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Comment by mushufasa | Hacker News Reader

I don't think incompetence is quite the right word. A compelling hypothesis is that a lot of the overall technology adoption curve is driven by lopsided age demographic, where Japanese have a high % of people over 40. Gen X and older are not digital natives. Digital UI/UX and internet services are generally behind the times in Japan, but physical appliances and devices are cutting edge.

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Nothing so complicated guys, it is because they are Japanese.

Obviously they can get rid of fax machines and Do Tech Better.

Here, go to a 7 floor electronics store and you'll see Walmart style greeters in larger numbers. Wall to wall. If you buy a washing machine you'll spend hours and meet a whole lot of uniformed employees to show you deference. Like the whole staff of that floor. You get to meet a village where everybody "loves" each other.

As if the store employees themselves cooperatively and humbly assembled the washing machine as a team effort. And no one person stands out.

An artisanal washing machine that crafts people diligently slaved away at making bespoke just for you. And sacred reams of paperwork they will equally fill out with the outmost of care and send by well trained hawk if need be. The more effort and "care" spent the better.

Or you can just order it online on the website for that very store. Same price. So what the hell?

I think it is because they don't view BS jobs as a bad thing but rather as necessary for an inclusive and harmonious society.

Theirs Not to Reason Why, Theirs But to Do and Die.

Very weird comment. I bought a washing machine earlier this year. From a 7 floor electronics shop. The only “paperwork” was the receipt and choosing a delivery time. I declined extended warranty. I dealt with exactly one salesperson, one other person trying to get me to change my phone plan in exchange for a discount (I declined) and one cashier.

Thus ruining these peoples day and rather strengthening my point. :P

Receipt and delivery time is all that is necessary, 10 minutes tops, in and out. It absolutely can and should go that way and did in your case.

But sometimes the pomp and circumstance take over and you would think it is 1924 and these are the first machines sold in Japan or something. That's because on slow days that floor full of people have diddly squat to do. Count them, it is x4-5 more than elsewhere.

Next time you're in BIC stay a while and observe. Especially older couples, they love the attention. That's the other subtle aspect at play I think. Loneliness resents efficiency.

The Western solution seems to be to give people basic income and have them stay home. I offer no opinion on what is "better" and maybe I'm wrong but I really think that's what is going on.

Don't stay home, stay in uniform, we'll find you something <- not an entirely terrible way to be.

I think a large part is that everything has a documented procedure. Just look how people work at banks or government offices. Or the documentation for just about anything. You'll find 2 pages documentation about how to fill a rather simple web form.

Changing the procedure is also a procedure, and is rarely done in disruptive ways.

Luckily these things are improving rapidly. Stuff that just a few years ago needed filling out a form and stamping it are now done either online or by the staff at city hall just scanning your My Number card

There's probably also a cultural perspective, where people are generally more ready to defer to authority. Say for example the boss of a company is an old man who's been with the company for 50 years... and he doesn't want to change how the receipts are processed... and nobody will challenge him.

And also money/business. These custom seals are a big business and changing that may create unhappy business people. Other things are “traditions”, like you have to pay a mandatory sum of money to NHK or to the “committee that organizes the life of the street”

Speaking of seals and traditions. Not all companies do that, but there's a tradition that on documents multi-sealed, each seal is rotated by some angle that depends on how low/high in the hierarchy people are, with the topmost being vertical and the lower rank you get, the more the seal is at an angle, as if it were bowing.

That has been mimicked in electronic seals, I kid you not.

The government has already massively reduced the dependency on seals with no pushback https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13781455

The licence fee isn't exactly a Japanese tradition, it was literally modeled after the BBC. There's even an anti-NHK political party

A local committee for upkeep of the neighborhood was also a thing in my parents neighborhood in Sweden, and the US has it even more formalized into HOAs

The seal engraver cooperative associations did make noise, unsurprisingly.

Edit: FYI, the NHK party changed its name for the 10th time and doesn't contain NHK in its name anymore.

I find this very convincing. I had the same thought on a trip to Italy.

Everyone’s old, and the local tech is very good at the things those people liked when they were young in the 70’s and 80’s.

Clearly there is lots of good engineering there but not for this new computer thing.

> Gen X and older are not digital natives.

You do realize that Gen X literally grew up playing video games and with `Apple ][`s & `Apple //e` in every classroom right? You know Gen X led Web 1.0, right?

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