13 ms·

The Great Shift in Japanese Pop Culture (2011)

102 points by tty 14y ago

jere 14y ago
I hate to be that guy, but when I'm viewing the font on this site at default size, the cross of every "t" is twice as thick as everything else and it's extremely distracting. It looks fine if I increase the font size and slightly better in IE for some reason.
- raldi 14y ago
  I'm not seeing it; how bout a screenshot?
  - dangrossman 14y ago
    Chrome: http://i.imgur.com/VBgcURG.png http://i.imgur.com/VBgcURG.png IE10: http://i.imgur.com/ZBrhDoS.png http://i.imgur.com/ZBrhDoS.png Firefox: http://i.imgur.com/ROwDLkb.png http://i.imgur.com/ROwDLkb.png Chrome's text rendering has been pretty broken on Windows since September 2012-ish. There are lots of long bug reports on Chromium's tracker with little effort to fix them. Custom fonts render too thin to the point of discontinuities in the glyphs. The blitting algorithm was messed up so non-black text is often rendered a significantly different color than is specified in the stylesheet. High DPI support is nonexistant (while it was supported for Mac and Linux quickly), so rasterized text is simply scaled up by fractional multipliers, which makes it terribly blurry in both the UI and webpages. I can only imagine that so many on the Chrome team are running Macs and Ubuntu that they don't see how terrible their software is becoming on Windows in fundamental ways.
    - anonymous 14y ago
      Damn those are ugly. If I had to choose though, I'd pick Chrome. The variable width is nothing compared to the rainbow text of the latter two.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - ferongr 14y ago
        There's almost no fringing in Firefox's text (and Mozilla devs went through a lot of pain trying to find good defaults for DirectWrite text in the post Fx4 days) but there's quite a bit in IE's text (see the "k" and "a" letters). Chrome's text looks completely atrocious though. Hinting is completely random and different letters have different sizes. To my experience, this has been this way since the release of Chrome. With the proliferation of Webfonts some time later Mozilla's and Microsoft's choice to use DirectWrite paid off while Chrome has made no improvement.
      - gcr 14y ago
        Working on a CRT monitor? You can easily adjust subpixel smoothing settings on any OS to get rid of the rainbow. (Windows calls this "Cleartype"; it's right in the control panel)
      - oakwhiz 14y ago
        The text is "rainbow" on purpose because subpixel rendering is enabled (it enhances text for specific LCD monitor types)
- lmm 14y ago
  Yeah, it's pretty awful. Evernote Clearly FTW.
anigbrowl 14y ago
Font woes aside, this is an extremely interesting series on economic adjustment; in many ways, Japan provides a leading indicator for changes in American and European economies.
- mc32 14y ago
  Yes and no. On the surface Japan can seem like it has some things in common (comparable) with the West; however, it's more or less comparing superficial manifestations. 1. Japan while you will see 'international' this and that everywhere and people are taught English from an early age, Japan is very insular (geographically, obviously and mentally) and inward looking (provincial not reflective) and hardly international. People (employees) in the international depts can't expect to rise much within an org. --with few exceptions). All talk and no walk. 2. Japan is very xenophobic (not just a little like Italy might be or France might be about undocumented Roma or Albanians). This could be traced back to how Japan dealt with foreigners (and trade) back in the Edo period as exemplified by Dejima island. Foreigners (dutch) were relegated to an island and had to be back by sundown and could not leave. This attitude has not changed in over a hundred years. 3rd generation Koreans are still considered foreigners (and they must assume a Japanese name, and oddly none the less considered foreign). The foreign population in Japan is actually on the wane for various reasons (economic and also people just get tired of the politics) 3. Japanese industry found their stride in the late 60s; however, few have revisited their assumptions, systems, technologies, methods, etc. For an example, look at their film industry. Almost complete implosion due to stagnation. 4. Conformity. While on the surface these niche 'diverse' groups would seem to indicate break with conformity, it does not. As someone observed, these movements and subcultures are de-coupled from politics, completely. That's just the beginning. There are many other reasons a 1:1 comparison with the West is not helpful. There is a kind of parallel withe the US. It's the maturity regression. However, while many in the US recognize and decry the eternal adolescence of American adults (viz toilet humor, frat culture), in Japan it's rather infantilization (viz Hello Kitty, stuffed animals, Pokemon --whose main audience are adults, not children). Edit: I guess what I mean is that one would extrapolate Japan onto the West at one's own expense (of understanding). In this agree with Japan --they are unique, in this regard.
MichaelGG 14y ago
Wow, what a fantastic set of articles. Some interesting things for me: - Apparently low/middle class consumers in Japan would put themselves into debt to buy luxury brands like Gucci. I'm not sure if this is meant general debt like we see in the US with credit cards, or if it mean specific financing for those items. (I met a guy in Central America that was making payments on a jean jacket.) - If I read correctly, the lower income pressure is making things that are marginally cheaper, like fake beer, actually take off. I would assume this is because of the generally high cost of products in Japan? Whereas in other countries, even with lower income, you don't resort to fake beer... maybe I misunderstood though. - As of the article's time, the Internet doesn't have any really influential outlets in Japan, and print media dominates for legitimacy and doesn't put much content online. I know myself and other folks that don't read any print media, so it seems odd that the Internet didn't penetrate quickly in Japan. - The squeeze on the markets means fringe groups now "dominate". That is, "normal" folks cut back on their consumption, but fringe groups are defined by such consumption. So the normal purchasing is gone, leaving just the fringe, leading to groups like AKB48 being #1, when in reality they have niche appeal. It closes pointing out that this fringe popularity taking over means Japan's cultural exports are growing weaker, and like technology, might be disrupted by Korea. Since the article was written, I think SNSD has grown in popularity, and Gangnam Style certainly brought K-pop into the highlight. It'll be interesting to see if Korea can successfully export other cultural stuff that Japan has done well with, like video games and anime. (From my brief and irrelevant exposure, it seems Korea is very insular and does not do well exporting culture, although the kpop thing might be changing that. For example, all Korean sites seem to require you to login with your Korean national ID.)
- kanja 14y ago
  I don't know about the rest, but the increased consumption of fake beer is a pretty classic example of an inferior good. The good that people resort to skimping on would shift from country to country (measured by indifference curves), but it's expected that as income drops spending on inferior goods would rise.
- wahnfrieden 14y ago
  The beer situation may be related to tax law.

102 points by tty 14y ago

jere 14y ago

I hate to be that guy, but when I'm viewing the font on this site at default size, the cross of every "t" is twice as thick as everything else and it's extremely distracting. It looks fine if I increase the font size and slightly better in IE for some reason.

raldi 14y ago
I'm not seeing it; how bout a screenshot?
- dangrossman 14y ago
  Chrome: http://i.imgur.com/VBgcURG.png http://i.imgur.com/VBgcURG.png IE10: http://i.imgur.com/ZBrhDoS.png http://i.imgur.com/ZBrhDoS.png Firefox: http://i.imgur.com/ROwDLkb.png http://i.imgur.com/ROwDLkb.png Chrome's text rendering has been pretty broken on Windows since September 2012-ish. There are lots of long bug reports on Chromium's tracker with little effort to fix them. Custom fonts render too thin to the point of discontinuities in the glyphs. The blitting algorithm was messed up so non-black text is often rendered a significantly different color than is specified in the stylesheet. High DPI support is nonexistant (while it was supported for Mac and Linux quickly), so rasterized text is simply scaled up by fractional multipliers, which makes it terribly blurry in both the UI and webpages. I can only imagine that so many on the Chrome team are running Macs and Ubuntu that they don't see how terrible their software is becoming on Windows in fundamental ways.
  - anonymous 14y ago
    Damn those are ugly. If I had to choose though, I'd pick Chrome. The variable width is nothing compared to the rainbow text of the latter two.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - ferongr 14y ago
      There's almost no fringing in Firefox's text (and Mozilla devs went through a lot of pain trying to find good defaults for DirectWrite text in the post Fx4 days) but there's quite a bit in IE's text (see the "k" and "a" letters). Chrome's text looks completely atrocious though. Hinting is completely random and different letters have different sizes. To my experience, this has been this way since the release of Chrome. With the proliferation of Webfonts some time later Mozilla's and Microsoft's choice to use DirectWrite paid off while Chrome has made no improvement.
    - gcr 14y ago
      Working on a CRT monitor? You can easily adjust subpixel smoothing settings on any OS to get rid of the rainbow. (Windows calls this "Cleartype"; it's right in the control panel)
    - oakwhiz 14y ago
      The text is "rainbow" on purpose because subpixel rendering is enabled (it enhances text for specific LCD monitor types)
lmm 14y ago
Yeah, it's pretty awful. Evernote Clearly FTW.

anigbrowl 14y ago

Font woes aside, this is an extremely interesting series on economic adjustment; in many ways, Japan provides a leading indicator for changes in American and European economies.

mc32 14y ago
Yes and no. On the surface Japan can seem like it has some things in common (comparable) with the West; however, it's more or less comparing superficial manifestations. 1. Japan while you will see 'international' this and that everywhere and people are taught English from an early age, Japan is very insular (geographically, obviously and mentally) and inward looking (provincial not reflective) and hardly international. People (employees) in the international depts can't expect to rise much within an org. --with few exceptions). All talk and no walk. 2. Japan is very xenophobic (not just a little like Italy might be or France might be about undocumented Roma or Albanians). This could be traced back to how Japan dealt with foreigners (and trade) back in the Edo period as exemplified by Dejima island. Foreigners (dutch) were relegated to an island and had to be back by sundown and could not leave. This attitude has not changed in over a hundred years. 3rd generation Koreans are still considered foreigners (and they must assume a Japanese name, and oddly none the less considered foreign). The foreign population in Japan is actually on the wane for various reasons (economic and also people just get tired of the politics) 3. Japanese industry found their stride in the late 60s; however, few have revisited their assumptions, systems, technologies, methods, etc. For an example, look at their film industry. Almost complete implosion due to stagnation. 4. Conformity. While on the surface these niche 'diverse' groups would seem to indicate break with conformity, it does not. As someone observed, these movements and subcultures are de-coupled from politics, completely. That's just the beginning. There are many other reasons a 1:1 comparison with the West is not helpful. There is a kind of parallel withe the US. It's the maturity regression. However, while many in the US recognize and decry the eternal adolescence of American adults (viz toilet humor, frat culture), in Japan it's rather infantilization (viz Hello Kitty, stuffed animals, Pokemon --whose main audience are adults, not children). Edit: I guess what I mean is that one would extrapolate Japan onto the West at one's own expense (of understanding). In this agree with Japan --they are unique, in this regard.

MichaelGG 14y ago

Wow, what a fantastic set of articles. Some interesting things for me: - Apparently low/middle class consumers in Japan would put themselves into debt to buy luxury brands like Gucci. I'm not sure if this is meant general debt like we see in the US with credit cards, or if it mean specific financing for those items. (I met a guy in Central America that was making payments on a jean jacket.) - If I read correctly, the lower income pressure is making things that are marginally cheaper, like fake beer, actually take off. I would assume this is because of the generally high cost of products in Japan? Whereas in other countries, even with lower income, you don't resort to fake beer... maybe I misunderstood though. - As of the article's time, the Internet doesn't have any really influential outlets in Japan, and print media dominates for legitimacy and doesn't put much content online. I know myself and other folks that don't read any print media, so it seems odd that the Internet didn't penetrate quickly in Japan. - The squeeze on the markets means fringe groups now "dominate". That is, "normal" folks cut back on their consumption, but fringe groups are defined by such consumption. So the normal purchasing is gone, leaving just the fringe, leading to groups like AKB48 being #1, when in reality they have niche appeal. It closes pointing out that this fringe popularity taking over means Japan's cultural exports are growing weaker, and like technology, might be disrupted by Korea. Since the article was written, I think SNSD has grown in popularity, and Gangnam Style certainly brought K-pop into the highlight. It'll be interesting to see if Korea can successfully export other cultural stuff that Japan has done well with, like video games and anime. (From my brief and irrelevant exposure, it seems Korea is very insular and does not do well exporting culture, although the kpop thing might be changing that. For example, all Korean sites seem to require you to login with your Korean national ID.)

kanja 14y ago
I don't know about the rest, but the increased consumption of fake beer is a pretty classic example of an inferior good. The good that people resort to skimping on would shift from country to country (measured by indifference curves), but it's expected that as income drops spending on inferior goods would rise.
wahnfrieden 14y ago
The beer situation may be related to tax law.