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Comment by 1stop | Hacker News Reader

I think this is just a massive over generalisation.

Sure so you have an example of perfect pizza.

How about WWII... that didn't really go perfectly for them? Or their economy being a complete shambles ever since. Or how about their Nuclear plants, or their response to failed nuclear plants. Selection bias is a pretty powerful beast, "All japanese are perfectionists, look at the pizza" isn't a compelling argument.

It's pretty clear Japan, just like everyone else, screw things up, and are slack/lazy, etc. There are not 129 million perfectionists... just 129 million people living out there lives in a modern developed economy with a fetish for foreign culture.

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Yes you are right, this is massive over generalization, and I am rather unhappy with my wording, unfortunately I can not edit my comment anymore. In my culture these almost „polemical statements“ are rather accepted and interpreted differently. I found especially english speaking people have a very hard time understanding my intentions. I should have known better.

Obviously there are not 129 million perfectionists, that was particularly misleading.

However I would claim that Japanese are more likely to favor and reward perfectionism than any other culture I experienced. I am only talking about a trend I may have observed.

As I implied in another thread. Germans seems pretty good at the 'perfection' side of things in their culture.

Which given Japan and Germany's history makes me believe the mindset of 'perfection' or continuous improvement/innovation comes from germany, rather than Japan.

disclaimer: I'm neither German, nor Japanese ;)

Oh, I am Austrian (culturally very close to Germany) and I worked in a German company in Tokyo. I am not alone with my opinion, that Japanese are taking perfectionism to a whole new level, actually harming productivity.

Much of it actually came from W. Edwards Deming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming), who taught it to the Japanese after World War II. The top prize for quality in Japan carries his name.

He was American; we've forgotten (or never learned), but they took it to an extreme.

I wouldn't say he gave them perfection, but rather that he tought some companies how to achieve the perfection they already desired from mass manufactured goods.

Yes, the How was the disconnect. It still is.

You're off base. emanuer is talking about a culture/mindset of perfectionism. He didn't say the Japanese were perfect.

I think that is just called arrogance (thinking you are perfect, when you are, in fact, not).

I don't know what you are talking about with this whole tangent. All I gather is you have something against Japan that precludes discussion about it.

Not at all. I was responding to the over generalisation that "Japanese are perfect" (to paraphrase).

The commenter has since pointed out his intent further, but my core point is, the traits people are saying are Japanese seem to stem from distinctly western sources (Demming, and Germany both being mentions).

But this whole idea Japan are 'perfectionists' is just racial stereotypes. The only thing Japanese people are (in general) is Japanese.

Just to make it clear: perfect and perfectionist are very, very different things. You cannot paraphrase one into the other at all.

In order to asses whether it's an stereotype or not, we have to set up some kind of measure of perfectionism. Otherwise we have to rely on anecdotes. My anecdotes, having lived in Germany and very briefly in Japan, match that of the original post: I was continuously baffled with the attention to detail displayed everywhere in Tokyo. It's just in a whole different level. And that of course does not make them perfect (what does that even mean?). Whether this attitude historically stems from Europe, is a second order tangent.

Your argument seems to be: Japanese are not particularly perfectionist (no more than Colombians, Danish, Turkish for example). But if they were, it's because they took it from the Germans. I found this confusing.

Indeed, look at the domains of civilian aviation (Japan Airlines Flight 123, where the sound caused by an incorrect repair was ignored for years, and let's not even get into how face is more important than saving lives, see also the Kobe earthquake response) and nuclear power.

I realized long before Fukushima that Japan's nuclear safety culture was impossibly awful, and I'm afraid I have to agree with those who say they have no business running serious reactors.

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