
The Great Shift in Japanese Pop Culture (2011) - tty
http://neojaponisme.com/2011/11/28/the-great-shift-in-japanese-pop-culture-part-one/
======
MichaelGG
Wow, what a fantastic set of articles. Some interesting things for me:

\- Apparently low/middle class consumers in Japan would put themselves into
debt to buy luxury brands like Gucci. I'm not sure if this is meant general
debt like we see in the US with credit cards, or if it mean specific financing
for those items. (I met a guy in Central America that was making payments on a
jean jacket.)

\- If I read correctly, the lower income pressure is making things that are
marginally cheaper, like fake beer, actually take off. I would assume this is
because of the generally high cost of products in Japan? Whereas in other
countries, even with lower income, you don't resort to fake beer... maybe I
misunderstood though.

\- As of the article's time, the Internet doesn't have any really influential
outlets in Japan, and print media dominates for legitimacy and doesn't put
much content online. I know myself and other folks that don't read any print
media, so it seems odd that the Internet didn't penetrate quickly in Japan.

\- The squeeze on the markets means fringe groups now "dominate". That is,
"normal" folks cut back on their consumption, but fringe groups are defined by
such consumption. So the normal purchasing is gone, leaving just the fringe,
leading to groups like AKB48 being #1, when in reality they have niche appeal.

It closes pointing out that this fringe popularity taking over means Japan's
cultural exports are growing weaker, and like technology, might be disrupted
by Korea. Since the article was written, I think SNSD has grown in popularity,
and Gangnam Style certainly brought K-pop into the highlight.

It'll be interesting to see if Korea can successfully export other cultural
stuff that Japan has done well with, like video games and anime. (From my
brief and irrelevant exposure, it seems Korea is very insular and does not do
well exporting culture, although the kpop thing might be changing that. For
example, all Korean sites seem to require you to login with your Korean
national ID.)

~~~
creamyhorror
It's a common topic in anime circles that the anime produced in recent years
has swung somewhat away from the grittier, more sci-fi stuff (e.g. AKIRA) that
initially drew international attention, to more otaku-oriented shows focused
on cute girls and in-jokes. This has occurred in parallel with the overall
"rise of kawaii" that commentators have observed about '00s Japan.

To illustrate, Blu-Ray discs of anime sell at incredible prices in Japan, e.g.
$88/disc or $600/boxset of 6 discs[1], and the same goes for merchandise like
figurines. (Compare that to the $60 price of US season boxsets.) The reason is
simple: for studios to make sufficient profit, they must rely on a small but
core consumer cluster - otaku - to pay extreme prices, because mainstream
consumption has imploded. (See [2] for a detailed revenue estimation.) The
otaku in turn "maniacally" consume whatever anime they like, making studios
increasingly have to turn toward otakus' tastes rather than mainstream or
international preferences. Otakus become anime's primary consumer group, and
then many anime watchers outside of Japan feel alienated by the decreasing
amounts of the sort of genres that first drew them to the medium. I think this
partially accounts for the fall in anime's international popularity over the
last several years.

[1] <http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=115312>

[2] <http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2012-03-07>

It's really quite scary how high youth unemployment can doom a generation's
economic prospects. There are "over 2,500,000 freeters and between 650,000 and
850,000 NEETs living in Japan between the ages of 19 and 35",[2][3] which is a
fair number although probably not terribly different from other advanced
economies. (Freeters are permatemps, i.e. those without permanent employment
who work low-paying temp jobs in-between periods of joblessness; NEETs are
recluses.) However, the benefits and mobility gap between the traditionally
employed and the freeters/NEETs is large enough that I think they'll be
cemented as an underclass at the rate things are going. Once they're off the
traditional career ladder, they can't get back on it, and they're stuck living
with their parents and sometimes withdrawing from social RL and becoming otaku
on discussion BBSs.

One possible route out for Japan is exporting to foreign markets, but the
market-cultural distance between Japan and other nations has widened since
large Japanese corporations started disengaging from their foreign ventures.
The whole Galapagos effect means that Japanese entrepreneurs have to base
themselves in other countries if they want to have a shot at creating a
product that sells outside Japan. It's a pity because I think they can make
some rather unique, interesting products - they just don't have a way to get
noticed outside of Japan. Korea took a much better route in focusing on
exporting both electronics and media to the world, and they're doing very well
as a result. Japanese media used to be significant here in Singapore in the
'90s, but its popularity waned as the K-wave surged, and now K-dramas dominate
the airwaves, I suspect crowding out even English-language shows.

I last visited Japan in 2008, and saw a good number of cut-price discount
stores there, but overall prices weren't truly cheap. I wonder how different
things are nowadays after these further years of lean.

[2] <http://www.japanfocus.org/-Kosugi-Reiko/2022>

[3] <http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=907>

_(This 3rd link is very worth reading for details on the unemployment
situation and lost generation in Japan)_

------
anigbrowl
Font woes aside, this is an extremely interesting series on economic
adjustment; in many ways, Japan provides a leading indicator for changes in
American and European economies.

~~~
mc32
Yes and no.

On the surface Japan can seem like it has some things in common (comparable)
with the West; however, it's more or less comparing superficial
manifestations.

1\. Japan while you will see 'international' this and that everywhere and
people are taught English from an early age, Japan is very insular
(geographically, obviously and mentally) and inward looking (provincial not
reflective) and hardly international. People (employees) in the international
depts can't expect to rise much within an org. --with few exceptions). All
talk and no walk.

2\. Japan is very xenophobic (not just a little like Italy might be or France
might be about undocumented Roma or Albanians). This could be traced back to
how Japan dealt with foreigners (and trade) back in the Edo period as
exemplified by Dejima island. Foreigners (dutch) were relegated to an island
and had to be back by sundown and could not leave. This attitude has not
changed in over a hundred years. 3rd generation Koreans are still considered
foreigners (and they must assume a Japanese name, and oddly none the less
considered foreign). The foreign population in Japan is actually on the wane
for various reasons (economic and also people just get tired of the politics)

3\. Japanese industry found their stride in the late 60s; however, few have
revisited their assumptions, systems, technologies, methods, etc. For an
example, look at their film industry. Almost complete implosion due to
stagnation.

4\. Conformity. While on the surface these niche 'diverse' groups would seem
to indicate break with conformity, it does not. As someone observed, these
movements and subcultures are de-coupled from politics, completely.

That's just the beginning. There are many other reasons a 1:1 comparison with
the West is not helpful.

There is a kind of parallel withe the US. It's the maturity regression.
However, while many in the US recognize and decry the eternal adolescence of
American adults (viz toilet humor, frat culture), in Japan it's rather
infantilization (viz Hello Kitty, stuffed animals, Pokemon --whose main
audience are adults, not children).

Edit: I guess what I mean is that one would extrapolate Japan onto the West at
one's own expense (of understanding). In this agree with Japan --they are
unique, in this regard.

~~~
barry-cotter
_3rd generation Koreans are still considered foreigners (and they must assume
a Japanese name, and oddly none the less considered foreign)._

They don't have to assume a Japanese name. Most do, probably the legal alias
they have used all their lives when speaking in Japanese. East Asian countries
do not have the same attitudes to names as unique identifiers, invariant
across languages as western countries do. The third generation Koreans you
refer to are Zainichi Koreans who don't hold Japanese nationality.

However, the Japanese Diet has not yet passed a resolution regarding this
matter [Zainich Koreans voting rights in Japanese elections] despite several
attempts by a section within Liberal Democratic Party of Japan to do so, and
there is considerable public and political opposition _against granting voting
rights to those who have not yet adopted Japanese nationality. Instead, the
requirements for naturalization has been steadily lowered for Zainichi to the
point that only criminal records or affiliation to North Korea would be a
hindrance for naturalisation._

I'm not saying that Japan isn't very xenophobic but if they want Japanese
citizenship most Zainichi Koreans can have it with relatively little
difficulty.

~~~
mc32
It just seems incongruous to me that someone who is third or fourth generation
born in Japan could be considered 'foreign'. It's not as if the parents were
'illegally' in Japan. (anyone illegal is pretty much promptly sent home --with
few exceptions of people involved with crime syndicates).

It's not even ironic that zainichi just means someone 'residing/staying'
temporarily, ie. not considered permanent -but they've been born and lived in
Japan all their lives, as well as their parents and grandparents.

~~~
barry-cotter
It seems incongruous to me as well but it's not my country so my opinion is of
at most academic interest. I'm not that interested in the literal meaning or
etymology of words. In the same way that Charlize Theron is not an African-
American but Morgan Freeman is, Zainichi Korean means persons of Korean
nationality who have been born and raised in Japan, not Koreans resident in
Japan who were born in Korea.

~~~
mc32
Charlize Theron is South African American, nationality-wise. In terms of
Continental designation, South Africans of any ethnicity (Indian, European,
African, ancestry call themselves 'African'. It's only outside Africa that it
might seem odd. I guess the flipside is how many/most? Egyptians consider the
fact they're in Africa incidental.

Zainichi people of Korean ancestry are not Korean nationals. Korea (South)
can't call them up to serve in the military for their compulsory army duty.
It's like saying 4th generation Americans of Italian or Mexican descent aren't
'Americans' if their parents were not officially naturalized Americans.
Zainichi for this intent means 'guest' Korean.

~~~
barry-cotter
[http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2008/12/16/issues/youn...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2008/12/16/issues/young-
zainichi-koreans-look-beyond-chongryon-ideology/)

Zainichi Koreans can get North or South Ko

rean passports. They are exempt from military service unless they move to
Korea. Connotations and denotations of language change, zainichi means
temporary and chosen means korea but zainichi chosen refers to born and raised
on Japan people with Korean citizenship or an entitlement to same, not people
studying abroad or similar.

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zainichi_Korean>

See footnote 1

------
jere
I hate to be that guy, but when I'm viewing the font on this site at default
size, the cross of every "t" is twice as thick as everything else and it's
_extremely_ distracting. It looks fine if I increase the font size and
slightly better in IE for some reason.

~~~
raldi
I'm not seeing it; how bout a screenshot?

~~~
dangrossman
Chrome: <http://i.imgur.com/VBgcURG.png>

IE10: <http://i.imgur.com/ZBrhDoS.png>

Firefox: <http://i.imgur.com/ROwDLkb.png>

Chrome's text rendering has been pretty broken on Windows since September
2012-ish. There are lots of long bug reports on Chromium's tracker with little
effort to fix them. Custom fonts render too thin to the point of
discontinuities in the glyphs. The blitting algorithm was messed up so non-
black text is often rendered a significantly different color than is specified
in the stylesheet. High DPI support is nonexistant (while it was supported for
Mac and Linux quickly), so rasterized text is simply scaled up by fractional
multipliers, which makes it terribly blurry in both the UI and webpages.

I can only imagine that so many on the Chrome team are running Macs and Ubuntu
that they don't see how terrible their software is becoming on Windows in
fundamental ways.

~~~
anonymous
Damn those are ugly. If I had to choose though, I'd pick Chrome. The variable
width is nothing compared to the rainbow text of the latter two.

~~~
ferongr
There's almost no fringing in Firefox's text (and Mozilla devs went through a
lot of pain trying to find good defaults for DirectWrite text in the post Fx4
days) but there's quite a bit in IE's text (see the "k" and "a" letters).

Chrome's text looks completely atrocious though. Hinting is completely random
and different letters have different sizes. To my experience, this has been
this way since the release of Chrome. With the proliferation of Webfonts some
time later Mozilla's and Microsoft's choice to use DirectWrite paid off while
Chrome has made no improvement.

