland any more. Its language and culture would be completely marginalised and replaced with something else.
        steveBK123 4y ago
        No one is saying Iceland should take 80% immigrants. A rational conversation is that US takes a higher % of immigrants than most of the developed world. No one sane is comparing notional numbers comparing a 330M country & small 5M countries. Talking % terms means it doesn't matter the base size.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
> Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population grows older? Again, it is to be expected. You already see it in some countries that just skipped cable TV, desktop PCs and wired internet, and that went straight to smartphones with mobile internet (or wifi). These are countries where you can do everything with your phone, whereas here some (e.g. government, banking organizations) are still trying to catch up and adjust.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  But is this MORE technological? Using smartphones imparts way less tech capabilities on the user than does using PCs, and definitely doesn't push users to learning new things (how many people are discovering IDEs on their phone and learning development as a hobby?).
gonzo41 4y ago
Old people love buttons. I don't say this disparagingly. I too long for my feature phone days. Things were simpler.
- Mumps 4y ago
  Typed from a Cherry MX "keeb".
ehnto 4y ago
> Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population grows older? Again, it is to be expected. I think they may have escaped to evergreen technology for consumer electronics, but one might argue America is equally as trapped by historical infrastructure. Japan's infrastructure is interesting as it's clear much of it was built in the 80s and 90s, but it's still serviceable and their big bets on trains turned out to be rather future proof. When walking the streets, especially somewhere like Osaka, you can see much of the signage, bridges, pedestrian crossing buttons are very old indeed. You do often feel like you are in a future-past of some kind. None of these statements apply universally across both countries mind you, there is good rail in the US and modern infra in Japan as well.
wheelerof4te 4y ago
"Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change." I believe that their mindset and stance towards technology is simply different. Japan had a history of "gadget technology", which was revolutional in the 90's before the Internet became ubiquious. I am guessing that they (myself included) were dissapointed in the direction technological advances went. Their vision maybe didn't happen, but that doesn't make it wrong, or that the current technological trends are right.
- quartesixte 4y ago
  >Their vision maybe didn't happen, but that doesn't make it wrong, or that the current technological trends are right. Nicely put. Perhaps the smartphone era will be seen as a odd blip in a long history of gadgets. Who knows what the future might bring?
x98asfd 4y ago
>Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change. Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population grows older? Again, it is to be expected. Would beg to differ. Japan is one those nation with extremely advanced space, robotic and nuclear tech. They can be a nuclear power over night if they are allowed to legally. Far as space, they landed probe on asteroid for space mining (https://www.space.com/41898-hayabusa2-deploys-hopping-robots-asteroid-ryugu.html https://www.space.com/41898-hayabusa2-deploys-hopping-robots... ).
- rayiner 4y ago
  Yeah, this is a very narrow HN definition of “technology”—I.e. web technology. And even then it overlooks the hardware side, since Japan has among the fastest broadband speeds, Japanese companies are leaders in cellular and fiber communications technology, etc. In terms of “core industrial competencies”—ability to design and build a nuke, ability to make advanced materials, ability to design and build a competitive microprocessor, ability to put things in space, etc.—Japan is still the second most technologically advanced country in the world.
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    And weirdly enough making high quality ball bearings.
    - lovemenot 4y ago
      I heard that the pachinko industry got its head start from the post-war surplus production of ball bearings. Perhaps the quality you mention is now feasible as a result of the scale economics from pachinko ball production.
    - loeg 4y ago
      Yep: NSK, NTN.
retrac 4y ago
> Japan got trapped in the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change The fax machine in Japan is always treated like it's proof they're stuck in a timewarp, an earlier age, and just haven't moved on. But I think it makes sense. Japan was introduced to fax technology early on. Japanese is traditionally written vertically. It is written with Chinese characters. In handwritten Japanese, people actually invent/modify characters on the spot. (Much as how Engl. text might be littered with randomly-invented abbr'vns.) They're not going to be able to enter those into a computer easily. Some Japanese newspapers were using traditional typesetting techniques right into the 21st century because vertical text support was, and largely still is, an afterthought in most publishing software. Software has only recently gotten to the point where it can replace a fax machine and handwriting, for reproducing Japanese texts in the manner the Japanese expect. Besides scanning/taking a photo of a page and emailing it, which isn't enough of an improvement to motivate the change. (Particularly as business faxes just end up digitized and emailed anyway.)
wk_end 4y ago
> declining population has not reduced price of houses in the city Despite overall declining population, Japan's major urban centres are actually increasing their population. Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Sendai, and more are all growing cities.
nebula8804 4y ago
People like Peter Zeihan argue that the USA seems like it will have a large replacement population just because they had a large population to begin with (boomers -> Millenials -> Gen Alpha). There are things that can blunt this (Millenials can't afford to have kids) but so far it seems like it is holding fairly steady. Given this it would be difficult to argue for them getting stuck in some specific technological era.
ROTMetro 4y ago
Considering older people tend to use computers and be more tech savvy while younger generations only interact with tech on their phones it will be interesting how this turns out.
tudorizer 4y ago
People do like to mention those faxes a lot, don't they? Or pocket translators. I think there are other uses of tech far beyond it that are far better integrated in the Japanese society that in the western world.

looseyesterday 4y ago

Japan has too many socio-political peculiarities for lessons to be translatable to other democracies. Especially when it comes to politics, its nearly a one party state with LDP having governed more than 50% of the time since the founding of the democracy.

karaokeyoga 4y ago
"The LDP has been in power almost continuously since its foundation in 1955—a period called the 1955 System—except between 1993 and 1994, and again from 2009 to 2012. In the 2012 election, it regained control of the government." – Wikipedia
krapp 4y ago
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- unity1001 4y ago
  Hard to understand why the parent comment was downvoted. This is precisely the interpretation of the US system in political science: A one party oligarchy with two factions that slightly differ in issues that are non-critical to the oligarchy's interests. They clash wildly on identity issues, but when it comes to feeding the military-industry complex, the stock market and keeping their own taxes low, they are always 'bipartisan'. A recent Princeton study confirmed this: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-... Actually, the above study is just a confirmation of what was known a long time ago as outlined in one of the most famous and biggest study of the US system and social dynamics: https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/class_domination.html https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/class_domination.html This famous UCSC study found out that ~30,000 people (including women, children) constitute the American elite class and they are extremely class conscious and exclusive. They hold balls to introduce their children into their own society for coming of age, they intermarry within themselves, they monopolize all positions of power among themselves. The study found out that they monopolize everywhere from governors' seats to senate to corporate boards among themselves.

abudabi123 4y ago

At least Japan has the capacity to launch satellites whereas the Brits failed to launch a small batch from an out of production Virgin Boeing 747 shortly after SpaceX had launched over 50 then 100 satellites in one go. Although Jaxa's last attempt was a fail consistent with the Brits. What I couldn't understand was why Sony couldn't keep up with Apple's stellar hockey stick growth when it had the talent in hardware. Don't know about the software because Microsoft.

gkanai 4y ago
> What I couldn't understand was why Sony couldn't keep up with Apple's stellar hockey stick growth Apple's strength is it's software. Sony lost out because it could not compete with Apple's software.
- m0llusk 4y ago
  Apple started it's recent strong of successes with the iPod. That was a device built around a cutting edge hard drive. Apple did well at choosing features, but iPod software was all contracted out. The hard drive was it's most important feature and Apple locked that on by buying all of the units Toshiba could produce before most had even heard about it.
drumhead 4y ago
Britain gave up it's independent launch system program partly because it was part of the ESA and partly because it bought Polaris/Trident from the US. Virgin Space is actually a US company not a British one, but their launch system is cheap and definitely worth persevering with.
smcl 4y ago
This isn’t an article saying “Japan sucks, Britain is the best!”. It is saying that Japan appears to have encountered some social and economic problems a few years ahead of the rest of the developed world.
LatteLazy 4y ago
All of the tech in (say) the iPhone was already in use elsewhere. Apple's great success was (1) bringing it all together and (2) selling consumers on one great leap forwards. That's where Apple beats the likes of Sony: Not in incremental improvements but in creating new product categories and marketing them so that 100m+ consumers want one on launch day.

srvmshr 4y ago

There was an article on New Yorker a few years ago. They illustrated that the US is usually at the kind of crossroads where Japan was two decades ago: Link: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-united-states-of-japan https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-united-st...

JKCalhoun 4y ago
On my second corporate trip to Japan I mentioned to one of my Japanese counterparts that I enjoy visiting Tokyo because it is like visiting the future. I wasn't referring to some futuristic veneer like Akihabara, but overall the way a society can function with the density that is Tokyo.

csomar 4y ago

It's important to note (for those who didn't read the article) is that this article is not about why and how Japan is a Harbinger state but rather why scholars study Japan.

specialist 4y ago
Yes and: I'm more interested in comparisons than trends, which often just feels like punditry. Like how misc constitutions effect democratic participation. Like how misc court arrangements and criminal law impact policing. Like how land use impacts public health. Etc, etc.

MomoXenosaga 4y ago

Once you start reading about history you will laugh at the challenges of today. Like it literally couldn't get worse for the Netherlands than 1672 and we got through that (in fact look at the mighty France and England today who's laughing now).

eternalban 4y ago
I had to look that up: https://www.aronson.com/the-disaster-year/ https://www.aronson.com/the-disaster-year/

justin66 4y ago

"Harbinger" is an unusual word, and it's interesting the way the paper distinguishes between "leader," "bellwether," and "harbinger." In Japanese politics during the nineties there were a couple of parties whose names were commonly translated as "Harbinger Party" (Sakigake) and "New Harbinger Party" (Shintō Sakigake). (Or maybe these names referred to the same party?)

cdiddy2 4y ago

Fitting day for this to be posted given this article https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64373950 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64373950 "Japan's prime minister says his country is on the brink of not being able to function as a society because of its falling birth rate." How Japan handles this will either tell the rest of the world how to do it or how not to do it. Lets hope they figure it out

fomine3 4y ago

> I argue that Japan is a harbinger state, which experiences many challenges before others in the international system. This is often called "課題先進国" in Japanese discussion, translated like as "Pioneer in Taking on Challenges" or "developed country facing challenges"

up2isomorphism 4y ago

It is extremely funny that many people believe that Japanese “trapped” in 90s technology and they don’t have access to the shiny new things we have in US. In fact they have better access than us. Some people just choose not to, because not all new technologies are created to improve lives of normal people.

alexanderglenda 4y ago

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