What's age got to do with it? American corporate software development is just as broken. Even the corporate ladder isn't that different. Programmers either move up as they age or are considered losers.
The difference is that the US has that dysfunctional system, but it also has a highly innovative system: startups and companies run something like startups (Apple, Google, Facebook, etc).
Japan simply doesn't have a startup ecosystem. Essentially no other country does.
Indeed. The key factor is, there is no-one who is a manager in a technical organization who doesn't consider management to be "better" than hands-on technical work - it's not as if there are pressgangs of board members roaming the halls, to move into management, you have to want to.
Now obviously these people consider themselves to be "successful", after all, they got promoted didn't they? So it follows logically that anyone with the same number of years of experience who isn't a manager must be "unsuccessful" and who wants to hire an unsuccessful person?
Some companies talk about creating a "technical" career track but in my experience that's never more than lip service, handing out a few job titles like "senior this" and "principal that".
The difference is that the US has that dysfunctional system, but it also has a highly innovative system: startups and companies run something like startups (Apple, Google, Facebook, etc).
Japan simply doesn't have a startup ecosystem. Essentially no other country does.