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Google's Streetview Seen As Culturally Insensitive In Japan
Jim O'Connell writes "Global Voices has a translation of an excellent open letter to Google by Osamu Higuchi, explaining that Street view is too invasive for Japanese traditional values when used in residential areas.
Having lived here for ten years, most recently in an older residential area, I can attest to its accuracy — Living in such close proximity to your neighbors, it becomes necessary to 'not look' at everything that you might be able see from a place such as the street, where you may have a legal right to be. The cultural boundaries are simply different than those of the US."
The cultural boundaries are simply different than those of the US.
It's that way here in the U.S. too. It is impolite to take photos in people's windows. Google just doesn't care.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
I don't know that what google is doing is taboo seeing as they are a technology in this case not a person.
If it's taboo to spy on your neighbors then don't use Google's street view. Or at the very least keep the view centered on the road.
You can't claim "the photo made you look". It's like child pornography. The fact that it exists does not force you to go download it. If you find it impolite to look at people's houses... don't look at people's houses. I'm going to let those who find the images offensive in on a little secret: nothing is stopping some insensitive smeghead from just driving down your street and staring at your house.
My view on all this? The Googmobile drove past work this last week and I hung out the window and waved.
For a country like Japan that doesn't use "addresses" Streetview is a god send.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
They do sort of have addresses, but it's by subdivision of block. As an example, a particular Hostel I was at was at "Shinjuku-ku, 5-2 Katamachi"
So to find it you need to go to the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, and then look for the Katamachi block, then find sub-block 5, and then it's the 2nd building in that section. Luckily for me the search space wasn't that large, but it's still definitely a two dimensional search rather than a one dimensional search...
View Map
yours,
kbs
Speaking as an American who grew up in America, married to a Japanese woman, and lived in Tokyo for two years while going to animation school, going through these street views is pretty spooky. I feel like a ghost freely walking along the streets, watching old haunts of a place I once knew and felt at home. It's two AM in the morning, so my wife is asleep, but I can't wait until she wakes up and I can show her the parent's house!
You appropriately got modded down, but I thought maybe some one should explain to you, not everywhere has the same geography/city layout. Before you ignorantly posted this, you might have wanted to experience Japan by at least looking through streetview and you would realize what you suggest is near impossible for a large percentage of the population. There are very beautiful houses with immaculate gardens that are surrounded by walls and then there are apartment builds or duplexes built on top of each other and almost nothing in between.
The fact that Google won those suits, for the most part.
In Soviet Russia, the street views YOU. Seriously though, I completely agree with this letter. My wife is Japanese and has been living here in the Bay Area for 5 years. She's pretty accustomed to American life, but as soon as I showed the Street View Japan, she went silent and then said something like, "No. no no no, this is bad. Not in Japan. No way." And her friends feel exactly the same way. It really is a cultural difference, and Google really is asking for a world of hurt here. What is astounding is that they pretty much did *all* of Tokyo. Look at how much of that map is blue. Did it occur to them to try it out in a small area to see how the Japanese would react? To me, this reeks of extreme hubris on Google's part.
Well Japan may not like Street View, and maybe some people here in the U.S. don't like it either.
But I'm currently looking for a new (well new to me) house to buy --and where I need to move to is several hundred miles from where I live now.
Google Street View has been a godsend for me --I can get a easy idea of the neighborhood and usually the property it's self --for free, from home.
So, as usual, any new use of technology has upsides as well as downsides... and who ever I buy the house from will be very happy about my use of Street view. (eventually I will have to go and take a physical look, but my list of places to look at will be vastly shorter because of S.V.)
Since when are the Japanese sensitive about photographing private residential areas!?
I live in the Weststadt residential neighborhood of Heidelberg, Germany. Heidelberg is a beautiful city, and sees many tourists. For some reason, the Japanese tour groups frequently travel down my street. Also, for some reason, many of the older Japanese tourists frequently take pictures of me doing such mundane things as bringing home groceries. I find it amusing that I am probably in several dozen Japanese photo albums, probably entitled "typical German going to the grocery store." I find it especially amusing, because I am an expatriate American, not a German.
In any case, is it typical for the Japanese to consider their own residential neighborhood private, but everyone else's to be public?
I have blonde hair and blue eyes. Every time I have visited China I have been practically assaulted by Japanese tourists. They not only photo me. They try and touch my hair and start posing in front of me etc etc etc. Needless to say this was unappreciated.
My aunt lives in Hawaii and japanese tourists are amazed by the size of her feet. She's been lieing on the beach and had Japanese tourists come up and lay down right next to her and have their pictures taken by their family with their feet right next to hers for comparison.
It's been my conclusion that any view of privacy on the part of the Japanese is strictly limited to the island of Japan. Which I've never had a problem with from a priacy standpoint--just a personal intrusion. I don't care if I'm in a photo. I do care that I'm being prevented from going about my business by someone standing in my way trying to pose in front of me. Or touching me. They can touch my blonde hair photos on the internet all they want as long as I don't have to be there while you do it.
Yup...
Few things will irk the average japaneese more than invasion of privacy.
This is a country and culture so different from occidental ones that they tend to have no locks in their rooms because nobody would imagine entering without knocking, where people police each other in the subway so that you dont scream or make any kind of fuss that might irk the guy next to you.
I admire that part of their culture very much because its clearly a civilizatory trend: it makes people very councious about the rights of the next guy: its an insular culture ripe for pure individual freedom at its best.
Interestingly enough, their rigid social side follows very clear rules and is never very personal: the japaneese keep their inner self... erm.. to themselves.
I like that a lot.
NO SIG
The japaneese take pictures of sidewalks.... they have this love for the cammera that i will never understand.
However, dont get them wrong: its completely harmless and they dont go publizicing them all over.
On the other hand, google is selling your life for profit: there is a difference there.
NO SIG
Try being 6'4" with blond hair and green eyes walking the crowded streets of Tokyo. People would come up to me and feel the hair on my arms. They seem to be utterly fascinated with anyone that has any kind of body hair. I guess hairy freaks aren't allowed any kind of personal space.
Large groups of people, mostly kids and teenagers, would crowd around me and want to have their picture taken. It was just as bad in the Philippines, if not worse.
I'm glad I don't travel anymore.
Being an American who originally came from Europe, I "STRONGLY" disagree.
Here in the US, people never ask permission before taking a picture that you might be on, for example. If you're in the public, you're expected to suck it up. If you don't want your picture taken, you have to stay at home.
Then there's newspapers publishing the name and pictures of crime suspects. Which quite often costs people their job and friends -- even if they are later found "not guilty". In other countries, where privacy is valued higher, this is a big NO.
Then there are the ubiquitous closed circuit cameras in pretty much every store. Even in the goddarn dressing rooms!
Oh, and try to rent a hotel room with cash, without showing a driver's license. Nope, they want your private information, so they can sell it to the highest bidder. Cause there are no privacy rights.
And let me not get started on direct advertising. Wonder why you get all the ads in your own name? Because everyone you trade with will happily sell your personal details. Not only name and address, but what you've been buying or which services you've used, so you can get targeted for maximum effect. Take your dog to the vet, and a month later, you get ads for dog food dumping into your mail box. Subscribe to a magazine, and you suddenly get eight different catalogs in the mail with the same misspelling as the magazine.
Here in the US, privacy is a commodity, not a right. I can think of few, if any countries I have lived in that had less privacy rights. Certainly not any of the European countries.
Bull. Not only did that letter from the Japanese guy sound just like the letters many Americans have written re Streetview, thus negating the whole "it's another culture" argument, but it's an objectively wrong stance and catering to it is harmful.
Reality. People need to cope with it. They're visible. If they're doing something interesting their neighbors are already taking pictures, they just aren't (yet) sharing them in an easily indexable way.
If you complain about this you'll go on acting like you have privacy until it becomes painfully obvious that you don't. If you suck it up and act now, regardless of your cultural preference, as if you do not have privacy where you do not (publicly visible areas) you will not get a rude awakening.
Banning Google's Streetview would prevent people from seeing the area, but would not prevent an enemy of yours from placing a perfectly legal webcam and watching you specifically, or sharing this data - it would merely prevent all the other uses.
Don't feed the concern trolls.
Oh, you mean like the way the visitors to the USA are treated?
That's part of the *culture*. And while there is certainly plenty to see if you pry, the cultural etiquette is to not overtly look in on your neighbors and certainly not to photograph people in their private lives. This is indeed a cultural difference, whether you like it or not. The analogy would be you suddenly photograph and blog your neighbors and the local onsen. Try that for a while and get back to us on how well it works out for you.
Here in Europe, this feeling of privacy is much stronger than in Japan.
Apparently, you don't know Japan very well. I not only have lived here for over 14 years but am married to a Japanese woman and have 3 kids. It may surprise you to know that the word for privacy in Japanese is...puraibashi. "Why is that" you ask? In Japan there really wasn't any real concept of privacy before Japan started becoming westernized. So to say that privacy is big here is just bullshit. All your neighbors here are always knee deep in your shit (most people can't help it because they are only centimeters away from their neighbors). Privacy has only recently become big here with big companies sharing your personal information with others. Companies can even be certified that they will keep your personal information secret. Other than that, in your personal life, here in Japan privacy doesn't exist.