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

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'

[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.

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

[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

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

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

[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?

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: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...