Having just flown back from Japan an hour ago, I gotta agree that it's a misconception for people to see it as more Faustian than its neighbors. It basically feels like it's stuck in the 2000s because it's a gerontocracy filled with DVD, CD, and even VHS stores where you have to pay with cash to make a purchase. In the 80s the majority o…
Having just flown back from Japan an hour ago, I gotta agree that it's a misconception for people to see it as more Faustian than its neighbors. It basically feels like it's stuck in the 2000s because it's a gerontocracy filled with DVD, CD, and even VHS stores where you have to pay with cash to make a purchase. In the 80s the majority of the top 50 companies by market cap were Japanese, whereas now Toyota is the only one that still is. Panasonic, Sharpe, and Toshiba have stopped selling TVs in the US because they couldn't keep up with Korean companies.
I posit that the reason people online perceive Japan as more restless and agentic is that it happened to be the first to converge with the West due to historical contingencies. China was bigger and therefore of more interest to the West, so the British went in and set off the century of humiliation. The US encroached on Japan, and the Japanese saw what had happened to China and took active steps to avoid such a fate. Korea then began the same process but was swept by the currents of great power competition and thus was unable to sustain the Gabo Reforms independently. The fact that Japan dominated export markets for several decades further cemented its place in the American psyche as a restless competitor.
I think most observers no longer hold this view however. Whenever you read an article or watch a video about contemporary Japan, it always tells the same story of Japan rising from the ashes of war then crashing into sclerotic, postmodern decline in the 90s.
Having just flown back from Japan an hour ago, I gotta agree that it's a misconception for people to see it as more Faustian than its neighbors. It basically feels like it's stuck in the 2000s because it's a gerontocracy filled with DVD, CD, and even VHS stores where you have to pay with cash to make a purchase. In the 80s the majority of the top 50 companies by market cap were Japanese, whereas now Toyota is the only one that still is. Panasonic, Sharpe, and Toshiba have stopped selling TVs in the US because they couldn't keep up with Korean companies.
I posit that the reason people online perceive Japan as more restless and agentic is that it happened to be the first to converge with the West due to historical contingencies. China was bigger and therefore of more interest to the West, so the British went in and set off the century of humiliation. The US encroached on Japan, and the Japanese saw what had happened to China and took active steps to avoid such a fate. Korea then began the same process but was swept by the currents of great power competition and thus was unable to sustain the Gabo Reforms independently. The fact that Japan dominated export markets for several decades further cemented its place in the American psyche as a restless competitor.
I think most observers no longer hold this view however. Whenever you read an article or watch a video about contemporary Japan, it always tells the same story of Japan rising from the ashes of war then crashing into sclerotic, postmodern decline in the 90s.