kgally 10 hours ago | parent | next [–]
Not to disagree with you or the commenters pointing out other Japan-specific factors, but I think there is one more possible explanation for the project’s failure: its top-down, government-bureaucrat-led nature. I’ve lived in Japan for forty years and have worked at a national university for the past twenty. The government regularly launches initiatives, sets goals, and promotes catch phrases that are supposed to lead to greater progress and prosperity. But, because the initiators and funders are often only tenuously connected to the complex and dynamic reality, the projects become rigid and wasteful, and eventually wither and die, more often than not.
forgotoldacc 6 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]
> The government regularly launches initiatives, sets goals, and promotes catch phrases that are supposed to lead to greater progress and prosperity.
Some stuff has worked pretty well. I registered for a MyNumber card after years of dragging my feet. Now I can check how much tax I’ve paid, how much I have in my retirement fund, health insurance things, and a bunch of other stuff from my phone in like 10 seconds all from a single app. Previously I’d need to take a half day off, bring my wooden stamp to the appropriate government office, and wait for 10-30 minutes in order to make sure my stuff is in order.
I’m actually amazed how well it works.
Japan also builds infrastructure really fast.
It’s not perfect, and some things lag behind other countries, but some things blow some other countries out of the water. If anything, I’d say the government moves pretty quickly with a lot of decisions (one consequence of being what’s effectively a one party state, I suppose). Companies, particularly big ones, are more risk-averse.
authorfly 2 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]
Japan has stagnated and had debt problems over those 40 years. May I ask you if you saw these as they began to accrue and if you think there is a long term strategy to address them?
Seems to me as an alien to the culture, that Japan is uniquely happy to continue on conservatively (culturally) without giving in to medium term fixes(e.g. immigration) but with no long term plan for the economics or population. Is this because of a different cultural view on those things and whether they are successes, or failures?
komali2 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]
I’ve lived in Taiwan for a while, not nearly as long as you have in Japan, but long enough that I have a couple observations I’d be interested in your take in, about “old hats” such as yourself.
The first is that the folks that immigrated decades ago tend to hold on to the perception they had upon arrival to the country, and the various impressions, for the rest of their lives there, and these impressions inform all future observations they have about the country. For example in Taiwan a lot of older American immigrants will talk about things like crime or the police as if it was still the KMT era when Taiwan was basically a different country, and their thoughts are really strange to hear when considering modern taiwanese police (who are basically teddy bears) or crime rates (extremely low).
The second is that, having spend decades in the country to which they immigrated, which is probably longer than they lived in their origin country, they seem to view everything that strikes them as odd, inefficient, or bad, as unique to their new home country. In this case such as your perception of Japan as being lead top-down by bureaucrats, when that description to me applies to basically every liberal democracy on earth. Thus:
> The government regularly launches initiatives, sets goals, and promotes catch phrases that are supposed to lead to greater progress and prosperity. But, because the initiators and funders are often only tenuously connected to the complex and dynamic reality, the projects become rigid and wasteful, and eventually wither and die, more often than not.
imo, this is true for most government-led initiatives in nearly every country on earth. Not that I’m arguing against government-lead initiatives because they do result in sometimes incredible things like train infrastructure, spaceships, the internet, medical breakthroughs etc, but for the most part it seems politicians make big pitches to get elected and then just maintain status quo.
Obviously Japan has some uniquely bureaucratic things about the culture as a whole (lol faxes), but on the other hand this doesn’t seem to be an obstacle considering they have some of the safest pedestrian-friendly streets in the world, some of the best public transit, an excellent healthcare system, low crime rates, low homelessness, low unemployment, etc. On the ground they’re doing much better than many countries.
What do you think? You probably know much more about such things given your time in Japan as well as the fact that you work at a university.
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