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Is it truly mysterious though? I find it interesting whenever HN has a strong fascination with all things related to "Japanese-ness". For example, there have be
by mkii 3y ago
Is it truly mysterious though? I find it interesting whenever HN has a strong fascination with all things related to "Japanese-ness". For example, there have been links to wikipedia pages of some Japanese term, and it will make front page with comments. I can't think of any other nation that has this kind of cultural representation on here.
And yet, the myth of Japanese "uniqueness" is largely the product of Japanese national propaganda, serving many useful purposes for the state, for example increasing tourism and limiting permanent immigration. I find it quite fascinating in modern times this propaganda still lives on strongly throughout the world, as people say "things are so different in Japan."
- booleandilemma 3y agoIt's not just HN. You'd probably enjoy this meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thing-japan https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thing-japan https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2554429-thing-japan https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2554429-thing-japan
- renewiltord 3y agoHaha, that's a funny meme. But the main picture sort of is different, no? In Tokyo, you'd wander through the streets and see all sorts of interesting things in that melange of billboards: model train stores, little book stores, an indoor hydroponics farm, a teppanyaki place. I've got nothing against truck stop off-ramps looking like they do (they provide great utility on road trips) but it's qualitatively different and I can see someone liking the former and not the latter.
- mkii 3y agoIt's kind of the same to me. There's videos on YouTube of Japanese tourist or exchange students in America, gawking and having fun over the most mundane American things.
- renewiltord 3y agoHuh, I suppose we're different. I wasn't born American, and both the truck stop stuff and the Japanese city are wondrous to me. But they're obviously different experiences because of how many novel things I can experience in a short amount of time.
- baby 3y agoAs a non-American the skyscrapers in NYC as well as the architecture in LV were mind blowing to me. I guess the US also has good nature. But Japan is a condensed WTF/sqm if you ever visit you will see that it’s truly a special country.
- mplewis 3y agoIndeed! I recently learned about an aspect of this which is named and tied to national brand strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Japan
- nickpeterson 3y agoI feel like China could really gain by taking a page or two from this playbook.
- mkii 3y agoNot arguing against your point, but there's an active element in America media that's very anti-Chinese. When's the last time you saw a story that was cool or innocent related to China in HN (because MSM's totally out of the question)?
- nickpeterson 3y agoThe MSM had a far more negative view of Japan not too many years ago.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoIf you fed Americans Chinese news stories from Chinese media directly, they would have an even lower opinion of China. Give an American a copy of global times or China daily (you can find them at the airport) and watch them wonder if this is satire or real! There were a lot of pro-China articles and comments on HN about 5 or so years ago, China’s popularity has just taken a huge nosedive since then. Sexy Cyborg makes China look cool until the government shuts her down, making China look very uncool.
- imp0cat 3y agoDefinitely. Unfortunaly, the people who are currently enjoying the benefits of being China's leaders would only lose. So they have decided to take a different path, esp. in the recent years.
- bmitc 3y agoThere is a lot of propaganda about Japan's culture, but there is no mistaking that it is indeed different and quite unique, not always in good ways. It is quite common for island or peninsula countries to have strong, unique cultures, and Japan certainly sits at the exceptional end of that in terms of how strong the culture is. What specifically are you balking at?
- tessierashpool 3y agonot the person you're replying to, but seemed pretty obvious they were rejecting the idea that Japanese programmers are somehow unique in being good in some cases and bad in other cases
- Jensson 3y agoJapanese organizations are different, and that makes the skills and behavior of their programmers different.
- tumdum_ 3y agoThey reward tenure and respecting the hierarchy. Wonder what kind of positive (from western pov) skills and behaviours are fostered in that environment.
- pnt12 3y agoRegarding hierarchy, I have an anecdote about India. A manager told me that western teams are more likely to challenge a ticket than Indian teams, who hesitate to do that and are more likely to power through. His theory is that the culture makes it disrespectful to question the upper hierarchy, given its caste system, and causes a clash with western culture. His solution was to communicate much more actively with the Indian team, to try to squeeze more feedback that they would hesitate to give at first.
- xeromal 3y agoTenure could induce creating respectable code that one has to deal with for a lifetime of work. Just a guess.
- soneca 3y agoI never met a Brazilian who went to Japan and didn’t spontaneously say that things there are so different. I don’t think it’s solely propaganda (if any at all).
- emodendroket 3y agoThey’d probably have the same reaction to America or much of Europe considering you’re talking about two countries with quite different levels of development and standards of living.
- soneca 3y agoNo, that’s not it. These people are used to go to the US and Europe and it’s not the same reaction. It is a mix of development, very different culture (Brazil has a lot of European and US cultural influence), but also safety, institutional efficiency, traditions. Idk, there is a lot of different aspects and things.
- kaba0 3y ago> Brazil has a lot of European and US cultural influence That’s the core point. Of course Asian culture is more different. Probably a better example would be for a Brazilian to visit some African tribe.
- soneca 3y agoAfrican culture also has a lot of influence in Brazilian culture. But anyway, there is another uniqueness aspect aspect, which is the urban development of Japan. I visited African tribes, and of course it is different than a big city in Brazil, it is just as different as an indigenous tribe here in Brazil, or a more rural village. Japan uniqueness, I believe, comes from its urban development. Rich, clean, polite, functional big cities is the uniqueness that I see in Japan that it’s not common in any other place in the world. I didn’t find that in LA, NY, Paris, London, Dakar. Maybe Copenhagen (from the ones I visited) would match some aspects of it, but then it’s not as big as Tokyo, nor it is blended with the tradition as in Japan (or I am used to Nordic traditions more than Japanese) I am convinced that Japan has some unmatched uniqueness which make it more different of other countries than other countries are among them.
- emodendroket 3y agoI hear you. Having studied Japanese seriously it takes a lot of the magic out of jargon that’s just common Japanese nouns. But it is still alien to most of our ways of working (though I think that has more to do with nonprogrammers programming than anything about the Yamatodamashii).
- golergka 3y ago> the myth of Japanese "uniqueness" is largely the product of Japanese national propaganda, serving many useful purposes for the state Is the Consumer Reports that we're commenting on also Japanese propaganda?
- kaba0 3y agoJapan definitely has their own business culture, which has pros and cons (e.g. it is very seniority-aware, but that’s also a negative). It seems to fit well engineering, but it is not that good of a fit for software development - as they are generally not too great at the latter. I have only heard these things, so not even first-hand experience, but due to a senior people basically “have to be” at a higher position, there are software companies where the higher ups don’t know shit about what is even a computer.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hintymad 3y agoOne thing that Japanese did really well is keeping their language identity. In particular, they don’t translate their words. They give us gyoza instead of dumplings. They give us ramen instead of some lame-ass noodle. They give us Sudoku instead of number puzzles. So much so that Japanese words have some kind of zen-like connotation to many people. In contrast, mainland Chinese always translate words to English. Ironically, gyoza is literally Chinese word 饺子，and Ramen is really the Chinese word 拉面。
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoJapanese has a lot of loan words from Chinese, which isn’t surprising. They aren’t even written in katakana. Japanese are more likely to adopt phonetic translation of new things (like computer) whereas Chinese will make a new word diannao (electric brain). Of course Chinese not having an auxiliary phonetic writing system (unlike Japanese or Korean) makes this necessary, although that’s probably by design (not completely true, some non-Chinese languages use Chinese as a phonetic writing system!).
- kaba0 3y agoElectric brain sounds cool! In Hungarian we say ‘számítógép’, which is literally computing/calculating machine.
- ajmurmann 3y agoIs this something that's happening because of something Japanese people are doing or because of the perception of Japanese culture where foreigners like Japanese words and thus don't translate it?
- tayo42 3y agoTo me names of things are like pronouns, why would you change it? Feels weird to me. Though I guess it's weird we didn't do that a lot of Chinese dishes. Soup dumplings instead of Xiao long bao. Idk how to even properly pronounce that.