Why Japan Gets the Cool Stuff

haahr writes "Good article about why the coolest electronics products are available first in Japan and may never make it to the U.S., in Slate."

Comments

I don't like it.

[Procrasturbator]

I'm just angry that it takes so long to get my translated import copy of Urine Cop VI. The japanese make my kinda stuff, but oh, the waiting!

Japan doesn't have a monopoly on 'cool stuff'

[2nd Post!]

Look at...

OS X
iMac
iMac2
iBook
iPod
PowerBook
Handspring
Newton
Palm Pilot
CrossPad
ViaVoice
Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty
Spider-Man
Lord of the Rings
The Matrix
The Matrix:Revolution
VooDoo
VooDoo2
GeForce
GeFor ce3
GeForce4
Quake3
Doom3

I'm sure there are more.

Re:Japan doesn't have a monopoly on 'cool stuff'

[packeteer]

Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty
u SURE about that one?... Hideo Kojima made that one... IN JAPAN...

who needs an iPod for $400 when you can get a much better on at half the price in japan...

also they dont need palm pilots or handsprings or crosspads when they have CELL PHONES than can do the same thing...

unfortunatly for us in the USA the cell phone system of Aisa is WAY better than here... its a ground up implimentation and there is none of this patchwork BS that we have to put up with... its cheaper and i know from people who have told me out of personal experiance that they work EVERYWHERE... none of this roaming, analog zone, digital zone, BS...

face it in japan they get the same tech only sooner...

Re:Japan doesn't have a monopoly on 'cool stuff'

[SpatchMonkey]

The mobile phone network in Europe is also a lot better. Roaming, btw, just means that when you go to a different country with your phone it allows you to use the foreign networks automatically (who then bill your home provider) - actually a good feature.
It seems to me that cellphones in America are so patchy is that they have been so slow to move to GSM. But then, they have a much larger area to organise. Also, analogue is more popular and local calls are cheap/free.
Hmm, this is a bit offtopic as the discussion is about Japan. Sorry.

Re:Japan doesn't have a monopoly on 'cool stuff'

[hbmartin]

OS X
iMac
iMac2
iBook
iPod
PowerBook

Those things are the first on the list for a reason!
You forgot the Apple logo itself, though.
Switch

eraserhead mouse

[swankypimp]

if you hate the "eraserhead" mouse-substitute then you'll hate this one too.

Since when did David Lynch start making mice for laptops? I know I would pay extra for a dark and disturbing, surreal input device. I guess Japan really does get all the cool new stuff...

Left one out

[The Cat]

Japanese companies keep their staff employed for more than six months at a time.

A minor point, but meetings don't make money, and middle managers don't build products.

Re:Left one out

[sql*kitten]

Japanese companies keep their staff employed for more than six months at a time.

That, unfortunately, is why Japan has been in recession for the last 20 years. The Japanese have very tight relationships between banks, NGOs, government departments and corporations. Americans and Brits are outraged when corporations get to close to governments (and vice versa) but in Japan, the boundaries between the public and private sectors are much less clear. Government will frequently underwrite corporate financing, grant monopoly licences, engage in mercantilist protectionist policies, and government planners will work along side corporate strategists, it would be unthinkable for a Japanese corporation to undertake a large project without a nod from the government.

The basic problem with Japanese industry is that they have a massive, systemic overcapacity. In Britain or the US, there would have been mass layoffs, corporations would go bankrupt, and stock markets would plunge in a similar situation. But in the West, a recession typically lasts 12-18 months and is followed by a period of economic expansion: our boom-bust cycle is like a regular spring cleaning of the economy, on approximately a 10-year cycle. During the expansion, the stock market goes up, and the unemployed from the last bust are re-employed. But in Japan, the government will not permit banks to call in loans or write off bad debt. Corporations cannot raise capital to finance expansion, and investors cannot get a return on their capital. So the Japanese economy is held in limbo, it cannot expand, it cannot collapse, and is stuck in a permanent slow decline.

What Japan really needs is to bite the bullet: let the technically insolvent banks and corporations collapse, suck up the pain of a Western-style recession, then Japan can get back on the track of economic expansion that was once the envy of the world.

Don't pay sales tax when shopping in Akihabara

[marhar]

If you take a trip to Japan and buy some electroncs, etc, be sure and carry your passport with you to the store and you will be exempted from paying the 5% sales tax.

They will fill out a little card, put a stamp on it, and staple it into your passport. When you exit the country, they will take the little card out of your passport.

Some of the the electronics stuff is labelled to run on 100V AC, but it works fine over here. And remember, don't buy a DVD player unless you really want the region 3 encoding!

Re:Don't pay sales tax when shopping in Akihabara

[Cryptnotic]

Japan is region 2, not region 3. This is because Japan is culturally a part of Europe (Region 2), and not part of Asia (Region 3).

Re:Don't pay sales tax when shopping in Akihabara

[Mooset]

Only certain stores will do this, because it requires special licensing. Be sure to go to the "Duty Free" stores. They are easy to find in any big shopping area and usually have English speakers to help out if you have questions about the gadgets. Laox in Akihabara is a good one.

Re:Don't pay sales tax when shopping in Akihabara

[BJH]

No, the DVD Consortium organized it that way so that Japanese consumers would not be able to play cheap imports from Taiwan and Hong Kong on their Region 2 players.

Oh please...

[Squeeze Truck]

The only stuff that comes first to Japan is the stuff that is made in Japan. Everything else gets here way late, or never gets here at all.

I'm still waiting for the concept of office LAN's, firewalls, and relational databases to really catch on here.

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[Deadstick]

Eons ago I read an article in a photo magazine, relating the author's tour of the Nikon factory. He remarked to the company honcho that of all features on a camera, the self-timer (the gadget that lets you photograph yourself) is the least likely ever to be used, and yet every Japanese camera has one...why was that?

The company guy responded by driving him past the Yasukuni Shrine, a war memorial that corresponds roughly to the Tomb Of The Unknowns. In front of it stood an army of tourist families smiling cheerfully at an army of tripods manned by an army of phantom photographers. "In Japan," he said, "No self-timer, no sell camera."

rj

Not very in depth

[aztektum]

In the end it all boils down to money.

We have too many conglomerates that won't spend to produce "cool" gizmos unless they can make huge returns.

They aren't interested in providing a service because it would be useful, rather only to make money.

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[Squeeze Truck]

1. The Japanese have a national obsession with gadgets. They just can't get enough of them.

The gadgets Japanese have an obsession with are the ones that facilitate social life and personal correspondence.
Cel phones that can handle email are a godsend in this arena. This way it is possible to juggle work, family, and a potentially unlimited ammount of mistresses at once in secrecy.

Think I'm joking?

Re:Racist and demeaning

[Cryptnotic]

I agree that those statements are offensive. It is a good thing that they were not included in the article referenced, or I really would have been angry.

Balderdash

[sakusha]

The reasons for Japan's preeminence in consumer electronics is simple, and completely absent from this article. The major reason is plain: kaizen.
Japan has a different system of product development. It dates back to ancient methods of production of artworks like lacquerware. Specialists in certain production methodologies allow the tasks to be separated. Many specialists were hereditary lineages, some families had practiced and continuously improved their techniques over hundreds of years.
And THAT is kaizen. Each product builds on the strengths of the previous generation, and eliminates weaknesses (or at least tries another approach). The Western approach is to build a product (or the packaging, at least) from scratch each time. Kaizen products are frequently updated, with minor incremental improvements. In many ways, it is a predecessor to Open Source methods like "release early and often" or "many eyes make bugs transparent."
The other factor is the short lifetime of fads in Japan. Fads like the Tamagotchi build to hysterical intensity in mere weeks. I still have an ad from the Asahi Shimbun with an apology from the President of Bandai. He apologizes at the inadequate supply of Tamagotchi, and promises Bandai is building new plants and within 2 months they will be able to produce 2million units a month. Unfortunately the fad was over long before the plants got up to speed, and Bandai ended up with millions of units they couldn't even give away. Bandai lost billions of yen and the President had to resign. So you've got to be nimble to keep up with quick-moving fads.
So anyway, how come complete idiots with NO knowledge of Japan get paid to write crap like that article? Jeez, the stuff I just wrote is far more informative than Slate's rubbish. I wonder if the author has evern BEEN to Japan.

Re:Balderdash

[jidar]

Hah! If you stopped patting yourself on the back long enough you might realize that your argument only works if Japan and the US are seperate entities that make their own items and don't export to each other. It's a global market and how things are manufactured in Japan as compared to the US has nothign at all to do with what is available on our market since anything they make they can sell here if there is a market for it.
The reason Japan has those things and we don't is exactly like the man said, they don't export it to the US because we wouldn't buy it. :P

Re:Balderdash

[sakusha]

Okay-- you keep using the word 'kaizen', but you don't even bother to translate it into English-- me thinks you may not even know the translation "improvement".

Kaizen does not just mean "improvement," although most dictionaries only have that simple definition. Kaizen is a process of continuous incremental refinement. It incorporates many similar philosophies, such as Drucker's Quality Circles. Kaizen is widely enough known as a philosophy, many books have been written on this subject, so it is common to use just the term kaizen instead of getting into all this stuff.
Kaizen has nothing to do with fundamental innovation, as has been commented by you and others. Kaizen is merely a system of putting those innovations into the market. The best example I can think of is GPSS. The US put up the satellites, but consumer GPSS devices appeared in Japan long before the USA.

Well....

[ImaLamer]

First like they say in Crazy People they are closer to the chips.

Actually it's a big question. We are afraid to test the waters and move forward. While we pioneered these technologies Japan will put a semiconductor in anything - at least once.

America is quite like the fall of the Victorian Empire. She has become a nation afraid of progress and if something doesn't change she won't stay towards the top of the heap.

Off-topic, somewhat:

Space could provide a new rain of resources, or it could bankrupt us. But its habitation does offer two other advantages.
The first: internation cooperation. No single nation can afford the price of extraterrestial development. To turn the wastelands of asteroids and planets into lands of plenty would involve consortia including Russia, Europe, and Japan. Those partnerships are already under development, though too often we are not involved in them. ... ... ...
-Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle (Chapter:Tennis Time And The Mental Clock)

There is more, that is actually on topic, but I can't find the page now. I don't want to misquote either. Basically we pioneered that technology, invented the PC but the majority of parts aren't even made here - and I don't mean assembly - I mean the companies who own the RAM factories etc.

This is just a preview of things to come.

100 times on the blackboard, young man!

[Nindalf]

"I will not expose the flaws in the slashdot moderation system."

And clean the brushes when you're done!

$2000 killer app

[peterdaly]

What makes the Libretto so great is that it takes up very little space. At 10.5 inches wide by 6.6 inches deep, it actually sits between the keyboard and monitor of my desktop, allowing me to check mail on one machine while running Photoshop full-screen on the other.

Wow, that "feature" alone makes me wish I had $2k to dump into a product like that. At work I have a 15" monitor and PC next to my 15" Dell (L)Attitude screen, just so I can have my email up all the time. Email is becoming enough of a killer app for some people where it is worth paying for a device like this which really is a PC, not some crippled appliance to fufill solely that function.

This may be an emerging market segment. I believe the whole Japanesse only thing has to do with the culture of the companies. Car companies are the same way, just look at the Nissan Skyline, Subaru WRX (now here), Mitsubishi Lancer (an not the crap they are selling in the US now), etc. Electronics companies are no differrent.

-Pete

Re:$2000 killer app

[rodgerd]

It's the culture of the US, not Japan. Here in New Zealand (1/100th the size of the US market...), we've had the Legacy RS Turbo, the Impreza WRX and STi, the Skyline GT-R, full-spec Type-R 200ZX/SX, Evos, and all the rest since day one; the only top end Japanese sports car I'm aware of not having was the "Batmobile" RX-7, which flooded in as a second hand import until Mazda realised they screwed up by not bringing it in themselves.

The US suffers from a huge NIH chip on its collective shoulder; look at what happens whenever a /. article appears suggesting the US trails some other part of the world in technology - cell phones, for example, bring out a horde of dickheads who argue (against all facts) that the reason the US has terrible cellular infrastructure is because the rest of the world has a third world phone system, and anyway, who cares about cell phones.

The US leads in a number of areas, but like all big, important nations, its citizens tend to stick their heads up their arses in the areas it trails - not unline that class of Pom who keeps reminiscing about 1966 and the Battle of Britain whenever a German wanders into earshot.

Re:$2000 killer app

[Wonko42]

My Subaru WRX certainly is a killer app. Dear god, the number of times I've nearly killed myself in that thing is absolutely insane. I sure do love that car.

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[Squeeze Truck]

Japan stiffs manufactured imports and does NOT allow immigration.

They don't? How the hell did I get in?

Oh the irony, it burns

[hayden]

It was frustrating and almost insulting--why don't we deserve the best too?

To here an American say that. May I welcome you to a place known as the rest of the world.

America caters to the mainstream

[infiniti99]

I think the reason Japan has so much cooler stuff is that they are willing to take risks. In the USA, if a particular device or software/game is not going to "make millions" by attracting mainstream buyers, then there is little chance it would ever make it to the market. Publishers and manufacturers here want to take only the safest bets. Ever wonder why the USA is full of so many crappy movies, games, and me-too products? Why take a risk when you can copy something proven?

In Japan, they release just about anything that their minds and conjure up. Surely they have the same economic business sense as those in the USA, but perhaps their consumer market is much more willing to risk buying innovative stuff (this is basically what the article seems to conclude). Also, maybe because of Japan's small size, companies don't have to spend very much money on initial production runs?

It's funny you should mention that...

[rcs1000]

Not, of course, your maths: 2002 - 1991 (ignoring a few non-recession years in the middle) = 11 years...

But: I remember in 1990 discussing with an American friend of mine (I'm British) that an Economist article said that Japanese productivity growth was significantly lower than in the US.

He laughed, and told me (basically) that the US was doomed and that we would all be speaking Japanese in 10 years.

Oh how times change...

Re:It's funny you should mention that...

[Squeeze Truck]

Oh how times change...

Indeed they do. With all it's problems, I think the basics of the Japanese economy are still sound. Japan still has a better work ethic, better education and higher levels of personal scruples than the US. Plus it still has strong steel, electronics, and manufacturing capacity. And don't forget that it lends far more money than it borrows.

So what if Japan can't survive forever as an exporter of electronic bric-brac to the US? I still think in the long term that it's in better shape than the US. Maybe a powerful China can be our new main trading partner.

The real answer

[Torgo's Pizza]

I would think that the obvious answer to why Japan gets things first is that they are closest to the International Date Line. It always gives Japan a huge jump on the rest of the world. ;-)

Re:Hence they've been in a recession for 20 years.

[Squeeze Truck]

For every Japanese company you can find who have an interest in copying American business practices, I bet I can find ten who think American practices are antisocial and, in the end, suicidal.

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[BJH]

His original name was David Oldwinkle, I think. He was U.S.-born, not Canadian. The reason he was refused entry was because the public bath had had trouble with Russian sailors (whether that's an excuse or not is debatable, of course).

Re:Military spending

[JimPooley]

Hah! You wait until Sony and Honda's giant robot armies come sweeping in from the sea, bristling with missiles and flashing laser beams from their eyes...

Roaming

[SgtChaireBourne]

Roaming may have been one of the keys to cell phone adoption in Europe -- the whole country is your zone. No point in buying a cell phone unless you can use it while travelling. Otherwise, you'll be near your regular phone, plus maybe a wireless handset. In the U.S. Chicago, IL and Madison, WI are probably in different roaming areas. Shoot, maybe even San Diego, CA and San Francisco, CA are in different zones. Odds are it's cheaper there with a pager and a payphone. Also, the screwed up choice of frequencies in the U.S. means that European and Japanese manufacturers have to make a special model just for the U.S.

Perhaps Japanese cell phones work in all of Japan and perhaps even at the same price. Japanese companies are pretty good about responding to what sells, so this would make sense.