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Japan’s Temple-Builder Kongō Gumi, Has Survived Nearly 1,500 Years
- romanhn 2y agoIt didn't really survive though, in the end. In January 2006 the company was bought out. Per Wikipedia: "The old Kongō Construction remained only in the real estate division and changed its name to KJ Construction Co., Ltd. The over-1,400-year-old Kongō family's management structure essentially closed its doors. In July 2006, KJ Construction filed for bankruptcy due to insufficient funds." Nevertheless, very impressive track record!
- gradschoolfail 2y agoHeh, guessing the new management structure led to a bout of volatility in funding? Survived nearly 1500 -> Nearly survived 1500
- lenkite 2y agoI think this is just due to the slow death of organized religion. There was no way for a temple builder to survive in their primary business. Otherwise, they had an extraordinary run. Wish governments supported such companies as cultural legacies.
- gradschoolfail 2y agoTemple construction happens also to be concern of the world’s 10th oldest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakamura_Shaji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakamura_Shaji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies (Of course, since wiki page hasn’t been updated for the first, it might also have quietly passed into the ether)
- thedailymail 2y agoIt looks like it is still a going concern - the company website and phone line both seem to be active. https://nakamurasyaji.co.jp/ https://nakamurasyaji.co.jp/
- aebtebeten 2y agoA recent SMBC* explores "what if religion was freemium?", but the existence of temples and sacrifices suggest that, whatever model deities may have had in mind, their worshippers have always been eager to sign up for a premium plan. * https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/bad-3 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/bad-3
- gradschoolfail 2y agoI love SMBC so much that i once suggested a joke idea to Weinersmith. Sad day for me and my ideas lol. In particular, to discover that my heroes Rao and Weinersmith selfidentify as hypernormies T_T [Cue yada yada the batman snowclone “live long enough”, eg you either die a batman or live long enough to become Batman) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(military) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(military)] [another source of hypernormie pro weirdos, from my personal anecdata, are psychiatrists, im guessing the sibboleth is the high neuroticism to __ ratio, which comes off as wisdom (after discounting for age).. weird pronormies would then be econs profs? This is prob why both trigger the So[Ha]Ri(veign/vian) Taleb lol] Also should have replied to alephnerd in a more timely fashion
- 082349872349872 2y agoFinally someone who pronounces sibboleth properly! At one point I ran across a US book which noted that children of psychiatrists tend to wind up in treatment themselves, with the exception having been just after WWII (when the army's need for psychiatrists meant they retrained many people who had studied as regular GPs), and concluded that it may be a field many people pursue due to the attraction of self-diagnosis.
- gradschoolfail 2y agoSorry to disappoint if you didnt already guess i picked that up from you. However, its probably not a spelling i would practise elsewhere — too memorable.
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- knallfrosch 2y ago> Wish governments supported such companies as cultural legacies. I feel like the core of the company – led as a family business, earning real money – would be lost if it was suddenly state-supported, with the inevitable meddling to go with it.
- kwhitefoot 2y agoThe support doesn't have to be a financial subsidy; it can be the creation of a regulatory framework that advantages companies of this type. That is surely unexceptional, after all it's done in many countries all the time. It just happens that it is large corporations that are state supported rather than those with multi-century continuity or support for the local community in mind.
- dredmorbius 2y agoThankfully religions have never meddled in affairs of business, state, war, or culture. </s>
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoBut they would; temples aren't destroyed unless there's a religious revolution, if the religion stops they become heritage sites and the work remains. Like modern day churches and cathedrals being repurposed as upmarket housing.
- hinkley 2y agoAren’t a bunch of Japanese temples already heritage sites? The big problem with these temples is not religion it’s deforestation. The spine is made of old growth timber. So some of these temples survived over a thousand years until the central pillars were deemed unsound and needed to be replaced. Problem is that the new pillars are estimated to need replacement again in 400 years. They are made of less sturdy stuff.
- onlypassingthru 2y agoMy impression is that Japan's temples are regularly destroyed. They're giant wooden structures with zero fire suppression and basically tinder boxes just waiting for a spark. Lo and behold, the Great ____ Earthquake/Fire or war occurs every few hundred years and there she goes.
- ensignavenger 2y agoIn fact, many Japanese temples are designed to be torn down and rebuilt on a regular basis.
- tmtvl 2y agoAs they say: fires and fights are the flowers of Edo.
- runjake 2y agoIf you look up the history of the temples mentioned in the article, they were more often destroyed by non-religious conflicts, fires, and earthquakes.
- astrobe_ 2y ago
- ddfs123 2y agoThis doesn't really say anything about religions. Constructions company can build a lot of thing. Temples are just happen to be good business at that time.
- FredPret 2y agoBut temples are almost uniquely good for construction companies. - the more ornate, the better - unlike palaces, every town needs at least one, and if you're polytheistic, so much the better - extremely price-insensitive clients who are content to wait generations - you can probably easily bulldoze both structures and local opinions that get in the way of construction because you're building for a cause everyone's supposed to worship
- prepend 2y agoThere aren’t any examples of state run businesses this old, right? It seems like at 1,500 years governments aren’t robust enough to survive. So any business run by a government would not survive the political upheavals.
- archgoon 2y agoThe Church of Sinai has operated Saint Catherine's Monastery for nearly 1500 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Catherine%27s_Monastery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Catherine%27s_Monastery
- alephnerd 2y agoSt Catherine's Monastery is not a business
- archgoon 2y agoI mean, if you want to argue it's a Non Profit, not a business, go ahead, but I'm not particularly interested in fitting modern tax code and business rules to an entity that has existed for 1500 years. The organization has existed and has had a need to find funding for it's activities. Since the question was about 'state' run entities, the goal of "making a profit" seemed not particular salient. Honestly, I thought the more contentious part of this claim was going to be if the Church of Sinai constituted a state.
- alephnerd 2y ago> I thought the more contentious part of this claim was going to be if the Church of Sinai constituted a state That is not as contentious, because it's basically autocephalous/self governing. It's always been a couple dozen loners in the Sinai peninsula maintaining self sufficiency, which is why I don't find it a good example - as there are plenty of similarly old and continuous organizations, but never truly scaled.
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- nothercastle 2y agoIt got killed by financial engineering in the end. No sanely run company can survive competition from a company structured to take advantage of low interest rates and public/private partnerships
- alephnerd 2y ago> It got killed by financial engineering in the end Real interest rates in Japan were on par with in the US in the mid-2000s [0], and only entered the negative range when the US began dropping interest rates to near 0 during the GFC [0]. The bigger issue in was the hangover of the 1990s Japanese bust which lead to larger players tightening their belts at the expense of smaller players [1] The big players in Japan are also similarly old (usually 300-500 year old guilds converted into corporations/zaibatsus in the 19th century) There is also a succession crisis brewing in plenty of Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese businesses. One person in my network is leaving American Tech PE/VC to concentrate on buying out Korean and a Japanese companies facing issues around succession now - just like American SMEs businesses faced in the 1970s-2000s. Ik people like to shoehorn the Japanese experience to extrapolate American and Western policy, but the Japanese economy is structured very differently from Western economies with an entirely different view on antitrust (ambivalent to opposed), welfare (highly supportive), inflation (keep it as low as possible), and state intervention (highly supportive). The only developed countries that can safely be compared to the Japanese economy are South Korea and Taiwan (maybe Dirigisme-era France and Italy pre-1990s, but they had the benefits of the EC/EU which made stuff significantly different). I recommend reading "The Japanese Economy" by Takatoshi Ito and Takeo Hoshi [2] and "Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan" by Takeo Hoshi and Anil Kashyap [3] [0] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FR.INR.RINR?end=2013&locations=JP-US&start=2001 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FR.INR.RINR?end=2013&lo... [1] - https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2000/01/03/national/execs-reckoning-small-firms-still-need-help-inaba-says/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2000/01/03/national/execs-... [2] - https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262538244/the-japanese-economy/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262538244/the-japanese-economy/ [3] - https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262582483/corporate-financing-and-governance-in-japan/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262582483/corporate-financing-a...
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- underlipton 2y agoIf I may be flippant, "Killing a 1400-year-old institution," is quite a feather in capitalism's hat.
- jalapenos 2y agoI think it's an exaggeration to say this event was the end of the company. E.g. we don't say GM ended because it went through a bankruptcy. Kongo gumi still continued operating even though it went through a restructuring, so it's fair to say it's still the oldest company in the world. Just it's no longer the oldest family business in the world - that ended when direct Kongo control of it ended, although I hear they still have a ceremonial involvement with the company.
- gradschoolfail 2y agoIts not that much of an exaggeration if you consider that the original Construction purpose is gone. E.g. Ford no longer making cars but still trading shares of Car companies would not be itself considered a continuation of Henry Ford’s original setup.
- jalapenos 2y agoDo you have a source that they're no longer in construction?
- gradschoolfail 2y agoOP was quoting wikipedia which also says that business+chief+employees were transferred to a new company Shin-Kongo (ie “New Kongo”). So it depends on what you mean by “they”, the company with the old name Kongo Gumi is no longer in construction, but otherwise the company with the new name Shin Kongo is, as a subsidiary of another conglomerate. Bloomberg also had an article https://archive.is/rLnnH https://archive.is/rLnnH
- userbinator 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies Looks like hospitality and foodservice make up the majority of the list, while very old construction companies are actually relatively rare.
- txdv 2y agoConstruction companies are very volatile but building temples is probably a steady business model
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoJapanese temples are rebuilt every 20-30 years, so steady business.
- numpad0 2y agoNot all temples, only richest ones. Lots of them are centuries old.
- noufalibrahim 2y agoInteresting how Japan and Germany dominate that list.
- perlgeek 2y agoCould be an artifact of record keeping culture, combined with eagerness to contribute to Wikipedia.
- severak_cz 2y agoI like how all Czech republic entries in this list are breweries (except for one hotel). There are some priorities of our people!
- defrost 2y ago
- dhruval 2y agoThe very old buildings the article talks about have long continuity but aren’t actually that old. Article doesn’t seem to mention that Japanese temples are rebuilt periodically every 20-60 years. Most construction businesses don’t have this recurring revenue model, tied to religious rebuilding.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago> Japanese temples are rebuilt periodically every 20-60 years. I think this is more the exception than the rule, isn't it?
- thaumasiotes 2y agoIs it? Chinese buildings are never old because China built in wood rather than stone. If you want to avoid rebuilding your buildings, they have to be made from permanent materials.
- lb1lf 2y agoWood is surprisingly long-lasting in reasonably dry environments as long as fire does not consume it. Norway still has more than a dozen wooden churches built in the 1100s-1200s, and on farms in the inland there are more wood buildings dating back several hundred years than we can count.
- lostlogin 2y ago> If you want to avoid rebuilding your buildings, they have to be made from permanent materials. I’m not sure how well that works when the ground keeps moving. Some places manage it to a degree, but the cultures that come to mind (Aztec) weren’t on land as shaky as Japan.
- southernplaces7 2y agoI'd reconsider that. The Aztec culture was spread over much of central and southern Mexico, a region known for having an abundance of tectonic and also even volcanic instability. Even the case of their capital is almost amusing in that it was built over sand and mud, on a lake, in the middle of a valley severely prone to very heavy earthquakes.
- jcims 2y agoThe closest (presumed) black hole to the Earth is Gaia BH1, which is about 1500 light years away. The expanding shell of photons reflected from the Earth during this era are just now reaching it. Some small percentage of those photons are going to approach the black hole at the perfect distance such that they will be slung back on a trajectory where our solar system will be 1500 years from now. Suppose in a thousand years we decide to build a space telescope of tremendous proportion sufficient to peer into that tiny little window and it takes us 500 years to build it. We could watch opening day!
- left-struck 2y agoWell the photons leaving earth are scattered in almost all directions. So at 1500 light years there might not be any photons arriving from that exact moment and place on earth because you might be down to say 1 photon arriving per hour or even less. Then the photons coming back would be all mixed in with other photons from the black hole so even if the same photons did go to where earth will be, the picture would be mangled beyond repair, and the darkness of the data you’re trying to capture is so low that again it might be less than a photon an hour.
- baxtr 2y agoEasy. We just use AI to “augment” any photon that is missing and voila we’ll be able to watch opening day.
- exe34 2y agoat this point we can do it without the photon!
- pavlov 2y agoHomeopathic astronomy? Those quack homeopathy treatments operate on the assumption that water has a "memory", and it's somehow enough that it's been in contact with some molecule in the past. The astronomy version would be that space has a memory, and you can observe anything if you know there was a relevant photon out there at some point.
- Animats 2y agoBerenberg_Bank, private bankers since 1590, and Beretta, making guns since 1526, are probably the oldest large companies. There are a few wineries, hotels, and religious goods makers that are older, but quite small. Berenberg remains a successful merchant bank today, and Beretta guns can be purchased wherever guns are sold. [1] https://www.berenberg.de/ https://www.berenberg.de/ [2] https://www.beretta.com/ https://www.beretta.com/
- xmprt 2y agoThe most interesting thing about these long lasting companies is how their governance changes over time considering how different society is from when they were originally founded. Countries have come and gone within the lifetime of these companies. There have been entire paradigm shifts in terms of how companies operate. And yet they still exist through it all.
- marc_abonce 2y agoIt looks like most of this centuries-long companies are family owned which sort of explains why do they survive all sorts of extreme political and economic changes that would otherwise break most companies. But it would be interesting to see if there's an actual study to explain this.
- xmprt 2y agoBeing family owned is still impressive. The founder of the company probably has many thousands of heir today so how the company lived without being split between heirs is surprising.
- lostlogin 2y ago> Countries have come and gone within the lifetime of these companies. Are there any that have existed as long as this company? Some sort of have if you are a bit vague and wave your hands a bit.
- 2y ago
- thoi2342o4j23jo 2y agoPeople (incl. Japanese who have a overtly rosy picture of Europe) underestimate how important Tokugawa's Sakoku was for the survival of all this. Indeed, by the time Europe had f*ed up all of Asia in the mid-1800s and reached Japan again, Japan had very high levels of literacy which was perfect for selectively taking of high-culture/industrial-technology of Europe.
- javaunsafe2019 2y agoAny sources on this ?
- CRConrad 2y agoShogun, by James Clavell.
- keiferski 2y agoThe whole Asia series is great. Personally I think Noble House and Tai-Pan are the best.
- kupopuffs 2y agoBy God.
- sva_ 2y agoThe TV series based on that book which was released this year is extremely good.
- CRConrad 2y agoBetter than the one with Richard Chamberlain in the lead, from... Uh, whenever it was?
- ahazred8ta 2y agoFrom the 1600s, Japanese scholars had an entire field of study dedicated to absorbing western knowledge. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangaku https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangaku
- bolangi 2y agoI have an in-law from a family of temple carpenters in Nara. They're not finding people who want go through the rigorous training and the work load demanded of an apprentice.
- temporarara 2y agoHave they tried to make the deal more appealing? Apprentices certainly don't have to be treated like garbage, not even in Japan. So what if the apprenticeship takes a little bit longer than in the old days where you needed to basically live in your workplace and survive all the toxic behaviour directed towards you, and maybe you don't even have to master every single one of those ancient skills to become a professional. Attitude and willingness to negotiate matter.
- keiferski 2y agoMaybe it’s just me, but the idea of starting a company that exists 1,000 years into the future is much more exciting than building a startup in a trendy industry, getting acquired for big bucks, and never being heard of again.
- blitzar 2y agoIts just you.
- teddyh 2y agoOf those two, of course one is preferrable. But. Either you have a company which does everything and anything, or you have a company which depends on solving a particular problem or set of problem. If your company solves a particular problem, the company depends on that problem persisting. I’d rather the problem be eliminated at some time by future developments, making the company defunct, rather than hoping for a 1000 year-old company. Hoping for a 1000 year-old company which solves one problem is really the same as hoping for humanity to keep having that specific problem for a 1000 years.
- keiferski 2y agoI think that’s a false dichotomy. Most of these old companies are addressing basic human activities, not problems. Unless you thinking eating good food and staying in hotels are problems that ought to be solved? Most entertainment business are also not solving problems, and yet manage to be extremely successful businesses. See: Disney, Pokémon, video game companies, etc.
- teddyh 2y agoYes, you’re right. (There’s also the “oldest profession”.) But I’d still like to think that many of these actually are problems to be solved, rather than unalterable facts of life. Look what happened to, for instance, secretaries. Or “computers” – i.e. the profession. Regarding entertainment, I don’t see how companies providing entertainment is an absolute necessity; people can be entertained by each other’s company, and have been for most of history and pre-history. Furthermore, the examples you give all rely heavily on copyright for their business models, a purely legal concept without a guaranteed future. If I had to bet on any entertainment company to survive for 1000 years, I would pick one which does things which can not be copied, like live performances, perhaps at specific historically important locations.
- surfingdino 2y agoCity of London Corporation started trading around 1067. It's getting close to being 1000 years old.
- dghf 2y agoThat's not a corporation in the sense of a company, though. It's a corporation in the sense of a local government body: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_corporation
- razakel 2y agoThat's a local government rather than a private company, though.
- ajb 2y agoIt says something about the UK that of the 10 oldest companies, 5 of them are pubs (and two more are hotels with rather pub sounding names). Three share the name "The Old(e) Bell"
- cjs_ac 2y agoThe UK does extremely well in oldest schools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_schools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_schools
- nix-zarathustra 2y agoA lot of the names of the pubs came from the depictions of highly recognisable objects (given that the population was illiterate) that they would use to attract customers.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoI could be mistaken but didn't pub kind of mean inn before it meant bar? https://www.etymonline.com/word/pub https://www.etymonline.com/word/pub
- phs318u 2y agoI'm surprised that no one has mentioned the oldest and prima facie most successful corporate enterprise in history: the Roman Catholic church.
- alecco 2y agoIt's interesting how there are a lot of jokes like this but not many about the other two Abrahamic religions.
- timeon 2y agoIs it because of church's structure?
- berkes 2y agoThey aren't as centrally and hierarchical organized as the RCC. Even most other Christian sects aren't organized like that. So this unique feature makes it distinctive. That, and the fact that it's much nicer to poke fun at "higher ups" than at peers. So if you make your whole organization about "higher ups" there's a lot of fun to be poked, I guess.
- Ekaros 2y agoState churches like Anglican church might be more apt comparison. And those often do look like corporations when squinting, with lot of state funding or even taxation instead of sales... You even get various managerial classes, which do need to perform slightly different corporate rituals.
- rsynnott 2y agoYeah, the Church of England is (ironically, given its origins) structurally not a million miles away from the Catholic Church. Much newer, though, of course; there are (quite a few) pubs older than the CoE.
- et-al 2y agoThe Latter-Day Saints (aka Mormons) are relatively young, but they're definitely one of the more, if not the most, organized Christian sect around.
- anilgulecha 2y agoThis is something that is a question to modern organizations: Capitalism is how the world runs, but companies don't last. For eg: any bet on how many of the top 50 companies in the world will exist in 50 years -- probably single digit at best. The institutions that endure seem to be religious, or family run institutions. One change in outlook is towards values/principles(/blind-faith?), as opposed to scaling/commercial aspects. Nation states and companies are broadly about a century old, and philosophers need to think and call out paths for current institutions and people for endurance.
- vladms 2y agoIs endurance to be desired? If we would make a parallel with biological systems, it seems that death allows evolution, so I think it's good that nowadays companies don't last that long. Given the state of the world I think there are still a couple of things to improve...
- anilgulecha 2y ago1) There is definitely value in endurance. Examples abound: whether history, religion, etc. 2) Evolution is possible with endurance. Religions and these family business have adapted to changing requirements of the world (mostly). It's core principles that have perhaps stayed the same. There's also confirmation bias at play - theres plenty institutions that were at odds with evolution did die out for sure. You raise a good point, but IMO we're giving close to zero thought on how our current institutions will endure. Perhaps one answer is don't do anything and some will anyway.. (I don't like that answer, personally)
- diatone 2y ago> There is definitely value in endurance. Examples abound: whether history, religion, etc. This is spurious. What about history or religion shows that for profit companies should last a long time?
- anilgulecha 2y ago
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoI wonder if there were families or the equivalent of "companies" in the old Egyptian kingdom, which lasted for about 3000 years, longer than any modern-day civilization (although there may be some cultures that have existed for more than 3000 years)
- Spooky23 2y agoOld money is really old. I’m sure there are modern day rich people who can trace their way back to the Greek rulers of Egypt who intermarried with the Egyptians of antiquity. You can trace power. Aristocracy used marriage as a political tool, but I doubt there are commercial entities that persisted - business was seen as dirty in those days in Western culture. Anywhere the Catholic Church was, lots of enterprises were laundered through them.
- msravi 2y agoWhy does Japan have such a heavy presence on the list of oldest companies[1], compared to say, China or India or Egypt? 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies
- AndyMcConachie 2y agoLack of colonialism.
- huijzer 2y agoFrom what I've read (but note that a Japanese could answer this much better), honor is an extremely important aspect of Japanese culture. As Karen Ma put it on a Quora answer: > In some odd ways, you can view many of Japan's famous and historical companies such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui as having assumed the role of the lords from feudal Japan, and the employees working for these companies can be seen as the modern day warriors. They devote absolute loyalty to their companies/modern day lords, who in turn vow to take care of these warriors by providing life-time employment, etc. > However, if these warriors tarnished the image of their companies somehow, e.g., involving in a scandal whereby their companies get blamed, or the reputation is severely damaged, then these corporate warriors would assume responsibility by kneeling down to apologize in public, and/or in some cases, jump off a building in an extreme expression of their deep regrets for failing to defend the honor of the company. Historically, warriors who protected the feudal lords would also commit suicide when they failed their master. See the Bushido book for more information about Japanese culture in English terms. It's really hard to express the culture in English, I think, because some is lost in translation and some is just hard to put in words.
- ahoka 2y agoColonialism, probably?
- iamEAP 2y agoMy understanding is that many of the oldest companies have lasted so long because they were/are family operations. Countries where “son takes over the business” is the norm will have more older businesses. Japan is one such country and also happens to have been around a long time too.
- singularity2001 2y agoLook up Charlemagne Paradox and ship of Theseus to see that it's merely a name that survived, and maybe some old techniques.
- quantumfissure 2y agoThis was fascinating and lead me down the "Oldest Companies" Wikipedia. However, I was watching the second video linked in the article made by Endevr and it just sounds like it was made by and read by ChatGPT. The pauses are off and inflections are exactly the same on some words sounding unnatural. Is it me, or does anyone else feel that way about it? This isn't a new trend, is it?
- mstade 2y agoIt's not just you. YouTube is littered with videos just like this one, with exactly the properties you describe. My guess is they are cheap to produce from stock footage, and the scripts rarely offer any deep insights but are mostly just regurgitated blurbs from Wikipedia. If narrated it's almost always by the same voice, presumably synthesized so no voice actors to pay. I guess it's good business from the ad income sharing, and at the very least it's slightly more interesting than people posting reactions to reaction videos.
- QuantumGood 2y agoAI-created voices do natural conversation pretty well, but many of the voices sold are developed from intentionally unnatural announcer speech. Online marketplaces became strong before the pandemic (and exploded during) and this meant many voice actors could get work and train themselves, and many of them tended toward a variety of unnatural announcer styles. This was partly because video narration was one of the largest (and lowest-paying) areas of work, and many of the buyers sought out inexpensive announcer styles. When you buy an AI voice, there isn't (yet) much you can do to get it vary its read, and many of the least-expensive voices you can buy are from these early mostly self-taught voice talent. When I used to hire agents to train for one of the 78 Voice Acting Expo events we put on, they would tell me that most voice actors "lose their talent when they get an agent". Too many trainees feel that acting is not something you do, it something used to train them, and that once they are trained and graduate by getting an agent, they simply need to "open their mouth and gold will fall out". A similar reversion to the mean happens in other areas of training. People return to just "making an effort" after training. I remember my parents (father was an Army doctor) going to tennis camps, and being good for a few weeks afterwards, but not having much of what they learned "stick". It's interesting to see AI immortalize this odd self-taught speech.
- AYBABTME 2y agoFun to find out that Japan's oldest temple builder company had Korean founding engineers.