4 ms·

No; Japan would have eventually stumbled and fell into obscurity even without any American interference. It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese can

No; Japan would have eventually stumbled and fell into obscurity even without any American interference. It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese cannot compromise quality to make costs reasonable. In an environment where the world produces goods 80~90% as good as Japanese ones for 1/4th~1/8th the cost, who in their right mind buys Japanese? This is what happened to Japan's entire electronics industry, home appliance industry, and more. Japan still has a domestic computer industry by a technicality (it's all Made In China) primarily fended over by Hitachi and Panasonic, but most westerners likely won't know because they simply don't sell overseas. I'm not going to bother getting into how Japanese are horrible with software too.

hakfoo 2y ago
The cost/quality thing doesn't mean they couldn't have maintained a "halo product" line that steered the platform. It could have been like the early 1990s PC market: government with a 'buy domestic' mandate or budget-no-object buyers might have bought a PS/2 Model 80 or Deskpro 386, but the masses, especially overseas, would buy a white-box 386DX made of Taiwanese parts. There's an interesting contrast: while Japan produced MSX-- a clear example that a multi-vendor standard can be wildly successful-- they missed the idea of a clone ecosystem for their heavier-duty professional machines. Why weren't there vendors cranking out clones of the PC-98, FM Towns, or X68000? Did they require more propriatery special sauce than an IBM 5150, or was there a cultural/market difficulty that would have caused them to flop on the market? OTOH, perhaps part of the problem was that the features Japan needed had poor cost/benefit ratios outside of the CJK market: you either have to make the enhanced video stuff optional, reducing platform standardization, or charge people for a feature they don't see as immediately beneficial.
hedora 2y ago
My switch and midrange sony tv (which just turned ten years old, and is still “good enough”) seem like decent counterexamples.
justsomehnguy 2y ago
> It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese cannot compromise quality to make costs reasonable. An old anecdote: A company places an order to produce some gizmo through a Japanese firm. The order states what is could be "up to three non-working gizmos per one hundred in the final shipment". The order is completed, the employee comes to get it, sees a big packed boxes and a small one. He asks "what's in the big boxes?" and receives "That's your one hundred gizmos, like you ordered". He asks again "But what is in this small box there?" and receives "That's your three non-working gizmos, like you ordered".
pezezin 2y ago
> It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese cannot compromise quality to make costs reasonable. As someone living in Japan, I don't buy this argument. There are plenty of shoddy Japanese products, number one being the houses (but I guess that is not something that you can export). > I'm not going to bother getting into how Japanese are horrible with software too. Here I fully agree. Anybody who has to suffer the software and web services made in here knows how bad it can be.
- endemic 2y ago
  Funny that Japanese _game_ software is brilliant.
BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
Cars and game consoles kinda disagree with you. For example, Mazda (now exclusively built in Japan) is a fair compromise between quality and cost. About software, I don't know. They seem to be very decent as far as research and embedded goes, even a bit of open source (I can cite https://github.com/guicho271828 https://github.com/guicho271828, https://github.com/fukamachi https://github.com/fukamachi and https://github.com/cxxxr https://github.com/cxxxr on the top of my head), but consumer software appears to be another story. I don't think it's for this reason, though. I can even remember them having a strong affinity with Prolog... ah, there's the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Generation_Computer_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Generation_Computer_Syst...

hakfoo 2y ago

The cost/quality thing doesn't mean they couldn't have maintained a "halo product" line that steered the platform. It could have been like the early 1990s PC market: government with a 'buy domestic' mandate or budget-no-object buyers might have bought a PS/2 Model 80 or Deskpro 386, but the masses, especially overseas, would buy a white-box 386DX made of Taiwanese parts. There's an interesting contrast: while Japan produced MSX-- a clear example that a multi-vendor standard can be wildly successful-- they missed the idea of a clone ecosystem for their heavier-duty professional machines. Why weren't there vendors cranking out clones of the PC-98, FM Towns, or X68000? Did they require more propriatery special sauce than an IBM 5150, or was there a cultural/market difficulty that would have caused them to flop on the market? OTOH, perhaps part of the problem was that the features Japan needed had poor cost/benefit ratios outside of the CJK market: you either have to make the enhanced video stuff optional, reducing platform standardization, or charge people for a feature they don't see as immediately beneficial.

hedora 2y ago

My switch and midrange sony tv (which just turned ten years old, and is still “good enough”) seem like decent counterexamples.

justsomehnguy 2y ago

> It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese cannot compromise quality to make costs reasonable. An old anecdote: A company places an order to produce some gizmo through a Japanese firm. The order states what is could be "up to three non-working gizmos per one hundred in the final shipment". The order is completed, the employee comes to get it, sees a big packed boxes and a small one. He asks "what's in the big boxes?" and receives "That's your one hundred gizmos, like you ordered". He asks again "But what is in this small box there?" and receives "That's your three non-working gizmos, like you ordered".

pezezin 2y ago

> It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese cannot compromise quality to make costs reasonable. As someone living in Japan, I don't buy this argument. There are plenty of shoddy Japanese products, number one being the houses (but I guess that is not something that you can export). > I'm not going to bother getting into how Japanese are horrible with software too. Here I fully agree. Anybody who has to suffer the software and web services made in here knows how bad it can be.

endemic 2y ago
Funny that Japanese _game_ software is brilliant.

BoingBoomTschak 2y ago

Cars and game consoles kinda disagree with you. For example, Mazda (now exclusively built in Japan) is a fair compromise between quality and cost. About software, I don't know. They seem to be very decent as far as research and embedded goes, even a bit of open source (I can cite https://github.com/guicho271828 https://github.com/guicho271828, https://github.com/fukamachi https://github.com/fukamachi and https://github.com/cxxxr https://github.com/cxxxr on the top of my head), but consumer software appears to be another story. I don't think it's for this reason, though. I can even remember them having a strong affinity with Prolog... ah, there's the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Generation_Computer_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Generation_Computer_Syst...