Analog Still Big In Japan (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader writes: BBC News reports that Japan, the island nation famous for robotics, 4G phones, bullet trains and corporate tech giants, is actually run by fax machines, human traffic lights, and 4.2 million small to medium-sized companies. Wary of connecting to networks for fear of data theft and hacking, Japanese office workers average just half the productivity of their American counterparts. Whether this conservativism in IT can prevent automation and robots from replacing people remains to be seen. However, the use of cassette tape recorders, hand-written data disk mailers, and 1997-era e-mail systems with near zero storage definitely hurts competitiveness in the global market.

Comments

illogical summary

[rubycodez]

What proof is there that this hurts global competitiveness in any way? because it sounds right?

Re:illogical summary

[youngone]

There's no proof, and the "Global Competitiveness" crap in TFA is irrelevant to the millions of Japanese SMEs, because they are not competing globally.

The point of Japanese business is to keep the people of Japan working, and so they employ people to do jobs that machines could do cheaper, because if you lay them all off, they will be a burden on society.

I knew a guy who worked for his Japanese Father-in-Law's business for a couple of years, and was told on his first day to forget about doing anything smarter or better, but to make sure everyone was doing their job, because the company existed to provide jobs.

He quite liked Japan, but his Japanese wife became homesick for New Zealand, and they had to move back.

Re:illogical summary

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're less productive then it means your costs are invariably higher than somebody else, including other countries with even higher cost of labor. That means you're going to have a harder time competing on product pricing. It also means that in the event of a labor shortage, your aggregate product output will be markedly reduced compared to your competitors, and the only way to improve is to improve productivity.

Or you could simply lead with quality, which is something people still travel to Japan specifically to seek.

Old-fashioned may mean inferior to most here, but to some, it's a sign of a well-worn and proven process. The Japanese seem to respect and embrace that.

And in the future when one employed American is responsible for providing for 30 others due to our massive outsourcing and automation efforts sucking jobs dry within the next 20 years, we might be yearning for the days of real jobs.

Re:illogical summary

[phantomfive]

I read the article, and they offer no proof. It's a baseless assertion. This quote from the article made me laugh:

This is a country ... where big-name companies running 10-year-old software is the norm.

Better tell the author to never investigate America, he may discover that all his bank transactions go through software from the 70s.

Re:illogical summary

[ShanghaiBill]

The point of Japanese business is to keep the people of Japan working

The purpose of a business to generate profits for the owners. A beneficial side effect is the creation of goods an services. "Keeping people busy" is neither a purpose nor a benefit.

they employ people to do jobs that machines could do cheaper, because if you lay them all off, they will be a burden on society.

This is the Lump of Labor Fallacy. There is not a fixed number of jobs in an economy, and if people are doing inefficient busy work, then they are already a burden on society. They should be doing something that actually creates value.

A big problem in Japan, is that to open a new shop, you need to get approval from other shops nearby. The shop owners work together to veto any competition, or consolidation. So the result is a proliferation of tiny inefficient shops, millions of people employed in unproductive retail jobs, high prices for consumers, and a lot of time consuming shopping while going from store to store to find what you need.

Re:illogical summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"The purpose of a business to generate profits for the owners. A beneficial side effect is the creation of goods an services. "Keeping people busy" is neither a purpose nor a benefit."

No, that is the capitalist purpose of a business. It's possible that other people have different definitions as to the purpose of a business.

Re:illogical summary

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like a Stalinist. The purpose of an association of people is whatever they damn please, not your quasi-religious goal of "profit".

As for the rest of your argument, a perceived inefficiency because nobody knows how to increase efficiency is practically equivalent to one deliberately introduced. As long as Japan is happy with its system, and doesn't require it to compete where relevant with external systems, there is no reason for it to change.

It's like wandering into 1850 with a digital computer and pointing out how so many people are suddenly a burden on society. Nope - they're exactly where they were two minutes ago, contributing to society. Maybe your computer gives them a version of society they prefer, or maybe not.

Re:illogical summary

[youngone]

The purpose of a business to generate profits for the owners

Not in Japan, not as an absolute.

The Lump of Labour fallacy is an unproven economics opinion. Not to be confused with a fact.

A big problem in Japan, is that to open a new shop...

This is not considered a problem in Japan.

Re:illogical summary

[LinuxIsGarbage]

I read the article, and they offer no proof. It's a baseless assertion. This quote from the article made me laugh:

This is a country ... where big-name companies running 10-year-old software is the norm.

Better tell the author to never investigate America, he may discover that all his bank transactions go through software from the 70s.

Or pretty much any company. My company has software dating from the 70's/ 80's / 90's running all the production equipment (some on 80's / 90's hardware). Go into a car dealership and there's a terminal window connected to VMS or IBM/360 system. The other day I was at the customer service counter of Walmart. I could see into someone's office, and there was a green terminal window connected to a VMS or IBM/360 system. Look behind the counter when you're at the check-in, or at the gate of an airport and likewise the airlines are all running VMS or IBM/360.

I don't even blink if someone is running WindowsXP based anything.

Re:illogical summary

[Z34107]

There's no proof, and the "Global Competitiveness" crap in TFA is irrelevant to the millions of Japanese SMEs, because they are not competing globally.

Japan is on the edge of a demographics crisis. 25% of their population is over 65, compared with 59% that work. Having only ~2.36 people paying into public healthcare and social insurance for each person drawing out is not a good ratio, and with their notoriously low birth rates, is only going to worsen as time goes on.

In the meanwhile, Japan's racking up shittons of debt, and has to import nearly all of their energy.

So, what does this mean? It means productivity is really fucking important. If your aging population has fewer than 2 workers to cover each retiree, those workers better be really fucking productive or those healthcare costs are going to be an incredible burden. If you need to import 94% of your energy at great expense, you better put that energy to really fucking good use--i.e., be productive--or otherwise you're spending everything on coal and petrodollars instead of your own people. If your government debt is skyrocketing, but has fewer and fewer taxpayers to pay it down, those people better be really fucking productive or you're not going to have a government.

That latter point is especially important. Japan can get away with its debt load because of Japan's famously high savings rate--lots of people (or banks using people's savings) buying savings bonds means you can issue those bonds really cheaply. But, when people retire, they by necessity stop saving and start drawing on their savings instead. The government has double their yearly income in what's essentially an adjustable-rate mortgage, and the interest rates are going to skyrocket right as fewer people are there to pay it down.

Re:illogical summary

[Snufu]

Newer is not always better, and quite often the reverse it true. In many cases, "They don't make 'em like they used to" is fact, not nostalgia.

Re: illogical summary

[Catbeller]

A corporation, being a government-granted license to avoid personal responsibility for one's actions, is not free to do whatever it wants for some self-defined goal of endless profit. That notion started around 1970. A corp is not a castle, and its true purpose is determined by the society that granted it its privileges. That has been understood for centuries, until, as I said, around 1970.

Re:illogical summary

[ArmoredDragon]

Or you could simply lead with quality

Only to a certain extent. When you apply "lean principles" (google it) you simultaneously increase productivity AND quality. The practice behind lean principles is the following:

- Always look for ways that you can reduce the number of manual steps in manufacturing
- Fewer manual steps means fewer incidence of human error, leading to lower defect rate (a defect is defined as anything that negatively impacts customer perception of the product) leading to higher quality
- Time to production is reduced, human labor cost is reduced and/or labor time is free for other tasks, such as increased output
- Price is reduced

Re:illogical summary

[vakuona]

How exactly are FAX machines making your costs higher?

 

Probably because electronic form filling allows you to skip the steps of printing, handwriting, and then scanning each document, in addition to the dial and handshake, and the transmit time, and remember, time is money. Furthermore it reduces material waste and reduces the need for data entry and/or transcription.

And then of course, since fax machines involve moving parts and in most cases ink/toner, there's added time and cost involved in routine maintenance tasks.

Or maybe it discourages them from sending pointless and avoidable communications, such as emails!

Re:illogical summary

[AmiMoJo]

I'm guessing you have not spent much time in Japan. The rules on opening new shops are great. They keep shopping areas from becoming clones of each other. Most UK towns are indistinguishable now, having the exact same set of shops and cafes as everywhere else. Japan has avoided that by giving local businesses a voice.

Yeah, it's less efficient. It's also qualitatively better. It's no longer a race to the bottom to see who can provide the cheapest parking, because that's the only differentiator. Areas have character and unique shops to visit. You can get personal service and unique goods. It's so much better than the alternative it's hard for me to convey.

Re:illogical summary

[Sique]

As I am working in the phone industry, I can tell you, that the thermo fax is long gone. All modern fax machines use simple printing paper and have either a laser printing engine or a normal ink jet one. Thermal paper today is mostly used to print paper receipts at POS systems, but not much somewhere else.

Re:illogical summary

[Ol Olsoc]

Higher paper and consumables. Data is sent as image making it harder to index and catalog. The mechanics of scanning analog sending and printing can cause a lot of errors in the stream. Poor quality means less detail or bigger text. Having to translate a bad fax.

Facing sucks. I work at a hospital I know. It is hard to force people off the habit.

But when the people you are dealing with use signed faxes? I don't use my fax portion of my machines unless requested. And since some of the people I deal with want faxes, I would lose a lot of time and money travelling to a place that had a fax and back.

The technology is ancient. But unless I'm going to change the lawyer in say, my father's will, or give up a sweet interest rate in order to not use a fax machine, - I'm not going to worry about it too much. I'll fax them the signed documents they want, then go about the rest of my life, fat dumb, and happy.

What is the definition of "productivity"

[rsborg]

Does productivity count if you're offshoring and outsourcing everything and not growing your job/revenue/tax base (by also allow those offshore/inverted operations to avoid paying taxes) ?

Sounds like eating your seed corn to me.

Re:What is the definition of "productivity"

[Ol Olsoc]

Does productivity count if you're offshoring and outsourcing everything and not growing your job/revenue/tax base (by also allow those offshore/inverted operations to avoid paying taxes) ?

Sounds like eating your seed corn to me.

It's the Job Creators creating Jobs.

They just forgot to tell you where those jobs were going to be. Oopsies!

Re:What is the definition of "productivity"

[DigiShaman]

Yes, and when you have no opportunities or able to feed your animals, you get rid of them. In our case, young unemployed adults will be drafted and sent off to fight in WWIII.

The land of ATMs on holiday

[Neo-Rio-101]

Japan is also a country where the ATMs close after hours, and where cash is still used exclusively for most things.

It's also a country where your girlfriend will get upset if you don't take her to KFC on Christmas eve, followed by a love hotel,... but I digress.

Re:The land of ATMs on holiday

[SvnLyrBrto]

To be fair, though, in Japan your chances of getting mugged and your cash stolen are about as near to zero as is statistically possible. And, should you lose your wallet full of cash, the chances are about 99% that it will be turned into the police (Who operate some truly astoundingly massive lost & found warehouses.) with the cash left untouched.

Given that the country, unlike the US, generates remarkably few thieving bastards; the motivation to adopt cash replacements is somewhat lower.

Re:The land of ATMs on holiday

[Harlequin80]

Rubbish. You may find one or two atms that are in a building that closes after hours but I have been there many many times and the ATMs work fine at 2 in the morning.

Re:The land of ATMs on holiday

[hcs_$reboot]

It's also a country where your girlfriend will get upset if you don't take her to KFC on Christmas eve

Maybe because your girlfriend was 16? But I digress..

Re:The land of ATMs on holiday

[PrimaryConsult]

Actually, yes.
I've visited twice. Stumbling on places that took a credit card was rare. Finding a place that took an American (non-chipped) card was almost impossible. Yes, large overpriced places of course take cards, but the places where the common man actually shops and eats, cash only. Compare to NYC where even the independent $1 pizza joints and $5 t-shirt shops take cards.

Now, the best reason I can think of for this is the credit card transaction fees - there *are* electronic payment forms but they are all in the form of preloaded debit cards [where the balance is stored on the card], including at least some forms of the cell phone method. I loaded cash onto my SUICA and EDY cards and between the two of them, I was able to be reasonably cashless there, but that's really a major-city-only thing.

Re:The land of ATMs on holiday

[GuB-42]

The banking system is broken in Japan. This combined with low crime rates favor cash use. It isn't that bad actually. And you can now find ATMs in many convenience stores, which are open 24/7. Most accept Visa and Mastercard now.
As for Christmas, one must understand that it is not part of the Japanese culture, it is no more important to them than Grandmother's day. Businesses like KFC took it and made it info some kind of a commercial remake of St Valentine's Day.

small and medium business

[iggymanz]

who said a country needs to have x percentage of GDP be by large corporations? the one percent?

Re:small and medium business

[PPH]

Not just Japan. Look up mittelstand.

Large conglomerates are mainly a US creation. A concept created by Wall Street to keep CEOs shuffling operating companies around while the financial consultants skim off exorbitant fees for financing that activity.

Re:small and medium business

[rsborg]

Not just Japan. Look up mittelstand.

Large conglomerates are mainly a US creation. A concept created by Wall Street to keep CEOs shuffling operating companies around while the financial consultants skim off exorbitant fees for financing that activity.

What do you think the British East India Corporation was? Where do you think Hollywood got the idea of Weyland-Yutani corporation from? The idea of a large conglomerated colonial corporation (completely outsourced ruthless governance) isn't an American creation, it's existed for centuries.

The other day I read "The Count of Monte Cristo" - very readable even in today's standards (except the part where he goes to Rome - got lost there). It even detailed how the wealthy even relied on financial derivatives as well as orchestrating a stock trading pump & dump. That book was written in 1844.

It worked for Battlestar Galactica

[Sowelu]

I'm not sure what I'd even put in the comment text, here. It seems kind of redundant.

They'll be better prepared for Cylon attacks

[elrous0]

Still need to work on their Godzilla preparation, though

Re:They'll be better prepared for Cylon attacks

[Ol Olsoc]

Still need to work on their Godzilla preparation, though

Put Gojira back to being a man in a rubber suit would be a good start.

Um... Japan's industry is doing horrible

[rsilvergun]

now, the Chinese factories that make all their stuff are doing pretty good, and a few guys at the top do well. But the rest of Japan has been in recession (depression? we're not allowed to talk about that) for 20 or 30 years since their bubble burst in the 90s. I knew it was bad when they started outsourcing animation to South Korea to save money...

Re:Um... Japan's industry is doing horrible

[Tablizer]

But the rest of Japan has been in recession... for 20 or 30 years since their bubble burst in the 90s.

That's because it was an unsustainable bubble, not unlike the dot-com bubble. It's true their GDP has been flat for many years, but they have low unemployment. They can't buy more over time, but at least they have jobs. Busy and stable and plenty of sake; life is good. We got financial roller-coasters and 9/11 panic.

I knew it was bad when they started outsourcing animation to South Korea to save money.

USA co's do that in both good times and bad. How does that make it a "recession"?

Re:If it ain't broke...

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Your knowledge of "basic economics" is bullshit and worthless. You can drive up productivity with machines, which cuts jobs and replaces skilled workers with less educated people at lower wages.

Fight for your bitcoins!

Re:Productivity of office workers?

[radish]

Well a lot of their biggest companies are in real trouble (ex Sony). They also have an extremely high suicide rate (double the US). I have no idea if any of this is related, but the comments I've read about people doing menial jobs which could be automated simply to keep employment up sounds like a recipe for depression, and I doubt it's sustainable. People know when their job is actually useful and feeling like you're not doing anything worth while is incredibly demotivating.

My Trip to Japan

[labnet]

My first overseas trip was to Japan some 25 years ago. The (business) trip was organised in a hurry, so I only had a Visa card and $50. I thought since I was going to one of the most advanced industrialised countries in the world, this wouldn't be a problem.
Well, arriving in Nagoya, was like arriving in to a 1960's hospital ward. The only way of changing my money was lining up for the government money changers, and there were no facilities for getting cash out with my Visa card. So I changed my paltry $50 into Yen.
I thought, how am I going to get to my hotel? Well there was this huge ticket machine for the train. It must of had 300 buttons; all in Japanese. I flagged down a pilot and asked him to get a ticket for me, which he did; but then I thought; if I get this wrong I could end up in the middle of nowhere.
I had one contact number for the guy I was to meet up with. I found a public phone booth, and coins from the vending machine, but no idea which coins to put in to the phone to make a call or even what part of the international phone number to dial. I had to flag down a Japanese lady, held out my hand with the coins, showed her my number, and thankfully she was able to dial the right number though to an English speaking concierge. Thankfully my contact was in his room and through his optimistic sweedish/english told me to just catch a cab and he would meet me and pay for the cab.
Well the cab line was something to behold. Hundreds of early 80's Toyota crowns; all the drivers wore white gloves, the seats had whitelinen cloths on them. What suprised me though, was the trunk and passenger door were controlled by levers by the driver! I hoped in a cab, and said the hotel name MiyakoNagoya and I get a grunt back Miagonagooya Hi. I repeated it to make sure, and off we go. The speed limit is only an advisory to the driver. I'm watching the taxi meter click over the total value of Yen in my hands, and started wondering what a Japanese jail cell might look like.

I had many many other adventures on that working week in Japan. It is a great country, but back then its banking system was fairly backwards.

Re:My Trip to Japan

[Harlequin80]

Japan has changed dramatically over the last 10 years (the gap between my first and most recent trips there) and they are hugely more accommodating of foreigners then they used to be. Back 10 years ago there were signs in Kyoto saying "No Gaijin" on restaurants. Now the buses around Kyoto have english commentary as you come up to each stop.

The same changes have occured to their banking system. 10 years ago 7-11s were the only place in Kyoto that would accept non Japanese bank cards. Now everywhere does.

Also if you live there you tend to sign up for things like pasmo and have an app on your phone. Pasmo is like an oyster travel card but it works in loads of places from vending machines to restaurants. That is kind like the future, tap your phone on the reader and away you go.

Re:My Trip to Japan

[labnet]

Yeh, I shouldn't of left you hanging there.

The cab driver found the right hotel the first time. I signed to him to wait and lucky the sweedish guy was there a 10,000 yen note.

I'll tell another story form that trip.
I was trying to diagnose a fault with a custom air-conditioner on a special train that used ultrasonics to do real time analysis of the rail track (looking for cracks and other faults). We had spent a long day out and were coming back into the shunting yards to park the train in the shed. These yards are huge and you need to cross dozens of rail switches. The two Japanese drivers kept stopping before each switch point and have little conversation which other. This was getting very tedious, so I asked the interpreter to ask what was going on. The drivers turn to the interpreter, and they say something in Japanese then laugh hysterically among themselves. I look to the interpreter and he says 'They are being extra safety cautious today'. In other words, having some train driver fun.
The sense of humor in Japan is priceless, as is the seriousness and honor with which they do their jobs. I remember watching some of their TV where the traffic debris collectors would have flag waving lessons, so they all wagged their safety flags the same way.

Japan is a terrific country. I was back there 2 years ago with my family to ski; and it still has all that quirkiness from 25 years ago, but with a lot more English signs now.

Lost Decade (now going on 3rd decade)

[trout007]

Funny how the economy became frozen in time when they stopped becoming more productive.

Re:Lost Decade (now going on 3rd decade)

[Darinbob]

Because the US economy sucks. Unless you're a crony capitalist. The media doesn't see this because they see economic reports that look good, and when they see that wages in the US have not increased even though the economy "grew" they shrug it off as an interesting side note.

The US economy is about increasing the wealth of the owners and not at all about increasing wealth of the workers or their spending capacity. Grow, grow, and keep growing, even if that means being a traitor. Sure, sell goods and products to third world countries, but don't sell off the jobs.

Re:Lost Decade (now going on 3rd decade)

[trenien]

Without being as aggressive fakekuck39, I do think you're losing sight of the "slight" problem Japan has : overworking.

The reality is that, except when there are hard laws that prevent it (such as for people working in factories), the average Japanese worker does something like 4-7 hours overwork per day (and quite often they'll have to come on weekends too, if they have any kind of management position). At the heart of that is a combination of conservatism (let's keep this way of checking up for mistakes, never mind the fact it's been obsolete for at least 20 years and there are another two in use at the same time, one of which is also obsolete, albeit not quite as much), social pressure (you better be there to work late, and if you finish early, find someone who hasn't to give them a hand, don't ever think of going home because you're actually know how to do your job within a reasonable amount of time) and sheer inability of knowing what to do with yourself if have free time. About that last, from primary school onward, everything is done so that people do not learn to have and enjoy long amount of free time.

The end result ? Japan is the first wealthy country to see its population numbers go down (it started in 2007, if I'm not mistaken). It's come to the point where the utra-conservative, very pro-business Prime Minister Abe urges people to stop with the long hours and go home (because sex : after 15 hour days going on forever, you do tend to lose interest in favor of a simple pillow).

Traffic lights

[CanadianMacFan]

Having someone direct traffic isn't such a bad idea. Yes it's expensive and sucks for the person when the weather is bad. But they can respond better to the traffic to keep it flowing better. How often are you stuck at a red light and there's no traffic in the other direction? Around here they use police officers when the lights go out or there's an accident. If they did the same thing it would create a big positive police presence. The officers would be out of their cars and in the community interacting with the people.

I'm not saying that we should do it, just that it may not be as daft as it first sounds.

Re:How is a fax machine analog?

[sound vision]

802.11g travels through analog air. It's still digital.

Re:discretized?

[sound vision]

Made discrete - what you would probably call "ones and zeroes", that is, digital.

It's also the culture

[spauldo]

Japanese business culture is weird.

I didn't have to deal with it a whole lot myself, but I have had some dealings with it, and know people who have had more.

First, there's the whole sempai/kohai system. Basically, that guy that was hired five minutes before you? Yeah, you're his bitch. But that's OK, 'cause the guy we hired five minutes after you is your bitch. Shit rolls downhill. You try to make it up the ladder so you're the one doing the shitting rather than getting shit on.

Then there's appearances to consider. The guy that finished all his work for the week and went home at the end of the day? Bad employee. The guy that spent all day playing minesweeper and put in overtime (to play more minesweeper)? Good employee. Results? Who cares?

And when the end of the day (and overtime) is over, time to go home, right? Nope, now it's time to "bond." Which means it's time to go to the bar with the coworkers and get drunk. Oh, and the sempai/kohai thing is still in effect. You're allowed to loosen your tie. Maybe.

I'm sure not all businesses in Japan are like this, but I've seen some that are, and I've heard of more.

Some subtle cultural issues

[NitWit005]

I'm a software engineer in the US, and I've worked at firms with Japanese customers. There are definitely some cultural quirks that you don't see anywhere else.

My current firm has several Japanese customers (and one US bank) paying to keep old Internet Explorer support, and to keep some old versions of the user interfaces alive. Not a small amount either. Their view appears to be that changes to the software product would require retraining people. If you view retraining someone as costing 1000USD per headcount, and you have thousands of employees, then it's a very substantial cost.

Now, part of me says, they're right. Retraining people is "Doing the right thing (TM)". You'll similarly find that the Japanese are the only ones reading our manual, to the point that Google searches in English hit the Japanese pages of the documentation, because they are the only ones with search click-through. Again, "Doing the right thing (TM)". Except, all that training and diligent reading of the manual is a total waste. Everyone else just clicks around, figures things out, and maybe gets help from a coworker or gives us a call.

It seems that Japanese firms are rather burdened by a desire to follow a costly formal process of moving forward. An attitude that would be great for a nuclear power plant, or maybe a bank, but not so good for a normal business.