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As a Japanese, I hope this will challenge the dominance of those IT giants. They should be subject to anti-trust regulations in the first place, but I think it

As a Japanese, I hope this will challenge the dominance of those IT giants. They should be subject to anti-trust regulations in the first place, but I think it won't happen soon, so I'm glad they are taking action. That said, I'm not particularly sure Japanese politicians can handle those complicated matters efficiently. I mean, our "cyber-security minister" was accused of never using a PC and not knowing what a USB memory stick is [0]. I can't help but think that this will end in disaster and IT giants will use these examples as evidence of how bad it is to make strict regulations against them... [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/15/japan-cyber-security-ministernever-used-computer-yoshitaka-sakurada https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/15/japan-cyber-se...

bamboozled 2y ago
I think Japan should build software which competes with these “giants” rather than try beat them through regulation. Building good software is still in reach. You don’t need to have an Apple or Google behind you to be competitive. Especially in Japan where just making a native Japanese <whatever> will lead to dominance. Look at Line. It’s atrocious rubbish. Everyone in Japan uses it. Japan makes the worst software out of any developed nation I’ve ever seen. Even Nintendo stuff is mostly terrible. Sony is a joke.
- sensanaty 2y ago
  Or we can do both? Encourage competition from smaller businesses while curbing the power and influence of these behemoth monopolies that control basically all of modern human civilization. Apple, Google, Microsoft and all the rest of them should've been nuked into a trillion tiny little pieces years ago.
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    Knowing Japan. This regulation isn’t about making your experience as consumer better.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      Then, what is it about?
      - bamboozled 2y ago
        Pleasing or protecting some mega corp.
- hamasho 2y ago
  There are some sweet spots where local tech companies can compete in markets even though their products are worse. But there's nothing close to Google Search or iPhone.
  - ChainOfFools 2y ago
    What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's? Was it motivated purely or mainly by a need for a workable kanji/kana interface for mobile texting, with no sense of the larger implications of such a capable system as a basis for a very comfortable head start 10 years later into the smartphone adoption cycle? It feels like such a perfect textbook example of a culture that embraces "how" much more than it embraces "why," a culture that is not endemic to Japan but actually quite common at various scales globally, because most of the time its the right mindset. But when it isn't, it becomes an enormous handicap.
    - hamasho 2y ago
      I'm not familiar with that era, but I think cell phones back then were more focused on hardware and brute-force style development than sophisticated software. It's unbelievable how tough it was to survive the NTT Docomo's R&D center, YRP. Depression and suicides were sadly common, which caused a lot of Japanese to avoid the IT industry for years...
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      >What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's? Nothing, really. Remember that most advancements in computing still happened outside of Japan (Windows 95, Pentium, et al.), or in the case of NAND flash happened in Japan but was shitcanned only to be picked up by the US. Japan never was great at tech beyond a certain point, but that only became really obvious in the 2000s when even their Galapagos phones were finally outdone.
    - numpad0 2y ago
      Docomo commissioned phone manufacturers to ship phones at half-year cycle. The idea was to sell it like women's clothing. But manufacturers didn't commoditize parts and optimize businesses for that cycle; instead they sped up and staggered development to match that cycle, in the process burning lots of cash and people's careers. By the time iPhone came out, the tech debts and bureaucratic overheads had grown so much that nothing could be done to save the industry and platform. Everything from devices to institutional knowledge and existing moats all went down the drain until enough was shed off that reasonably usable Android phones could be manufactured, but not much points were left in making those. > Was it motivated purely or mainly by ... I'm sure Docomo execs had sane long-term plans, but ideological and hierarchical thinking isn't Japanese forte so executions were counterproductive and/or micromanagement mess. Kanji/kana interface has nothing to do with it, all Nokia phones handled Japanese language perfectly fine, certainly more than adequately for ... a dozen model or so sold over a decade.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  It's astonishing this comment is as heavily downvoted as it is because it hits Japan's problem at its core. Apple and Google are dominant because Japan simply cannot do software (and tech in general). They have no domestic players, so this conclusion is natural. Some amount of regulation might be necessary, but fundamentally Japan cannot break the US-held monopoly so long as they fail to bring their own players to market.
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    I'm not on HN to make friends :) I do spend a lot of time in Japan though. A lot more then most down voters that's for sure. For most people visiting Japan, their first interaction will be buying a a train ticket for the NEX Airport express or the Shinkansen, it's a horrendous and confusing experience. Their interactions with Japanese software will only get worse from there however.
    - qiqitori 2y ago
      Hmm, I don't get anything in this thread. What's so bad about Nintendo's or the Sony PlayStation's software? From my perspective they're like... almost perfect, except for the fact that there are updates sometimes, but they're fast. What's so bad about JR's ticket vending machines? What could be improved?
    - unscaled 2y ago
      I think most of the confusing experience comes from the way that Japanese limited express paper tickets used to work. If you rode a limited express (like Shinkansen or Narita Express), you'd have to buy two tickets: the basic fare ticket and the express surcharge ticket. The basic fare ticket would also cover your non-express connections, so this was quite convenient in Japan's complex transit system. Japan still has that system in place, but the basic fare is usually replaced by your IC transit card or integrated into an eTicket (which contains both basic fare + express surcharge and is tied into your IC card). So if you buy a ticket to NEX on the Ekinet app you'll be offered a ticketless option, but you probably wouldn't know that means you still need to tap your Suica in order to pay the basic fare. Shinkansen trains are generally using eTickets, which would be even more confusing for visitors, but many visitors are using JR Pass which is completely outside the fare systems (but does need reserved seats). Most of this complexity is inherent complexity, not accidental complexity that comes from bad software. The main issues I've seen with the software in question are: Lack of English version (Ekinet), Complex registration flow (SmartEX) and flaky authentication (Ekinet). This is not a great UX, but the apps don't feel worse than train operator apps in other countries. These are not tech companies.
- numpad0 2y ago
  Japan had a strong flip phone ecosystem back when iPhone happened. Contactless payment, lootbox microtransactions, music downloads, GIF emojis, TV broadcast, multicore CPUs, Linux-based OS, biometrics, >326ppi displays before iPhone 4, 3x mechanical zoom, literally everything. Sadly the industry was focusing razor sharp on political infighting and was just building up crufts, and so the UI/UX was beyond atrocious - it was not simply outdated, the entire ecosystem was user hostile. That and downright illegal quota enforcement from Apple wiped it out. Two major mistakes made by Japanese phone manufacturers was that they didn't ship the phones globally from being scared to death with language barriers, and that no one cared about horrible organizational mess. They had a decade and half to make MOAP(L) work out as a usable touchscreen OS that runs on Renesas SH processor with Toshiba DRAM and paired with a Fujitsu modem, they didn't take that route and instead spent that engineering man-hours on processing PDF file returned from payment gateway on a phone, and let it all bleed out. IIUC, Korea was in an almost exact same situation. They managed to come out of it. Japan could not.
  - SunlitCat 2y ago
    That's something wondering me as well. Japan had so much cool things way back in the 2000's (even late 90's I think?). Internet on mobile phones was thing (I think it was called iMode or so). Those flip phones were awesome and way more convenient then those bricks back then over here (I still have my international version of an NEC flip phone I bought in mid-ish 2000's somewhere around. It even had iMode access, albeit pretty useless here). I still wonder what could have happened, if Japanese companies pushed their phones (and technology) more worldwide. Well, we will never know.
    - treflop 2y ago
      Don’t forget that the US had Internet on mobile phones in the 90s/2000s too. It was called WAP. However it was expensive as shit. I’m glad that both WAP and i-mode failed and we got the real Internet though.
      - numpad0 2y ago
- mempko 2y ago
  The U.S. is about to put the hammer down on TikTok, eliminating a large foreign competitor to their social media empires. Protectionism is how countries develop local brands in the first place. Protectionism works for the U.S., it will also work in Japan (and has worked in the past).
dmix 2y ago
> They should be subject to anti-trust regulations in the first place > I mean, our "cyber-security minister" was accused of never using a PC and not knowing what a USB memory stick is From what I've read about Japan it was probably the usual small set of local megacorps that Japanese politicians protect heavily that seeded the regulations, not out of a genuine interest in the protecting or improving regular customers lives or opening up competiton to smaller players. But regardless hopefully it is more than just the pipe dreams of the existing entrants and there really is upstart competition that is capable of operating in a meaningful way.
dannyw 2y ago
Meanwhile Singapore’s prime minister knows programming and writes Python in his spare time.
- Barrin92 2y ago
  Does that mean anything though? I don't want Slash to draft anti-trust legislation in the record label industry because he can play the guitar. Crafting correct market regulations is largely going to depend on whether people understand the economic dynamics and are free from corporate influence, not whether they do some coding.
  - senorrib 2y ago
    It may not mean guaranteed signal that they can create good regulation, but the opposite is a pretty major red flag. If you don't understand technology, I have a very hard time trusting you to enact laws on the subject.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Being a guitar player by itself does not qualify you to draft anti-trust legislation for the music industry. However, someone who's deaf and doesn't know anything at all about music or the music industry would probably also be a poor choice. At least Slash has decades of experience working with major players in the industry and could probably advise on it to some lawyers who know about anti-trust regulation and at least understand the basics about the industry.
    - jvanderbot 2y ago
      I still disagree. It's somehow weird to have a deaf person writing music industry regulations - but it's actually not at all important for them to hear music to regulate it. Otherwise, do we regulate differently based on _sound_!? I hope not! We don't regulate based on music theory either! Do we need him to know chord progressions to be able to write laws? I hope not! With tech it's a little different, we do regulate based on aspects that touch on fundamental theory, like manufacturing processes, cryptography, etc.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>As a Japanese, I hope this will challenge the dominance of those IT giants. Also Japanese(-American), this will not fundamentally change the situation of Japanese irrelevance. You cannot and will not win if you have no players to begin with, and Japan is by far the absolute worst country when it comes to tech now. Once upon a time NEC was one of the biggest microprocessor manufacturers in the world, Sony was the world's boutique brand, Toshiba was bleeding edge, and Panasonic was the Samsung of the time, but it's the 21st century now and Japan hasn't been relevant for a looooooooong time. Top down government regulations won't solve this. Only Hitachi has remained mostly unchanged, relevant then and still relevant now. Not much room for comfort, though.
- hammyhavoc 2y ago
  IMO, a compelling alternative to push more heavily is open source, because it's something different than just another corporation that places profit before substance and ethics.
- unscaled 2y ago
  There are about 195 countries in the world (depending on how you count), I find it hard to believe that Japan is dead last on the list. I'll be the first to complain about the bad state of software in this country, but it still sits very comfortably in the top half of that list.
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  Japan stopped being relevant predominantly because the US diplomatically bullied Japan into making itself irrelevant. Japan used to be what China is now: a megasupplier, protected by an artificially cheap domestic currency. Top-down government regulations are necessary to curb big tech's power because big tech has subverted the normal mechanisms of market competition that are supposed to make dictatorial control unprofitable. The question is whether or not Japan denying market access to Apple or Google will be a sufficient punishment to get companies to comply.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >Japan stopped being relevant predominantly because the US diplomatically bullied Japan into making itself irrelevant. No, Japan stopped being relevant because Japanese companies are legendary in their hostility towards each other. They themselves are their worst enemy. Not to mention Japanese society is more interested in looking in the mirror than out the window. In fact, it's not even the US who really drove Japan into irrelevancy, it's South Korea, China, and Taiwan. All countries whose companies spent more time taking on the global market instead of squabbling amongst themselves and thus succeeded at out-Japan'ing Japan as a mere stepping stone. Samsung, LG, and Foxconn killed off NEC, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, Sanyo, and Elpida. Huawei and such cleaned up what remained. Renesas is basically on legacy life support, and who knows if Rapidus won't be stillborn. The US dominance that is Apple and Google is a result of Japan loving to hoist petards, not because the US has power and has no qualms about using it legally or otherwise.
resoluteteeth 2y ago
> That said, I'm not particularly sure Japanese politicians can handle those complicated matters efficiently. It's not as if this law was actually written by the elected politicians, and furthermore, it's based on an EU law. Japan is only one of the many countries that are now using EU laws as a model for their own legislation for issues like privacy and antitrust law.
Nition 2y ago
> Another joked that perhaps Sakurada was simply engaged in his own kind of cybersecurity. > "If a hacker targets this Minister Sakurada, they wouldn’t be able to steal any information. Indeed it might be the strongest kind of security!" I love this comment from your article.
wraptile 2y ago
While I agree I feel it's kinda poetic that Japan is notoriously ok with Nintendo and Sony putting people in prison and has done absolutely nothing about it.
pciexpgpu 2y ago
Do you think the Agriculture minister drove tractors and tried out various fertilizers? In a way, having a fresh mindset not bogged down by trends and status quo is actually a nice thing.

bamboozled 2y ago

I think Japan should build software which competes with these “giants” rather than try beat them through regulation. Building good software is still in reach. You don’t need to have an Apple or Google behind you to be competitive. Especially in Japan where just making a native Japanese <whatever> will lead to dominance. Look at Line. It’s atrocious rubbish. Everyone in Japan uses it. Japan makes the worst software out of any developed nation I’ve ever seen. Even Nintendo stuff is mostly terrible. Sony is a joke.

sensanaty 2y ago
Or we can do both? Encourage competition from smaller businesses while curbing the power and influence of these behemoth monopolies that control basically all of modern human civilization. Apple, Google, Microsoft and all the rest of them should've been nuked into a trillion tiny little pieces years ago.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  Knowing Japan. This regulation isn’t about making your experience as consumer better.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    Then, what is it about?
    - bamboozled 2y ago
      Pleasing or protecting some mega corp.
hamasho 2y ago
There are some sweet spots where local tech companies can compete in markets even though their products are worse. But there's nothing close to Google Search or iPhone.
- ChainOfFools 2y ago
  What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's? Was it motivated purely or mainly by a need for a workable kanji/kana interface for mobile texting, with no sense of the larger implications of such a capable system as a basis for a very comfortable head start 10 years later into the smartphone adoption cycle? It feels like such a perfect textbook example of a culture that embraces "how" much more than it embraces "why," a culture that is not endemic to Japan but actually quite common at various scales globally, because most of the time its the right mindset. But when it isn't, it becomes an enormous handicap.
  - hamasho 2y ago
    I'm not familiar with that era, but I think cell phones back then were more focused on hardware and brute-force style development than sophisticated software. It's unbelievable how tough it was to survive the NTT Docomo's R&D center, YRP. Depression and suicides were sadly common, which caused a lot of Japanese to avoid the IT industry for years...
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >What happened to the incredibly futuristic basis in the smartphone space that Japan had with NTT docomo back in the mid-late 90's? Nothing, really. Remember that most advancements in computing still happened outside of Japan (Windows 95, Pentium, et al.), or in the case of NAND flash happened in Japan but was shitcanned only to be picked up by the US. Japan never was great at tech beyond a certain point, but that only became really obvious in the 2000s when even their Galapagos phones were finally outdone.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    Docomo commissioned phone manufacturers to ship phones at half-year cycle. The idea was to sell it like women's clothing. But manufacturers didn't commoditize parts and optimize businesses for that cycle; instead they sped up and staggered development to match that cycle, in the process burning lots of cash and people's careers. By the time iPhone came out, the tech debts and bureaucratic overheads had grown so much that nothing could be done to save the industry and platform. Everything from devices to institutional knowledge and existing moats all went down the drain until enough was shed off that reasonably usable Android phones could be manufactured, but not much points were left in making those. > Was it motivated purely or mainly by ... I'm sure Docomo execs had sane long-term plans, but ideological and hierarchical thinking isn't Japanese forte so executions were counterproductive and/or micromanagement mess. Kanji/kana interface has nothing to do with it, all Nokia phones handled Japanese language perfectly fine, certainly more than adequately for ... a dozen model or so sold over a decade.
Dalewyn 2y ago
It's astonishing this comment is as heavily downvoted as it is because it hits Japan's problem at its core. Apple and Google are dominant because Japan simply cannot do software (and tech in general). They have no domestic players, so this conclusion is natural. Some amount of regulation might be necessary, but fundamentally Japan cannot break the US-held monopoly so long as they fail to bring their own players to market.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  I'm not on HN to make friends :) I do spend a lot of time in Japan though. A lot more then most down voters that's for sure. For most people visiting Japan, their first interaction will be buying a a train ticket for the NEX Airport express or the Shinkansen, it's a horrendous and confusing experience. Their interactions with Japanese software will only get worse from there however.
  - qiqitori 2y ago
    Hmm, I don't get anything in this thread. What's so bad about Nintendo's or the Sony PlayStation's software? From my perspective they're like... almost perfect, except for the fact that there are updates sometimes, but they're fast. What's so bad about JR's ticket vending machines? What could be improved?
  - unscaled 2y ago
    I think most of the confusing experience comes from the way that Japanese limited express paper tickets used to work. If you rode a limited express (like Shinkansen or Narita Express), you'd have to buy two tickets: the basic fare ticket and the express surcharge ticket. The basic fare ticket would also cover your non-express connections, so this was quite convenient in Japan's complex transit system. Japan still has that system in place, but the basic fare is usually replaced by your IC transit card or integrated into an eTicket (which contains both basic fare + express surcharge and is tied into your IC card). So if you buy a ticket to NEX on the Ekinet app you'll be offered a ticketless option, but you probably wouldn't know that means you still need to tap your Suica in order to pay the basic fare. Shinkansen trains are generally using eTickets, which would be even more confusing for visitors, but many visitors are using JR Pass which is completely outside the fare systems (but does need reserved seats). Most of this complexity is inherent complexity, not accidental complexity that comes from bad software. The main issues I've seen with the software in question are: Lack of English version (Ekinet), Complex registration flow (SmartEX) and flaky authentication (Ekinet). This is not a great UX, but the apps don't feel worse than train operator apps in other countries. These are not tech companies.
numpad0 2y ago
Japan had a strong flip phone ecosystem back when iPhone happened. Contactless payment, lootbox microtransactions, music downloads, GIF emojis, TV broadcast, multicore CPUs, Linux-based OS, biometrics, >326ppi displays before iPhone 4, 3x mechanical zoom, literally everything. Sadly the industry was focusing razor sharp on political infighting and was just building up crufts, and so the UI/UX was beyond atrocious - it was not simply outdated, the entire ecosystem was user hostile. That and downright illegal quota enforcement from Apple wiped it out. Two major mistakes made by Japanese phone manufacturers was that they didn't ship the phones globally from being scared to death with language barriers, and that no one cared about horrible organizational mess. They had a decade and half to make MOAP(L) work out as a usable touchscreen OS that runs on Renesas SH processor with Toshiba DRAM and paired with a Fujitsu modem, they didn't take that route and instead spent that engineering man-hours on processing PDF file returned from payment gateway on a phone, and let it all bleed out. IIUC, Korea was in an almost exact same situation. They managed to come out of it. Japan could not.
- SunlitCat 2y ago
  That's something wondering me as well. Japan had so much cool things way back in the 2000's (even late 90's I think?). Internet on mobile phones was thing (I think it was called iMode or so). Those flip phones were awesome and way more convenient then those bricks back then over here (I still have my international version of an NEC flip phone I bought in mid-ish 2000's somewhere around. It even had iMode access, albeit pretty useless here). I still wonder what could have happened, if Japanese companies pushed their phones (and technology) more worldwide. Well, we will never know.
  - treflop 2y ago
    Don’t forget that the US had Internet on mobile phones in the 90s/2000s too. It was called WAP. However it was expensive as shit. I’m glad that both WAP and i-mode failed and we got the real Internet though.
    - numpad0 2y ago
mempko 2y ago
The U.S. is about to put the hammer down on TikTok, eliminating a large foreign competitor to their social media empires. Protectionism is how countries develop local brands in the first place. Protectionism works for the U.S., it will also work in Japan (and has worked in the past).

dmix 2y ago

> They should be subject to anti-trust regulations in the first place > I mean, our "cyber-security minister" was accused of never using a PC and not knowing what a USB memory stick is From what I've read about Japan it was probably the usual small set of local megacorps that Japanese politicians protect heavily that seeded the regulations, not out of a genuine interest in the protecting or improving regular customers lives or opening up competiton to smaller players. But regardless hopefully it is more than just the pipe dreams of the existing entrants and there really is upstart competition that is capable of operating in a meaningful way.

dannyw 2y ago

Meanwhile Singapore’s prime minister knows programming and writes Python in his spare time.

Barrin92 2y ago
Does that mean anything though? I don't want Slash to draft anti-trust legislation in the record label industry because he can play the guitar. Crafting correct market regulations is largely going to depend on whether people understand the economic dynamics and are free from corporate influence, not whether they do some coding.
- senorrib 2y ago
  It may not mean guaranteed signal that they can create good regulation, but the opposite is a pretty major red flag. If you don't understand technology, I have a very hard time trusting you to enact laws on the subject.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Being a guitar player by itself does not qualify you to draft anti-trust legislation for the music industry. However, someone who's deaf and doesn't know anything at all about music or the music industry would probably also be a poor choice. At least Slash has decades of experience working with major players in the industry and could probably advise on it to some lawyers who know about anti-trust regulation and at least understand the basics about the industry.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    I still disagree. It's somehow weird to have a deaf person writing music industry regulations - but it's actually not at all important for them to hear music to regulate it. Otherwise, do we regulate differently based on _sound_!? I hope not! We don't regulate based on music theory either! Do we need him to know chord progressions to be able to write laws? I hope not! With tech it's a little different, we do regulate based on aspects that touch on fundamental theory, like manufacturing processes, cryptography, etc.

Dalewyn 2y ago

>As a Japanese, I hope this will challenge the dominance of those IT giants. Also Japanese(-American), this will not fundamentally change the situation of Japanese irrelevance. You cannot and will not win if you have no players to begin with, and Japan is by far the absolute worst country when it comes to tech now. Once upon a time NEC was one of the biggest microprocessor manufacturers in the world, Sony was the world's boutique brand, Toshiba was bleeding edge, and Panasonic was the Samsung of the time, but it's the 21st century now and Japan hasn't been relevant for a looooooooong time. Top down government regulations won't solve this. Only Hitachi has remained mostly unchanged, relevant then and still relevant now. Not much room for comfort, though.

hammyhavoc 2y ago
IMO, a compelling alternative to push more heavily is open source, because it's something different than just another corporation that places profit before substance and ethics.
unscaled 2y ago
There are about 195 countries in the world (depending on how you count), I find it hard to believe that Japan is dead last on the list. I'll be the first to complain about the bad state of software in this country, but it still sits very comfortably in the top half of that list.
kmeisthax 2y ago
Japan stopped being relevant predominantly because the US diplomatically bullied Japan into making itself irrelevant. Japan used to be what China is now: a megasupplier, protected by an artificially cheap domestic currency. Top-down government regulations are necessary to curb big tech's power because big tech has subverted the normal mechanisms of market competition that are supposed to make dictatorial control unprofitable. The question is whether or not Japan denying market access to Apple or Google will be a sufficient punishment to get companies to comply.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >Japan stopped being relevant predominantly because the US diplomatically bullied Japan into making itself irrelevant. No, Japan stopped being relevant because Japanese companies are legendary in their hostility towards each other. They themselves are their worst enemy. Not to mention Japanese society is more interested in looking in the mirror than out the window. In fact, it's not even the US who really drove Japan into irrelevancy, it's South Korea, China, and Taiwan. All countries whose companies spent more time taking on the global market instead of squabbling amongst themselves and thus succeeded at out-Japan'ing Japan as a mere stepping stone. Samsung, LG, and Foxconn killed off NEC, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, Sanyo, and Elpida. Huawei and such cleaned up what remained. Renesas is basically on legacy life support, and who knows if Rapidus won't be stillborn. The US dominance that is Apple and Google is a result of Japan loving to hoist petards, not because the US has power and has no qualms about using it legally or otherwise.

resoluteteeth 2y ago

> That said, I'm not particularly sure Japanese politicians can handle those complicated matters efficiently. It's not as if this law was actually written by the elected politicians, and furthermore, it's based on an EU law. Japan is only one of the many countries that are now using EU laws as a model for their own legislation for issues like privacy and antitrust law.

Nition 2y ago

> Another joked that perhaps Sakurada was simply engaged in his own kind of cybersecurity. > "If a hacker targets this Minister Sakurada, they wouldn’t be able to steal any information. Indeed it might be the strongest kind of security!" I love this comment from your article.

wraptile 2y ago

While I agree I feel it's kinda poetic that Japan is notoriously ok with Nintendo and Sony putting people in prison and has done absolutely nothing about it.

pciexpgpu 2y ago

Do you think the Agriculture minister drove tractors and tried out various fertilizers? In a way, having a fresh mindset not bogged down by trends and status quo is actually a nice thing.