
Ask HN: Why are techies so interested in Japanese culture? - somenomadicguy
Another thread made me kind of curious about geek fascination with Japan? As long as I can remember be it Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Reddit, HN! or any other techie-oriented forum, the only foreign the western tech culture western seems to have a fascinating with is Japan. So what is it? Why does our community have a more vocal interest in Japanese culture than others?
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PaulHoule
Very few countries are successful in exporting culture at all.

For instance, the EU is requiring that 20% of content on Netflix be European
in origin and considering the population size and economic weight of Europe
that is more a guarantee that Europe doesn't get shut out instead of a level
playing field.

India has a huge movie industry (which is unusual enough) but it gets almost
no attention from outside India except by expats.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Trap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Trap)

Another aspect is that Anime has developed a postmodernism that is very
different from the navel-gazing postmodernism of Hollywood which could be
characterized by the movie "Pulp Fiction" Anime is easy to relate to, if you
are inclined to relate to it, is because it is about a very small world. When
you see anime for the first time (for me some early inputs were "Star
Blazers", "Urusei Yatsura" and "Nadia") it looks like a huge world. Nadia in
particularly uses the trick of making it seem like the world gets bigger in
every episode.

After you have seen enough anime you realize that Ataru Morobishi, Usagi
Tsukino, and Haruhi Suzumiya all go to the same high school, that the monsters
in "Nadia" and "Neon Genesis Evangelion" look the same, etc. It's not about a
large universe, but it is really one of those closed spaces that Haruhi wants
to move into.

~~~
eshvk
> India has a huge movie industry (which is unusual enough) but it gets almost
> no attention from outside India except by expats.

Do you have enough evidence to support this claim? Anecdotally, I have seen a
lot of folks in Africa, the Middle East obsess about Bollywood movies. To me,
anime (outside Asia) is a niche whose obsession is heavily correlated with
young American/Western/white men. Could possibly be a reason why tech (with
its demographics) has a lot of anime lovers.

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mattm
If you're in your 20's or 30's, you'll probably remember when you were young
that Japan was synonymous with technology. The best electronics were made in
Japan and they were at the forefront of innovation. That is not really true
anymore (although Japan does still lead in areas like robotics) but the
stereotype persists.

~~~
gaspoweredcat
yeah, i think for me this is the case, much of the newest coolest and best
tech, not to mention games came out of japan and cyberpunk was at its peak
around that sort of time too, seeing various images of this incredible neon
wonderland of technology that was often described as "10 years ahead of the
rest of the world" stuck in my mind heavily

and after a very long 30 odd years i got myself there and you now what? even
in this era it didnt disappoint, and in some cases they are still years ahead
although maybe not a decade, i read an article just this morning on how
"pepper" was being launched in the US, i saw both pepper and the more
impressive (if less useful) NAO in softbank stores in tokyo two years ago
(although pepper and NAO are technically french they were bought by softbank a
few years back)

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cwt
I think the fascination comes from an early introduction to Japanese culture,
even if we're not aware. Japan probably has the largest cultural footprint in
America for Eastern countries. A lot of cartoons I watched growing up were
Japanese anime. Then there was Pokemon. And Nintendo. And Playstation. And the
Mario Brothers. The list goes on for geek entertainment. I think the question
could be juxtaposed with "Why do other countries have a fascination with
Western culture?" \- Hollywood, our entertainment industry. Or why is
Soccer/football the most popular sport in the world? - people have access to
it all over the world starting at an early age.

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agibsonccc
Moved from SF to tokyo. Japan happened to be one of our bigger markets (among
doing well/better in asia).

I was a gamer who grew up in Michigan, so I saw the downfall of the automobile
scene at the hands of toyota among others as well as lived and breathed
japanese games.

Japan's dominance is all too familiar in that space.

Tokyo today tends to not be very good at software. That coupled with the tech
scene here trying to revitalize itself (see the work by 500 startups japan as
a great example) is an interesting time to keep an eye on the culture as well
as the country to see if it can rebound.

It's definitely a combination of things but that with the vastly better
quality of life here has lent itself to what I believe is a big interest from
a lot of people. As mentioned in other comments, japan also knows how to
export its culture well.

I'm not sure it's 1 thing but a bunch of small things that make a difference
here.

Not sure if that helps or not.

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auganov
I wouldn't say HN is a strict part of geek culture or that trend (while Reddit
et al. are). As far as the manga etc obsession goes - many geeks have long had
a penchant for all sorts of Fantasy [0]. And the Japanese managed to capture a
lot of that "market". That obsession is almost solely directed at the parts of
Japanese culture that are acutely distinct from Western culture, hence it
might feed into the craving for fantasy.

There's also I think a separate trend of people (who might happen to be
techies) that like East Asian countries (Kor, PRC, HK, Spore, Taiwan, Jap etc)
for certain cultural values [that are actually mainstream] (tho of course it
can still be based on unrealistic assumptions).

[0] I'd even venture to say it's a defining feature. Or that it's worthwhile
to make it so.

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sotojuan
Maybe the question can be reversed—anime/manga/video game fans are usually
drawn to technology because of the content in the media and also because these
people tend to spend a lot of time online and may see tech as a "natural"
thing to do.

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
I suspect this too. At least for me, Japanese video games from my childhood
inspired me to learn to program.

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fitzwatermellow
The quintessentially Japanese focus on _Mastery_ underpins the global
obsession. Think about it! Or just watch _The Last Samurai_ for the hundredth
time ;)

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tonymrey
Techies are interested in Japanese culture, for the simple reasons, techies
are hungry to know more and understand new things, and because they see a lot
common interests with Japan, and moreover, things that bring similar but yet
novel developments, these techies feel japan brings something new to be
discovered. Yet, they feel like they can relate to it, like they do in the
West.

Lets look at history, even before world war 1, the Japanese government was
developing an inspired European military strategy, more and more in fact till
well we know what happened in WW2, it's not to far from the Napoleons, and
English rule for example. Now this is the interesting thing, Japan did not
just acquire western technology and throwed it away, they actually culturally
integrated it, but they used it to their advantage even way before the culture
shocks of today, and by doing that, well they excelled in it.

The Japanese culture since the 60s and more so today has had a fusion of
cultures, which today the young generation of Japan, feel much more
Americanized and westernized. As the youth of Japan, today is more and more
Americanized,they also feel partially like they are missing out, because so
much of what they like comes from America, or other western countries.
Japanese techies are as curious as the western techies, why we share the mix.
Whats happening in the western world? Well the same thing is happening On the
opposite side, here as well in the western world, we feel we are missing out
on new and interesting things, which go hand in hand with what techies or
other non techies like. As the Japanese culture has brought commonality and
newness to many industries, think products such walkman (that device even blue
Steve Jobs mind), think anime's(stuff that makes physicist dream big), think
ruby(programming), think videogames(biggest entertainment industry). And
today, science and many more areas of expertise, share a lot of curiosity and
interests with the western world and the rest of the globalized world. I would
say this is due to simple reason that the Japanese culture has merged with the
western culture to some point and that produces very interesting stuff, mixes
are always very interesting and unique. So to close my thoughts, I would say
the world is in a better place, because of this relationship we have between
the West and the East, and we are hopefully moving towards a unified, peaceful
and interesting human civilization type 2, referencing Kardashev Scale.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale)

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zolmetric
Techies are naturally curious , wanting to know more about everything. Now,
japanese culture is so deep and vast that it just stokes their curiosity.
Another factor could be the huge amount of technological innovation that came
from Japan.

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Zelmor
It's just observational bias, really. Though Japan gets more exposure in tech
media than, say, the Philippines.

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sunstone
Because it's new and very different.

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marmot777
It could be Zen Buddhism.

