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

[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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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)

[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).

Re:How is a fax machine analog?

[sound vision]

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

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'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.