Interesting article and it echos my own views of Japan after visiting the country last month for the first time in my life and spending 2.5 weeks there.
I grew up in the decade[1] where Japan absolutely dominated the consumer electronics industry hence, I've always long held this view of Japan being one of the most technological advanced economy in the world. But when I actually went there, my view completely changed. They still are, to a certain extent[2], but from a tech industry standpoint they are starting to lag behind IMHO.
For example, when I was in Akihabara, I was told it was a electronics mecca filled with all the latest Japanese gadgets and gizmos but when I was there last month, all I saw was a myriad of chinese made/manufactured stuff. Most of the electronics stuff I've already seen in my own country and there was nothing much that looked truly new[3]. Maybe if I was walking down these streets 15 years ago, I would have been pretty wide-eyed. Even if you look at the one electronic device that a Japanese brand still dominates (which is mobile), the Docomo made mobile phones are all mostly using android and majority of them are flip phones[4]! And if you don't see someone using a Docomo made-phone, it will most likely be an iPhone.
Don't take me wrong, Japan still is a fairly advanced country[5] but my trip there last month made me realize that they are fast falling behind the rest of their Asian counterparts: China and Korea in particular. These once mighty Japanese tech companies needs to start making bold innovative moves instead of living in the past and being hankered down by bureaucracy. If they don't do it soon enough, one day it will be too late and it will have a devastating effect on the Japanese economy.
[1] Child of the 80s/90s.
[2] Japan may be losing innovative and competitive ground in terms of anything tech related but they are still quite ahead in some aspects. I.e. The transportation industry (trains in particular) are light years ahead. The Shinkansen(bullet train) itself was built in the 60s but still looks like it was designed in the 25th century.
[3] Most of the electronics were "new" and "latest" but none of them were "unique". They were the same Korean, Taiwanese or China branded electronics that you see anywhere else in the world (or at least in my country). You will be hard pressed to find any funky new Japanese gadgets or gizmos.
[5] One thing I admired when I was in Japan is that, a lot of their technology (transportation system, infrastructure, telecommunications, etc) were built decades ago but it still looks fairly advanced to this day. Though, you will noticed it is starting to age.
1. Flip phones are more compact, which is valued by the Japanese.
2. Unlike English, the traditional keypad is perfect for inputting Japanese text. In fact, touchscreen smartphone Japanese keyboards essentially mimic this setup[0].
Yeah. The Japanese have always been fond of their flip phones, and in fact they were well ahead of us on smartphones. Long before the iPhone and such, they had very powerful flip phones there made by Sharp and such.
Except even with those phones (now called 'garakei'), the software was still awful, and the ecosystem was still locked shut -- getting an app onto the phone took a lot of sweat, and a lot of connections.
Well, not really. Getting an app on a docomo phone for example was extremely easy, as in create the app and put it online. You had to be a verifiable company to touch the encrypted bits (user ID, encrypted NFC etc) or to make payments (which are then carrier handled payments), but that
about all.
The other carriers needed paperwork even for free apps, but not so much more.
About the software, it was barebone compared to iPhone apps, but you could run an app for three days without crashing or dropping a single call. The scrutinity towards quality was equivalent to home appliances' level. The iPhone brought the expectations of reliability close to Windows PCs.
Did you manage to hit the Yodobashi in Akiba? That's really the place to see both some more Japanese products and get a wonderfully overwhelming "this is what it'd be like if you put a Fry's inside a Fry's, added a Best Buy, and threw in an amazing food court" experience.
The electronics dealers along the Akiba side streets are a great place to get off-generation parts on the cheap. For example, last-generation RAM upgrades for your machine, at prices pretty decently discounted from newegg. But I certainly found the rest of Akiba more dedicated to anime/manga/jpop idols at this point than the electronics-focus that we (I'm also a child of the 80s/90s) had been promised.
Funny you mentioned Yodobashi because I actually stayed 5 minutes away from Shinjuku station when I was in Tokyo and did stumble into it when I was roaming the streets.
My impression of Akiba?
Interesting no doubt and you are right in a sense that they are probably closest to the "electronic-focus Japan" that we imagined but it was still filled with the same Chinese, Korean or Taiwanese branded stuff. My point is, gone are the domination of Japanese branded electronics (with maybe the exception of Sony) in these sort of places in Japan.
>20 years of no growth buried them under a mountain of debt, crippling the domestic market which had been a big part of their rise (c.f. china).
I don't think a lagging economy explains why Sony and most Japaense tech giant missed the web/mobile boat. They missed that boat, because they missed that boat. The US economy is in its own "lost decade" but Apple, Google, and Microsoft are doing quite well.
It doesn't seem like you really gave a reason for thinking it not to be true. It's an awful big coincidence that all of japan's CE firms would lose their ability to innovate simultaneously around the time of a extended economic slump.
You're thinking in overly short time horizons. Major economic impact takes time to reverberate. Where was Sony in '95? On top. US Stagnation started in '08 give or take, so it really hasn't been that long. A lot of California's current success (in the web and elsewhere) can be traced back to the economic policies of the 90's and the easy money of Y2K. Where do you think the angel money came from? What would happen if there weren't small innovators available everywhere for google et al to purchase to keep their growth up?
When I was in Osaka, I stayed at a backpackers and I met a few young Japanese locals. Between my extremely poor and limited Japanese and their broken English, we were somewhat able to maintain a conversation and I mentioned the same thing to them.
Since it was only a subset of 5 or so people, I wouldn't count it as the general consensus of the Japanese people but they were very aware of how stagnant the big Japanese tech giants (and the country's economy) have become and how Japan is already lagging being China and Korea.
What I did find interesting is that these young blokes blame the government rather than the company themselves.
The issue is that a lot of technically-minded foreigners go to Akihabara without realizing that for a lot of Japanese people, the place is just as much about otaku stuff (manga, anime, cosplay) as it is about electronics. And then they get disappointed when they realize that otaku stuff is what makes up most of Akiba.
Absolutely. When my friends from the US come to visit me in Tokyo they almost always want to visit Akiba. I tell them, "You wont find cheap gadgets (the exchange rate is against you) and you wont want to buy anything that requires software (because it won't be localized to english and will be too hard to use) but you should still go because it's a mind-blowingly weird place." Most people go there and buy a wierd iPhone case, USB gadget or something retro and cool. I try to get everyone to visit the AKB48 theatre or an photo/video game arcade or something non-tech too so they get that half of it.
Akihabara is now the mecca of a small sub-culture of Japan. Most people here never go there but its influence is felt. I think most people here view it like Hot Topic at your local mall although maybe slightly more legit than that because it has roots in a very old tradition of hardware engineering.
Another thing that skews the perspective of foreigners is that since the main streets of Akiba have been "cleaned up", many of the small-time hardware vendors have moved onto the backstreets.
Most foreigners don't know Akiba's backstreets (just visiting Japan), don't know anyone who knows the backstreets who can guide them (again, just visiting Japan), can't ask for directions (don't know Japanese), and can't look up stuff on their phone (expensive roaming data plans).
I did some research before going, and was able to find Super Potato[0], which sells used video games. Since it has a site, it's obviously not that "small-time", but locating the physical location was a pain in the ass. And this is despite knowing Japanese and having a printed out map on hand.
I replied this somewhere else but just a note that I was staying about 5 minutes away from Shinjuku station so I did stumble along into Akiba backstreets when I was there. Also, when I was in Osaka, I visited DenDen City! All of these places are probably the closest thing to what I imagined when I was young but my point remains that I expected loads of unique Japanese branded electronics but was surprised (and underwhelmed) to see the same Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese branded stuff I see anywhere else around the world.
p/s: I'm probably not your typical "foreigner" since my heritage is Asian, I speak passable Japanese and I had one of those pocket mobile wifi thingamajig (GlobalAdvanceComm) so that I could use Google Maps to find my way around.
I grew up in the decade[1] where Japan absolutely dominated the consumer electronics industry hence, I've always long held this view of Japan being one of the most technological advanced economy in the world. But when I actually went there, my view completely changed. They still are, to a certain extent[2], but from a tech industry standpoint they are starting to lag behind IMHO.
For example, when I was in Akihabara, I was told it was a electronics mecca filled with all the latest Japanese gadgets and gizmos but when I was there last month, all I saw was a myriad of chinese made/manufactured stuff. Most of the electronics stuff I've already seen in my own country and there was nothing much that looked truly new[3]. Maybe if I was walking down these streets 15 years ago, I would have been pretty wide-eyed. Even if you look at the one electronic device that a Japanese brand still dominates (which is mobile), the Docomo made mobile phones are all mostly using android and majority of them are flip phones[4]! And if you don't see someone using a Docomo made-phone, it will most likely be an iPhone.
Don't take me wrong, Japan still is a fairly advanced country[5] but my trip there last month made me realize that they are fast falling behind the rest of their Asian counterparts: China and Korea in particular. These once mighty Japanese tech companies needs to start making bold innovative moves instead of living in the past and being hankered down by bureaucracy. If they don't do it soon enough, one day it will be too late and it will have a devastating effect on the Japanese economy.
[1] Child of the 80s/90s.
[2] Japan may be losing innovative and competitive ground in terms of anything tech related but they are still quite ahead in some aspects. I.e. The transportation industry (trains in particular) are light years ahead. The Shinkansen(bullet train) itself was built in the 60s but still looks like it was designed in the 25th century.
[3] Most of the electronics were "new" and "latest" but none of them were "unique". They were the same Korean, Taiwanese or China branded electronics that you see anywhere else in the world (or at least in my country). You will be hard pressed to find any funky new Japanese gadgets or gizmos.
[4] http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/05/ntt-do...
[5] One thing I admired when I was in Japan is that, a lot of their technology (transportation system, infrastructure, telecommunications, etc) were built decades ago but it still looks fairly advanced to this day. Though, you will noticed it is starting to age.