Comment by Dalewyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Dalewyn | Hacker News Reader

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Apple peelers are more artistic license than not to prove the point, but there are other real examples.

The chief example are mobile phones, the poster child of Galapagos Syndrome[1]. Once Japan figured out mobile phones they stopped moving. They kept reiterating and ended up with the craziest mobile phones known to man, but they got 1HKO'd in broad daylight by the invention of the smartphone and haven't been relevant since.

Another is the Mitsubishi Regional Jet. With expertise building licensed F-15s and the pride of restarting Japanese domestic aviation manufacturing since the YS-11, they built one of the best regional jets ever and failed to sell a single one because they couldn't figure out how to document how the thing was made and thus the required certifications from the FAA and other authorities.

Both examples are of Japan simply not understanding what a good purpose made tool is, because they don't need to. Why would anyone want a smartphone? Why do we need to explain how this jetliner is made? Of course they realize why once they're crashed in the dirt, but by then it's way too late.

While not immune (eg: the ancient state of US banking), the rest of the world and the United States in particular on the other hand respect good products that shake the markets, people and companies who don't (eg: Boeing and Intel for recent examples) are tarred and feathered for their insolence.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_syndrome

I disagree with your diagnosis.

I think these are good examples of Japanese corporate culture being quite insular, often not just of the world outside Japan, but often of the world outside the same company. Product design often stumbles because it focuses on the needs of the company not the customers (not a uniquely Japanese problem; cough Google).

It’s not a problem of people not appreciating good products - e.g. smart phones rapidly displaced the old “garakei” feature phones in Japan. Japanese consumers clearly appreciated them, just like they clearly appreciate fruit peelers..

Rather the mobile makers that reached market dominance became complacent. They failed to innovate, failed to expand overseas and were disrupted by innovative products.

>It’s not a problem of people not appreciating good products - e.g. smart phones rapidly displaced the old “garakei” feature phones in Japan. Japanese consumers clearly appreciated them, just like they clearly appreciate fruit peelers..

The problem is they need a Steve Jobs selling them on iPhones more than anyone else on the planet, and they almost never get their own "Steve Jobs" especially these days.

For a software example, consider LINE: The most popular instant messaging platform in Japan. It's owned and operated by a Japanese company today (LY Corporation, or the LINE Yahoo Corporation), but LINE is originally a South Korean piece of software engineering by Naver. Japan couldn't make their own product because "Why?", email and texting are fine they say; South Korea had to show them why.

A particularly egregious example is Toshiba putting the inventor of NAND flash (Fujio Masuoka) out to dry and claiming the technology was invented by Intel, because they so utterly hated the idea of creating an entire new market and needing to answer "Why?" when hard drives and floppies and tapes were just fine.

Japanese people are too capable for their own good, arguably they are so capable they are incapable.

Incidentally, Japan is still trying to make the metaverse and NFTs a thing. That should tell you all you need to know about how stagnant the Japanese can be once they're satisfied.

Toshiba fumbled the initial opportunity with NAND memory but went on to became a major player. The modern Kioxia is one of the largest makers in the world and a direct spin-off of Toshiba’s memory division.

They were motivated to claim that Masuoka was not the inventor of NAND because they would have owed him millions in inventors rights on the patents. Masuoka eventually sued and settled out of court.

Line wasn’t particularly innovative. It’s basically a WhatsApp clone. It was mostly developed in Japan, by a team of mostly Japanese engineers, working at the subsidiary of a Korean company. It succeeded because of good timing and execution, not because it was innovative.

The Mitsubishi Jet project had many problems. It was massively overtime and budget. Its design didn’t match the needs of foreign carriers. They didn’t have the right team in place to navigate the certification process. Seriously read the Japanese wiki page on it. It’s a good summary of where the project went wrong.

I don’t see how any of this supports the conclusion that Japanese people are “too capable for their own good” and “so capable they are incapable”, or “incapable of recognising good tools”.

There’s plenty of counter examples where Japanese companies have been innovative and pivoted. Look at Kodak vs Fuji Film.

Kodak invented much of the underlying technology for digital cameras but failed to capitalise. Instead their business was disrupted by Japanese digital camera makers, eventually driving Kodak to bankruptcy. Meanwhile Fuji Film saw the writing on the wall and successfully pivoted.

> the rest of the world and the United States in particular on the other hand respect good products that shake the markets

Especially when the politicians are well paid by the makers of those products. /s

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