5/22/2026 at 3:46:53 PM
It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN. It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality.This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is that this system is heavily driven by Japan's unique, subtle classism. It's a highly collectivist society with strict age-based milestones and immense pressure to secure traditional employment. In Japan, your corporate affiliation often dictates your social standing.
The author paints the lack of shareholder pressure as the secret behind their successful diversification. While true for a few, the flip side is that it created a massive 'zombie company' problem—a heavily discussed issue in Korea and Japan that the West seems largely blind to.
Also, the idea of a 'horizontal culture' in Japan is a myth, especially in software. Even a glance at the Japanese web(5ch, onJ etc...) reveals a deeply entrenched vertical hierarchy. In my experience working with Japanese developers, their reliance on the legacy Waterfall model and an exhausting chain of approvals and reporting was far from horizontal. (Though I admit my sample size is small, it heavily contradicts the Western narrative).
I agree that this rigid system fosters the tacit knowledge needed for hardware and materials. Still, it proves that we all tend to project our fantasies onto cultures we don't fully understand. The divergence in perspectives on HN never fails to amuse me.
by jdw64
5/22/2026 at 4:00:57 PM
> It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality.Quite the opposite - for me, anyway.
FWIW, as a Westerner, I find the Mondragon Corporation to be fascinating and something I've read a lot about because there's no way we've figured out the ideal sort of setup for a business (or government, or any sort of human organization, given appropriate context) in the year 2026.
We have a lot to learn, and while "different" doesn't always mean "better," I strongly believe being exposed to "different" is necessary for us to devise novel approaches to human organization.
by jodacola
5/22/2026 at 4:07:47 PM
Same thing, being Spanish the Basque Cooperatives movement is fascinating. Do you have any recommended read about it?by amunozo
5/22/2026 at 7:00:09 PM
These arrangements lean into "third way" and distributist economics. You might find John Médaille of interest. He's written some books[0] about the subject, some articles[1], and given a talk at Google[2].In the US, the American Solidarity Party[3] draws from distributism, for instance.
[1] https://distributistreview.com/archive/an-introduction-to-di...
by lo_zamoyski
5/22/2026 at 11:22:57 PM
“Flee to the fields” is a great read, too.by christophilus
5/22/2026 at 8:28:42 PM
Thank you!by amunozo
5/23/2026 at 10:59:29 AM
I had a couple of eye-opening conversations about this the last time I was in San Sebastian. Not everyone there loves Mondragon as much as we think, some see it as a closed club that makes it arbitrarily hard to get a job with them depending on your connections. I met some workers unhappy of their hiring practices and I think their starting working conditions. No idea if they were fair or just resentful.I still admire Mondragon and wish there were more companies like it, but now I try to remind myself that most characterizations from the outside are surely lacking in nuance.
by ikurei
5/23/2026 at 2:07:35 PM
Yeah the problem with co-ops is that every new employee means reduced profit-sharing for existing employees. Ironically, companies in SV actually have a nice solution to this problem: Employees get equity, but newer employees get less than older employees. So from the perspective of old employees, it still makes financial sense to hire new employees, because the old employee equity becomes more valuable.In technical econ terms, the marginal profit of new employees is typically below the average profit of existing employees. A profit-maximizing business only cares that the marginal profit is positive, and will hire until there is no additional profit to be made. A co-op is incentivized to keep average profit per employee high, which can mean reducing headcount in order to keep the average strong. So that's why co-ops can have a sort of exclusive club feel to them.
SV is actually an interesting example which proves how employee ownership can drive prosperity, but the typical co-op crowd doesn't want to talk about it because it's too capitalist-coded. In a way, SV companies show that employee ownership is not some sort of instant cure for everything which ails capitalism.
by 0xDEAFBEAD
5/24/2026 at 6:59:48 AM
What is ”SV” in this context? Silicon Valley? (Not a US resident, and I’ve never heard of any software cooperatives from there.)by Jolter
5/24/2026 at 7:31:23 AM
Yes, SV=Silicon Valley. Startups aren't co-ops (the term "co-op" implies employee governance for example). But employee compensation is heavily loaded towards equity or stock in the employing firm. If you're an early hire at a unicorn, you can make serious money off your ownership share in the company. It helps align the incentives of the employees and management. Press coverage of Silicon Valley doesn't usually mention it, but employee ownership is a huge part of the culture.by 0xDEAFBEAD
5/23/2026 at 9:48:03 AM
There is a really interesting article that goes into the origin and modern development of the Mondragon Cooperative here: https://open.substack.com/pub/ellegriffin/p/mondragon-as-the...by jinjin2
5/24/2026 at 6:09:30 AM
> As a rule, the highest-paid workers at Mondragon cooperatives earn only six times more than the lowest-paid workers.And I bet these salary-capped co-op leaders are still appropriately capable / qualified. The U.S. billionare situation is ugly.
by mcbishop
5/22/2026 at 5:27:12 PM
The most recent video I could find about this was from like 7 years ago, very weirdby gigatree
5/22/2026 at 7:15:45 PM
Maybe try a book instead of YouTube. Not weird as it probably isn’t something that would get clicksby oceanhaiyang
5/22/2026 at 9:57:57 PM
Any particular books you'd recommend?by shimman
5/23/2026 at 7:43:24 AM
Probably whatever George Orwell wrote after he picked up a gun and fought on their behalf.by hmmokidk
5/23/2026 at 11:14:15 AM
In Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell narrates just how little fighting there was. It was trench warfare where both sides had precious little ammo and guns that couldn’t shoot straight. He sat in the mud at the front rotting with the rest. Apart from a few days in cities, hospital recovery, and a desperate last few weeks.He had to flee the country because his chosen party was purged. He survived a street battle. Then made a final visit to many of his comrades in prison.
Don’t presume that his views were shared with those who had influence.
He had admiration for his comrades in arms, especially the mess hall staff. He was on the workers side, but he was in the banned party, of the losing side of the war.
Above all, Orwell saw through the propaganda at home and the rest of the worlds deliberate misunderstanding of the whole situation. For instance, he saw that France had a tacit agreement with the Soviets to slow-walk supplying arms to the Nationalists, to ensure French financiers had protected investments in Spain’s railroads. And every newspaper outside Spain reported like Fox News.
by FarmerPotato
5/23/2026 at 8:09:40 AM
Orwell had been dead for several years when a Catholic priest started those cooperatives.by kgwgk
5/23/2026 at 8:40:42 AM
Zombie soldier summoned by Catholic priest to fight for cooperatives.by ponector
5/22/2026 at 5:25:12 PM
Let’s not confuse “romanticism” with “intrigue.” Things can be interesting and intriguing without being ideal targets.by jagged-chisel
5/23/2026 at 5:33:26 PM
Because the only certainty is there is no ideal sort of setup, just a set of probably decent options for the current conditions, which are highly changeable. The only thing that is certain from a benefit maximization perspective is there are a lot of companies much larger than minimum efficient scale that we should probably antitrust out of existence to increase competitionby snapplebobapple
5/22/2026 at 9:18:24 PM
There are aspects about cultures which can be fascinating, not (only) because they are foreign and new, but because dedicated and intelligent people have been improving them for generations, centuries even. I have a friend who is from Korea and who is a wood worker, and we have compared the different approaches to what, in the end, solves the same problems. Not everything can be incorporated into the other way of doing things, but I have found it eye-opening. My brain still tries to find ways, comparing, like a constant ping. Maybe one needs to dedicate 100% to the new way for a while to understand it fully before a genius brain would be able to find the spark how to meld both methods into a single improved Way of Doing Things (tm).by Squeeeez
5/23/2026 at 3:19:36 AM
Wait, how can you as a Korean say these things as if you're different, given that Korean companies are essentially the same?by rjzzleep
5/23/2026 at 9:32:20 AM
Korean companies are no different, but the author only singled out 'Japan.'by jdw64
5/23/2026 at 6:13:41 PM
I responded to the wrong post. I meant to respond to the parent("korean"/"as an east asian")by rjzzleep
5/23/2026 at 5:21:16 AM
He is not Koreanby Scrapemist
5/23/2026 at 7:05:22 AM
How are you drawing that conclusion? He mentioned in several comments on this thread that he is Korean…?Genuinely curious.
by lonelycompiler
5/22/2026 at 9:33:14 PM
This is a good approach.That said... It's hard to deny the romanticization and projection point above.
Beer goggles can be a mind expanding POV, but you need to be aware of it or you just end up being wrong for silly reasons.
A sober look at different is a good thing. Ooh... I agree that better and more advanced org concepts are likely still to be developed. But Otoh...
by netcan
5/22/2026 at 7:09:37 PM
What article were you reading? This article isn't idealizing Japanese companies, and specifically discusses the drawbacks of the Japanese approach, including zombie companies.The article's thesis statement isn't "the Japanese approach is better," but that business practices like these bundle together, that they're very difficult to change, and that each bundle has different advantages and disadvantages.
Ironically, you've proved a deeper point about how amusing HN is: we all tend to project our fantasies onto the articles we're discussing, even if we didn't fully read or understand the article.
by dfabulich
5/22/2026 at 8:44:30 PM
I did read it, but my impression remains the same. While the article does contain critiques of the Japanese system, as an East Asian, I feel it completely misses the actual underlying dynamics. I know the author isn't trying to paint Japan as a utopia. The reason I call it 'romanticized' is because the author claims Japan's success in precision parts is driven by 'horizontal' and 'collaborative' practices. That just isn't true.[1]In reality, this system is largely sustained by the ruthless squeezing of subcontractors (for the record, I am Korean, but I actually like Japan), which is a massive social issue there. It’s very difficult for me to understand how anyone could view this structural dynamic as collaborative or horizontal.
If the author had concluded that their success in these niches stems from being an extremely vertical society where defying your superiors is simply not an option, I would have fully agreed. That aligns exactly with what I have experienced firsthand.
>"The andon method is really the J-mode in miniature. Information flows laterally, authority to act is widely distributed, and the people closest to the problems are the ones who fix it."
Does your definition of a 'horizotal culture' actually mean forcing people to work overtime just to hit deadlines? Are you sure you haven't completely confused 'horizotally' with 'top-down'
[1] https://www.jftc.go.jp/dk/guideline/unyoukijun/romuhitenka.h...
P.S. The link I provided is an official directive from the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) explicitly warning large corporations to stop ruthlessly suppressing their subcontractors' labor costs.
by jdw64
5/22/2026 at 11:57:00 PM
The “Just-in-Time System” amounts to the exploitation of subcontractors. As a Japanese citizen, I am well aware of the reality of the Japanese economy. While server resources can be scaled up or down with a simple command, scaling physical factory resources is not so easy. Inevitably, this leads to suppressed wages for employees. Furthermore, while labor unions exist within large corporations known as “keiretsu,” they do not exist in subcontracting firms. There are laws in place to protect subcontractors, but in practice, they do not function (because if a subcontractor were to legally sue a major corporation, they would lose their business).This country’s economy is built on the sacrifice of others.
by tyaka
5/22/2026 at 9:10:15 PM
ruthless squeezing of subcontractorsWalmart and Amazon ruthlessly squeeze their suppliers. They achieve low prices on some things and try to corner the market on others (and then raise prices). What I don't see them achieving (to the contrary, I see them failing spectacularly at) is the quality control that some Japanese companies excel at.
So there has to be something more to it than that.
by chongli
5/22/2026 at 9:17:34 PM
When U.S. giants like Walmart or Amazon squeeze their suppliers, the natural consequence is cost-cutting and a drop in quality control. But for regional companies in Japan and Korea, regional mobility is incredibly difficult. In Japan, for instance, even politics is often "hereditary," and there is a strong overarching tendency for people and businesses to stay rooted in one specific region (while many do migrate to Tokyo, a vast number of people simply do not have that choice).In the highly fluid U.S. corporate ecosystem, mobility is always an option. If a supplier loses a contract with Walmart, they can still pivot to another massive retailer, even if it's not quite as large.
Japan and Korea, however, have small landmasses, and the reputational risk is absolute. If a company's reputation is damaged by a single failure or a lost contract, their next job simply vanishes. Because of this existential threat, they fundamentally cannot compromise on quality. Imagine what happens to a small supplier in Japan if they are cut off by a mega-retailer like Aeon Mall. There is no backup giant waiting to take them. They are finished.
So, while geographical and structural differences dictate this extreme pursuit of quality, framing it as a "horizontal culture" is completely wrong. As an East Asian, I can confidently say that "horizontal culture" is the single most mismatched term you could possibly use to describe East Asia
by jdw64
5/23/2026 at 6:53:07 AM
Thank you for your posts, which 100% match my experiences with Japan and Westerners not being able to see through the "Tatemae".by CarlitosHighway
5/23/2026 at 10:17:30 AM
If you are from the West, navigating East Asian culture can be exceptionally grueling. At a fundamental level, our societies tend to be inherently exclusive toward different races.by jdw64
5/23/2026 at 2:49:33 PM
Do you have a good book, article(s) or podcast to recommend on this topic (business culture in East Asia, or a specific country), in English & approachable by Westerners, while not giving just a cartoon overview of the issues?by senko
5/23/2026 at 3:07:29 PM
https://japan-dev.com/blog/black-companies-in-japanDogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan
japanese Business Culture and Practices: A Guide to Twenty-First Century Japanese Business Protocols
by jdw64
5/24/2026 at 12:31:09 PM
This is a two part question, the system and the idolise part aren't related.You are ignoring a lot of quality Japanese product have been producing for more than 50 years, which answer partly why idolise Japan question. But the so called squeezing of subcontractors is true as of any other American companies if not worldwide and yet they failed ( or mostly failed ) to achieve similar standing to Japanese counterparts in terms of quality.
by ksec
5/23/2026 at 3:09:14 AM
The focus of the article is on why Japanese corporations excel at so many different areas. Are you saying that all the factors it mentions, like employees being trained as generalists, life-time and so on, are completely irrelevant? or are you saying they are important but some other essential factors were left out?by belviewreview
5/22/2026 at 10:39:02 PM
> In reality, this system is largely sustained by the ruthless squeezing of subcontractors (for the record, I am Korean, but I actually like Japan), which is a massive social issue there. It’s very difficult for me to understand how anyone could view this structural dynamic as collaborative or horizontal.This is the picture painted for me by the article. Vertical integration eliminates subcontractors. Horizontal integration squeezes them.
> If the author had concluded that their success in these niches stems from being an extremely vertical society where defying your superiors is simply not an option, I would have fully agreed. That aligns exactly with what I have experienced firsthand.
Same story here. When switching jobs is made difficult, the incentive is not to make waves.
> Does your definition of a 'horizotal culture' actually mean forcing people to work overtime just to hit deadlines?
Yes, provided your boss is working with you.
by itishappy
5/22/2026 at 8:07:15 PM
Exactly, I was confused too. The authors clearly mention what the parent comment talks about, albeit towards the end of the article, that the 'J' bundle meant that these firms were not set up for success once they 'caught up' and were required to innovate not just process but from the ground up to envision new categories (e.g. iPhone).by neosat
5/22/2026 at 7:15:28 PM
Thank you, I was confused reading the comment above, because the article pretty clearly laid out the benefits and drawbacks of the system. I didn't see any idealizing.by Trasmatta
5/22/2026 at 8:53:51 PM
[flagged]by jdw64
5/22/2026 at 9:57:46 PM
I made a very small and highly defensible claim.You argued that this article (by David Oks) is an example of "how Westerners idealize Japan." I argued that this article does not idealize Japan, and that, if you interpreted Oks' article that way, then you didn't understand the article.
I didn't say that Japanese business culture is more "horizontal" than Western business culture, or that Japanese business culture is better in any particular way. I didn't even say that the article is right or wrong about anything.
All I did was to restate the thesis statement of the article, to clarify what the article actually says.
I don't harbor any particular affinity for Japan, or Japanese business culture. I know very little about it. I'm not an authority to speak on it, and I didn't.
You assumed what I believe without understanding what I wrote. You did exactly the same thing to me that you did to David Oks.
by dfabulich
5/23/2026 at 6:55:40 AM
You say you know very little about it, but that didn't keep you from posting? This isn't what HN is about.by CarlitosHighway
5/22/2026 at 10:15:42 PM
[flagged]by jdw64
5/23/2026 at 1:52:45 AM
From pfp Oks is upper middle class hafuThere's almost no way these guys (low pass filter)can see the water they have been breathing since they were born unless they've had first hand experience that wakes them up (high pass filter)
Add to that (Western) (indie?) game-makers and hafu are both predominantly right-wing.. far-right, if you take a global perspective. Polite to the point of being offensive, though. :) Perhaps there are very very few opportunities in which to feel a loss of control in real life, or trained since infancy
That said, there's seems to be still a lot of useful info in article that bears "bookmarking"..
Anyways..
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Especially
Jesuit to Marxist or Marxist to Catholic is always interesting, but it's not quite an 180 life changer
Like sending Mormon kids to spread the faith in Indi-- er, Maharashtra
by oliculipolicula
5/23/2026 at 4:00:58 AM
[dead]by oliculipolicula
5/22/2026 at 9:42:55 PM
> In Japan, mobility is fundamentally expensive, and relocating to a different region is much harder than outsiders realize.Unless said mobility is paid for by the company.
As part of the job rotation mentioned in the article, larger Japanese companies are also notorious for reassigning job locations, often at short notice and with zero care for family dynamics. Hence the tanshin-fu'nin phenomenon, where the husband is sent off to work at some factory or regional branch in the sticks for years while the wife brings up the kids elsewhere.
by decimalenough
5/22/2026 at 9:48:51 PM
You seem to understand this deeply, perhaps even better than I do. When I worked in Japan, experiencing the corporate culture firsthand was much harder than I had anticipated. They even provided a translator for my boss and me during our business trip, but it was still incredibly tough. I do remember that, at the time, they were conducting suicide prevention training for employees in the wake of the Toyota new-hire suicide incident.Anyway, you clearly know a lot about Japan, and I apologize if it came across as me just badmouthing the country. My original intent was simply to point out how drastically different things look from an East Asian perspective compared to a Western one. I didn't mean to keep painting Japan in a negative light—every system obviously has its pros and cons. I actually have fond memories of the unique, close-knit, family-like atmosphere that Japanese companies have
by jdw64
5/22/2026 at 9:30:04 PM
How does the "concentration" of gamedev jobs look like ? In US and I think in most of EU countries that have noticeable gamedev it is usually concentrated in very few cities, so changing job does not necessarily consist a move. But other industries similarly usually have a niche and sometimes whole towns that rose around it.I think main difference is that there is very little tradition of company thinking they own something to the workers, and (I think) far more of companies just buying out their competition and then gutting any tradition and institutional knowledge within
> (Moving in Japan involves massive upfront rental fees like shikikin (deposit) and reikin (key money), making the physical act of relocating extremely prohibitive.)
I don't think that part is all that different? While we don't have "key money" it's still a big deal to take your life and move it somewhere else
by PunchyHamster
5/22/2026 at 3:57:52 PM
I didn't feel like this article necessarily idolized it; the author seemed pretty even-handed about strengths and weaknesses.The interesting question in all of these kinds of things is "are there ideas we can take to gain the strengths of other systems or patch the weaknesses in ours?". Looking at Japan specifically, I think I speak for most westerners in saying that if we could get a little more stability and less financial-quarter-driven behavior without taking the whole kit of lifetime employment and zombie companies, that would be a good thing. The author points out just how bundled that is, so it's a tough nut to crack.
One model that does give us that is the 'Untouchable visionary CEO' of Jobs and Musk, but I think the popularity of that approach is also limited, partially because of all the not so visionary CEOs trying to be Jobs, and partially because working for those guys is terrible. They inevitably seem to become tyrants.
Most Americans I know are familiar with the unending work culture of Japanese white collar workers (if only a parody version of it), and want no part of it.
by showerst
5/22/2026 at 6:49:58 PM
Interestingly this article argues very strongly that you cannot have some of those things without taking all of them. That the various aspects of corporate culture reinforce each other and make performance worse if taken piecemeal.by jimbokun
5/22/2026 at 7:40:09 PM
Although from the perspective of most of the world, the US is also very work oriented. We also work some of the longest hoursby fyrn_
5/23/2026 at 4:29:29 AM
The American work week has been progressively shortening over the years: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/658235/why-americans-workin...Americans including myself love saying we’re busy though.
by kevmo314
5/23/2026 at 4:45:48 PM
> Thinking about your primary job: On average, how many hours do you work per week?Not really sure they are measuring what they think they are measuring. This being more pronounced amongst young people may be because working long is being seen as less and less cool, as there has been a major vibe shift among young workers regarding their relationships with employers. Doesn't necessarily mean they are actually working less, might mean they don't want to admit it.
Revealed concrete hours would be much more trustworthy
by fyrn_
5/22/2026 at 4:02:07 PM
> how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain?HN has had posts romanticizing them, maybe check those
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32622140
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41438060
> it created a massive 'zombie company' problem—a heavily discussed issue in Korea and Japan that the West seems largely blind to
Zombie companies in the west are mentioned as a low/ZIRP phenomena. But the west shouldn't have as big an issue with those because companies, when less diversified, get killed off more often by interest rate hikes.
by BJones12
5/22/2026 at 4:39:47 PM
Zombie companies exist in Europe; at least part of the euro crisis was exacerbated by the continuing cascade of bankruptcies making other banks insolvent.The EU’s crisis schemes like furloughing employees en masse dull the pain but also do prolong some companies’ lives. The US historically has had much more brutal impacts but quicker recoveries.
by bobthepanda
5/22/2026 at 11:14:32 PM
And the US ZIRP zombie companies die at some point even without rate hikesby jim33442
5/22/2026 at 5:17:37 PM
Japanese and American companies have different purposes.In Japan the corporation primarily provides stable income and employment for society, and secondarily returns on capital invested. In America, corporations primarily provide returns on capital invested and secondarily provide stable income and employment.
This shows up in the data too. Japanese corporations are less likely to go out of business but provide worse investment returns. American corporations provide better investment returns, but the citizens have to deal with layoffs.
Most citizens would prefer stability to growth, but I think the tradeoff has a lot of downstream consequences.
by andrewmutz
5/22/2026 at 10:23:12 PM
> Most citizens would prefer stability to growth, but I think the tradeoff has a lot of downstream consequences.People want personal stability, which in our current society means a stable job.
That doesn't have to be the case, though.
Overall, economic growth is good for society as a whole, so it makes sense that a state should encourage it as much as it can.
This means that what is good for an individual is not the same as what is good for society.
I think the ideal solution would be to keep the risk-taking in business that you need for good growth, and instead provide stability through strong social support services, like healthy unemployment insurance or UBI. That way, everyone can take risks to try to drive the economy forward, but not starve if things go poorly.
by cortesoft
5/23/2026 at 1:55:54 AM
> Overall, economic growth is good for society as a whole, so it makes sense that a state should encourage it as much as it can.The problem with basing the language in the aggregate, is implies that distribution doesn’t matter, and all modern economic models agree. This is a big problem for the reality of people living in ever increasing inequality. Money is a competitive resource, we use it to bid for real resources. If constant economic growth disproportionately goes to the already wealthy, it worsens inequality when resources to exploit become more scarce. It’s one thing to have massive swaths of untouched natural world to exploit for human benefits, but those days are long gone IMO.
by layoric
5/23/2026 at 8:24:48 PM
I think that was the point I was trying to make, that both total economic output and distribution matter. Both matter in terms of overall citizen satisfaction.If you have a very fair distribution of a very small productive output, everyone will be miserable because they don’t have enough to live. At the same time, producing a ton that only goes to a select few will also leave most people miserable.
We don’t want to go to either extreme. We want to find the best way to foster productivity while making sure everyone benefits from that productivity.
My suggestion is that you get the best of both by letting competition and innovation be rewarded, while also taking care of the ‘losers’ in that competition.
by cortesoft
5/23/2026 at 3:27:54 PM
Inequality is not "ever increasing". You should resist the urge to say everything is constantly getting worse just because that makes you look more sympathetic to the poor.(A worse issue is that inequality decreasing can mean things are getting worse for everyone.)
by astrange
5/23/2026 at 3:39:05 PM
> If constant economic growth disproportionately goes to the already wealthy, it worsens inequality when resources to exploit become more scarce.Economic growth means resources get more plentiful.
by parineum
5/23/2026 at 5:30:23 AM
If you see how Japanese CEOs live, they live a far more deprived life on the backs of their employees than any billionary CEO in the USA. Japanese companies are centered around treating most employees like indentured servants in a sweatshop so the few bosses can have giant expense accounts, vacation houses, company cars, etc.by socalgal2
5/23/2026 at 5:53:52 AM
> they live a far more deprived lifeIt took me a minute to figure out the typo ("depraved" instead of "deprived")
Japan compares much better to the US in terms of how much wealth the top 1% control. 24.6% vs 34.8% according to https://wid.world
Graph here: https://imgur.com/a/UwWvaHW
by evilos
5/23/2026 at 7:00:52 AM
That is true, but at this point in time, looking at wealth inequality in the US for comparison feels pointless, as the US can't be seen as a humanoid society anymore. By that I mean the riches of the Top 1%, and the "soon" attitude of the bottom 80% in the US feel alien, surreal, and perverted to an extent it stopped being useful as a measure for humans.by CarlitosHighway
5/23/2026 at 8:25:49 PM
If you look at the graph I linked, you can see that the world average for that statistic has consistently been higher compared to the US, though the two series have been converging lately. So according to that data the US has not been uniquely unfair, but it has been getting worse.I do think there will have to be large changes soon.
by evilos
5/23/2026 at 3:25:19 PM
Depends what you mean by "control". If you don't own a nice house, car, driver etc. but your company just happens to provide it as a perk, then you still have it.by astrange
5/23/2026 at 8:52:00 PM
That's a fair point. Is it actually common for CEOs to live on a company property? I can see how transport would be company controlled.by evilos
5/23/2026 at 10:09:31 AM
Japanese CEOs have a Toyota Crown in their garage and spend each Friday night at a kyabakura/hostess bar with a few employees. They take a trip to Hawaii twice a year.American CEOs are on the board of 8 companies but spend 5 minutes a year combined at the offices of those companies. They spend their weekends at private islands off the coast of the US Virgin Islands with other billionaires. They fire employees who ask for health care benefits or a day off. They actively endorse political candidates who went to the same private island with them and who will lengthen working hours, reduce benefits, and make it easier to fire employees. They want global surveillance to track anyone who's ever even considered saying anything bad about them. When it's possible to inject ads directly into our brains, those CEOs will force their employees to do it.
As an American who's been in Japan for a very long time and worked at Japanese companies, Japanese companies don't pay big bucks, but there are fewer deranged ultra rich people within them.
by kdheiwns
5/23/2026 at 11:59:05 AM
Depends on the scale of the company;At the biggest ones you start to see branches of the organisation dedicated to c level services... Things like a driver awake and ready to go 24/7 (for the whole family), purchasing or even building apartments.
All available in the west, but the distinction is who directly pays for these things.
by servo_sausage
5/23/2026 at 8:50:23 AM
What’s the difference exactly? I don’t think the pickers at Amazon would believe they’re living the high life thanks to the sacrifices Jeff is making.by gizajob
5/22/2026 at 6:26:16 PM
Stability is preferred to growth in the moment, but in retrospect and in comparison to others most people don’t want to give up what they have and go back in time.by therealdrag0
5/22/2026 at 6:53:11 PM
And arguably growth could lead to better overall stability in the long run, as people find employment in new companies at higher wages over time with lower overall unemployment.by jimbokun
5/22/2026 at 9:39:33 PM
> but in retrospect and in comparison to others most people don’t want to give up what they have and go back in time.And in the long-term, people start fleeing the "stable" countries for already-grown ones.
by jjmarr
5/22/2026 at 8:26:21 PM
>Japanese and American companies have different purposes. In Japan the corporation primarily provides stable income and employment for society,Are you Japanese? Because this doesn't match what I know about Japanese companies, like Sony for example, who operate in a very American way.
Your image on Japanese vs American companies feels like the copy and pasted idealistic impression of what American redditors imagine Japanese companies would be like, rather than reality.
by joe_mamba
5/22/2026 at 9:39:19 PM
The idea that Japanese companies provide more stability and lower returns on capital isn't a hypothesis, it's backed up by databy andrewmutz
5/23/2026 at 12:00:43 AM
Failed businesses also tend to provide lower returns on capital, and that’s totally backed up by data. Doesn’t mean the “purpose” of those companies was to provide lower returns on capital.by oefrha
5/23/2026 at 7:39:05 AM
The purpose of a system is what it does.by thfuran
5/23/2026 at 9:55:43 AM
This is mostly a meaningless statement that can be used in any situationby simianwords
5/22/2026 at 7:35:37 PM
Stable income and employment feels like a distant 4th nowadays. Nothing feels stable.by johnnyanmac
5/22/2026 at 7:00:44 PM
[dead]by rhdndndn
5/22/2026 at 8:29:17 PM
I'm a german software developer working for a japanese corporation in a german subsidiary. I agree with pretty much everything in your post. Especially the exhausting chain of approvals and also the unwillingness to make quick/tough decisions feels like walking through molasses at times. However, there is also an upside to this. I can actually confirm that they take quality control very serious, probably due to the losing face cultural thing if the product fails the customer and therefore rarely do quick last minute changes or crunch, because it degrades quality.by spkm
5/22/2026 at 8:53:10 PM
I worked for a software consulting company in Japan, we had a contract with a big well known company. The contract gave a precise date for the delivery with huge fines if we delivered late but there was also a long bug fixing period after the initial delivery.So we had overtime for 2 months working from 10am to 4am just so that we could deliver the "feature complete" software. If any bugs were found they were classified as either blockers (feature cannot be shown without) or scheduled to be fixed after delivery.
My boss knew it was stupid, he didn't like it but it was the standard contract from that big Japanese company and we were small and they weren't going to change that.
by sersi
5/22/2026 at 9:00:51 PM
That's a very narrow viewpoint. From the customer perspective, defect rate is only one component of the product quality vector.by nradov
5/23/2026 at 1:16:14 AM
As a fan of Nintendo (the games, not the company of course), this definitely checks out. There are exceptions, but you rarely see a new Zelda game release in the state you can expect from Bethesda.by platevoltage
5/23/2026 at 5:23:57 AM
Almost nothing in this aritcle matches the reality of my experience in Japan. Horizontal culture? In in my experience. Everything you do requires approval in triplicate. Do the wrong thing at a company and you'll get screamed at by the person who feels their job is under threat from you trying to step out of your precribed role. There's absolutely no such thing as "generalist employees" at any Japanese company I know of. I have no idea where the author got this idea.by socalgal2
5/22/2026 at 5:18:54 PM
> how Westerners idealize JapanWesterners are taught by the media and education to idealize Japan and hate China almost everywhere. They present cherry-picked aspects of both countries that make China look bad and Japan look good. In reality every country has its good and bad aspects.
This is just part of the propaganda machine and what politicians want you to believe, in an effort to align their populations to be supportive of their foreign policy and military motives. That ultimately trickles down to things like this. When people come to HN, or any place, with rose-colored glasses of Japan, they will seek confirmations of that rose color everywhere.
by qurren
5/22/2026 at 6:33:28 PM
> Westerners are taught by the media and education to idealize Japan and hate China almost everywhere.As an American educated by the American public education system and indoctrinated by American media, our government is certainly stupid and vengeful enough to make me want to support this if it were true, but it's just not. The much more banal truth is that Japan is extremely talented at exercising soft power by projecting a favorable image of itself via the media it exports, whereas China is just comparatively terrible at exercising this sort of soft power.
by kibwen
5/22/2026 at 6:58:48 PM
I suspect that’s related to China’s lower levels of individual freedom relative to Japan. Censorship does not fit well with producing powerful and influential cultural exports like manga, anime and video games.by jimbokun
5/23/2026 at 2:59:47 PM
This is supported by looking at what happened to Hong Kong cinema that was huge till the early 2000s.by ajmurmann
5/23/2026 at 7:27:10 AM
> our governmentWe're talking about media and narratives mainly.
On idealizing Japan, people here seem to think it's benefic and pushed by Japan, where I think it's more complicated. If the goal is to keep the US customers and workers in a state of fear and adversity, you need a credible threat from a somewhat powerful enemy, and idealization becomes needed.
That was Japan a few decades ago, that lead to the bashing movement, and I think it kept going t a smaller pace still, while China got set as the next unstoppable threat.
by makeitdouble
5/22/2026 at 6:45:17 PM
Not being a single-party, notionally communist dictatorship may be helping with the image too? I don't know, spitballing here.I think the default approach in the West - and that's not a US-specific thing - is to treat exotic faraway lands with a mix of curiosity and awe. But China is a geopolitical rival with a political system that rightly makes many Westerners queasy, so it doesn't benefit from that anymore.
by lacewing
5/22/2026 at 7:10:55 PM
> Not being a single-party, notionally communist dictatorship may be helping with the image too? I don't know, spitballing here.No, everyday people are perfectly content to warm to brutal dictatorships who successfully put on a friendly face. Case in point: Dubai.
by kibwen
5/22/2026 at 10:46:16 PM
I don't think there are many people in the West who profess love for the UAE. But there are several reasons why it's not as disliked. First, it's a monarchy, and monarchies are harder to parse, given that many European countries are notionally monarchies too. Second, it's not by any stretch of imagination a serious geopolitical or economic threat to the West. Third, although it is authoritarian, by most third-party assessments, it's not nearly as authoritarian as China.by lacewing
5/23/2026 at 7:39:06 AM
People seemingly often forget how brutal Chinese authoritarianism can be. I don't know whether it's the fault of the news or if it's selective amnesia, but there are few worse cases of authoritarianism than the country that welded people into their apartments.by Pay08
5/23/2026 at 12:56:05 PM
You're giving people too much credit. People in general simply do not care about whether or not a government has committed atrocities, even when that includes their own government, as long as they think (rightly or wrongly (usually wrongly)) that atrocities won't be happening to them.by kibwen
5/23/2026 at 11:18:30 AM
Laugh in Plaza Accord and 80s anti Japan scare. At one point American was more concerned with Japanese economy than Soviet lmao/by eunos
5/23/2026 at 3:01:12 PM
Not being worried annoy the Soviet economy makes sense thoughby ajmurmann
5/24/2026 at 11:51:48 AM
Is not economy per se. Japanese economy was putting more pressure than Soviet military in perceptionby eunos
5/22/2026 at 6:08:08 PM
Is it propaganda though? Japan is more aligned with ‘the west’ not only in geopolitics but in the system of governance that was imposed upon it by via USA occuptation. Whereas China has a very different political system that is generally poorly understood and distrusted. Regardless, I don’t know where you’re from, but I see plenty of idolizing of China and how it manages to solve big problems at speeds unseen outside of mobilization in other parts of the globe. China-studies are a big thing at the moment. The positive view of Japan probably flows from its postwar boom years and popculture exports. China is at the moment being viewed with suspicion over its military buildup near Taiwan and creeping authoritarianism under Xi. This could all change again in the future depending on the actions China will take.by user____name
5/22/2026 at 6:43:01 PM
> but I see plenty of idolizing of China and how it manages to solve big problems at speeds unseenThis is actually a great example for extant romanticization of China. People lauding Chinese expediency in the context of industry and construction often don't realize it's almost entirely enabled by extreme underregulation and underenforcement of industrial safety standards. Chinese people themselves will often point this out, though depending on the person they may frame it more in a style of "The West is slow because of all of the red tape!"
Of the subset of Westerners who are aware of this, sometimes I have to balk at how many of them will take that framing to heart and paint it as a positive thing. Even most Chinese don't have a positive view of it, not in reality. At most it's a tragic necessity required to build China up, though younger Chinese rightly tend to see it for what it is: corporate exploitation of laborers.
Of course in the context of solving political problems, the Politburo readily cutting through its own invented problems is another matter.
by ux266478
5/22/2026 at 7:01:58 PM
The recent Abundance movement on the left argues strongly that progress has been held back by over regulation and bureaucratic processes.by jimbokun
5/22/2026 at 8:12:46 PM
Does it? I’ve seen Ezra Klein talk about his book and he talked about how bureaucracy is frequently a scapegoat for getting things done. Europe is very bureaucratic yet is able to build. The issue he called out is red tape yes but more so litigation by the private citizen. That any individual can stop an apartment being built because it blocks morning light into their flower bedby adamwk
5/23/2026 at 3:22:10 PM
Isn't he for relaxing zoning? Arguably one of the main pieces of red tape leading to the housing crisisby ajmurmann
5/22/2026 at 9:32:16 PM
Those law suits are made possible by the regulations.by jimbokun
5/22/2026 at 11:44:09 PM
They're made possible because all but the most frivolous lawsuits are not disincentivized, but are in fact tolerated as a tacit, systemic feature by the state and the bar association. The example given is a stalling tactic. Stalling tactics also exist in China through property rights, it's a weird thing to hold up as contrast. Having a right to the house you own is such a fundamentally important thing to have in a society. That it can be abused because bureaucracy will tolerate it out of epistemic humility doesn't change that fact.by ux266478
5/22/2026 at 11:14:09 PM
Good thing voters are skeptical of abundance or they have never heard of it (like 90% of democratic party members have never heard of abundance).Thank fuck too. Neoliberalism sucks, along with EK + DT.
by shimman
5/23/2026 at 12:00:26 AM
It’s hilarious to me all the progressives like yourself absolutely losing their shit over someone saying they want government to be more effective and accomplish things instead of just spending tons of money and nothing actually changing.by jimbokun
5/23/2026 at 1:00:12 AM
Can you please tell me which politician runs on making the government worse? No single electoral campaign has ever said "I'm running to make the government less effective." Trump ran on making the government more effective, Harris ran on making the government more effective.Turns out you need more that just vague platitudes than "things should be better."
No shit dude. Welcome to the ground floor everyone agrees with.
This is why EK is such a fucking dork. Go follow some organizers with your preferred beliefs, that would do you better than listening to the smart boy thinking very smart things and if you disagree with the smart boy you aren't a serious adult.
by shimman
5/22/2026 at 7:15:44 PM
> People lauding Chinese expediency in the context of industry and construction often don't realize it's almost entirely enabled by extreme underregulation and underenforcement of industrial safety standardsKind of like Tesla's latest factories, or DR Horton building homes with massive problems from day 1?
Or Silicon Valley being a collection of superfund cleanup sites?
Or just the environmental pollution, in general, in Texas?
No one has figured out how to balance growth with safety. Ideally it shouldn't be hard, the total amount of money saved is pennies compared to the overall investment, but making everyone follow the rules via regulations ends to being a huge cost and time multiplier.
by com2kid
5/22/2026 at 8:26:09 PM
The more direct comparison is the blue collar working conditions throughout the west in the late 19th and early 20th centuries actually. It is true that environmental protections could be much better in the United States, did you assume I would disagree or find it shocking? Why?> but making everyone follow the rules via regulations ends to being a huge cost and time multiplier.
The cost and extra time it takes saves lives. That's the bottom line. It's your attitude that gets people maimed and killed.
by ux266478
5/23/2026 at 6:20:11 AM
> The cost and extra time it takes saves lives. That's the bottom line. It's your attitude that gets people maimed and killed.My argument, and I should have made it clearer, is that we are paying a huge penalty for people who are dishonest. The amount of money they save by being dishonest and endangering others is generally tiny, but the cost to society to prevent the dishonesty is huge in the form of regulations.
by com2kid
5/22/2026 at 6:21:13 PM
Hate China? I don’t see that. There are plenty of factual reports about the CCP that are pretty damning, but the people/culture/place is generally perceived postively other than being a competitor…by mrkstu
5/22/2026 at 7:38:03 PM
> I don’t see that.You seem to be an American so I'm very confused. You'd have to be willingfully blind at this point to not see the anti-chinese propaganda that has been going on in America for (at least) the past decade.
by tredre3
5/22/2026 at 9:23:21 PM
Is the propaganda false?by nradov
5/23/2026 at 1:52:37 PM
by and large yes.by fooster
5/23/2026 at 7:24:18 AM
This is a not even wrong sort of misunderstanding to the realities of real politik. Your confusion is simple. You are unaware of the geopolitical games played at this level.It is true there is anti Chinese propaganda but that is neither here nor there since posturing in this way is simply what competing world powers do.
Look past the institutional framing. The citizenry of all countries on this world are in reality on the same side far more often than opposed. The average American worker, Chinese worker, Russian worker, all want the same things: stability, prosperity, a future worth living.
It is in the self interest of states to promote nationalism and construct out-groups.
But that does not mean ordinary people should internalize such division. A wise citizenry knows to separate the notion of geopolitical competition from hatred towards ordinary citizens/culture of other countries, no matter what the state apparatus tries to tell them.
by stevenhuang
5/22/2026 at 9:16:35 PM
Decade? At least as long as I've been alive and I'm very "mid-career".by esseph
5/22/2026 at 5:58:34 PM
From what I’ve seen, the opposite is often true. Western leftist mainstream media frequently portrays Japan as a racist and declining society.Meanwhile, on platforms like YouTube and communities such as Hacker News, the bias is even much stronger. China, along with the broader “Axis of Resistance” and third worldist camp (though China arguably doesn’t fully belong there), is often praised, while the West, including Japan, receives disproportionate criticism.
by h8hawk
5/22/2026 at 5:57:17 PM
I disagree. People still trade, travel, and visit both countries regularly. Even if some media outlets are biased against China, that doesn’t mean Japan need to be idealized, it proves nothing. Your comments come across as more like propaganda.by ExoticTiger
5/22/2026 at 7:10:56 PM
So in a discussion about a Korean’s view of an American’s view of Japan, you bring up China, and you’re the one complaining about propaganda?by YurgenJurgensen
5/24/2026 at 4:11:36 AM
What I find weird is that they idolize Japan but not South Korea. South Korean is as much a western ally as Japan and share many of the same social ills as Japan, but the typical western perspective on it is a lot more negative.by pibaker
5/22/2026 at 5:56:32 PM
I really don't really think there's much political or propaganda interest in getting Westerners to idealize Japan, at this point.Now back in the 80s? Back in the 80s, despite being aligned with the West, they were perceived a lot like China is today. Everyone was scared that they were going to start eating the West's lunch and various negative stereotypes and exaggerations started to bubble up: it was a futuristic land, but a futuristic land of suicides, with little drone-like salarymen crammed into little shoebox apartments the size of a Western bathroom, working 20 hour days.
Between the Plaza Accords and the bubble bursting and decade after decade of Lost Decades, the Japanese threat was successfully neutralized. I think Cool Japan is mostly something they've earned for themselves, frankly.
by wk_end
5/22/2026 at 6:11:45 PM
> Now back in the 80s? Back in the 80s, despite being aligned with the West, they were perceived a lot like China is today. Everyone was scared that they were going to start eating the West's lunch and various negative stereotypes and exaggerations started to bubble up: it was a futuristic land, but a futuristic land of suicides, with little drone-like salarymen crammed into little shoebox apartments the size of a Western bathroom, working 20 hour days.Yep. A lot of cyberpunk fiction from that time that demonized corporate influence and power was inspired by the rise and perceptions of Japanese technology companies.
I can remember one of the American news magazine shows, maybe 20/20, showing a Japanese school with long hours and intense discipline and contrasting it with fat, illiterate American kids (the same stereotypes were made about the Soviet Union).
A lot of the perception of Japan, especially among Gen X and younger, is influenced from exports of Japanese culture. Nintendo, JRPGs, Manga, Anime, and even the quirky stuff reflects well on the Japanese though American eyes. No propaganda is needed.
by trentnix
5/22/2026 at 5:58:10 PM
> it was a futuristic land, but a futuristic land of suicides, with little drone-like salarymen crammed into little shoebox apartments the size of a Western bathroom, working 20 hour days.So basically just what the west is becoming?
by blowscum
5/22/2026 at 6:24:54 PM
Not really? If I were to describe the issues inflicting the west, none of too-small homes, high suicide rates, or an economy based on long hours of white collar work would immediately come to mind.Rather, the west seems to be characterized mostly by insanely expensive housing caused by an extreme antipathy towards denser housing as populations grow, and a K-shaped economy where white collar coastal elites are actually doing relatively well but everyone else - namely blue collar and service workers - are doing worse and worse. Suicide rates aren't rising dramatically, and are nowhere near where they were in Japan at their peak in the 80s, which itself was always overstated (they were higher than they were in the US at the time, but were comparable to many other western countries).
by wk_end
5/23/2026 at 3:30:13 PM
> everyone else - namely blue collar and service workers - are doing worse and worse* better and better
by astrange
5/22/2026 at 6:10:24 PM
The US under trillionare leadership, certainly.by user____name
5/23/2026 at 11:28:13 AM
> little shoebox apartments the size of a Western bathroomYou mean, American bathroom.
Apartments in major Europe cities aren't that much bigger than Japanese but for sure the bathroom sucks.
by eunos
5/22/2026 at 8:13:34 PM
> part of the propaganda machine and what politicians want you to believeAlternatively it could be due to emergent outcomes from our societies and systems.
Is there a word or concept that explains the idea that "people in power are controlling us"? Maybe the word is related to hierarchy? I also see it in conspiracy thinking (Rothschild, lizard people). The assumption that somebody is in charge manipulating us, and that we can discern their motives based on what their incentives are imagined to be.
A past example might be the red menace - which appeared to me to be part of US culture (politicians pushed it but I think they also took advantage of a natural us-versus-them zeitgeist). People seem to collectively desire a labeled enemy (you also see it about sports teams).
Or see the sibling comment "banal truth is that Japan is extremely talented at exercising soft power by projecting a favorable image of itself" where manipulation is imagined as the base cause. I just don't see the world that way (apart from the scientific difficultly of discerning cause versus effect in human systems).
Maybe it is just all memes.
Individually even very well educated people don't seem to see systems and effects of systems: e.g. every thread about economics e.g. politicians pretending they are in charge when systems have fucked them.
by robocat
5/22/2026 at 6:56:01 PM
China being an autocratic, authoritarian system with galling human rights abuses may have something to do with it, too.(For the record, I would put Japan above both China and the US at the moment in that regard.)
by jimbokun
5/23/2026 at 3:18:21 AM
for what it's worth, back when i was in b-schoo, the predominant theory for the existence of large, diversified Asian conglomerates (Japanese keiretsu is a prime example, but it's not unique to Japan. Similar entities exist in S.Korea and Thailand, among other places) is the friction of starting and doing businesses in these countries. Startups there have such a hard time getting funded and landing clients, that the financing aspect alone give the conglomerates enough of an advantage to edge out startups, despite the inefficiencies typical of large organizations (and in this the Japanese corporate giants are no better than IBM or GE).this theory is typically mentioned when introducing the Theory of the Firm, i.e. why do companies exist at all? why not everyone just freelances, and when you need a marketing/finance/legal/coding person, you just contract one on the free market? the idea is that there are always frictions when doing business with someone new (is this person good? trust worthy? how do i find out?), and how much friction there is determines how big the firm will grow (to incorporate functions in-house, or expand to other industries).
in a perfect frictionless economy, it could indeed be true that business transactions all happen at the smallest unit, i.e. the individual. at the other extreme, there would just be one firm that coordinates all economic activities. all real world economies sit some where in between.
by fhe
5/22/2026 at 4:32:40 PM
>This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is that this system is heavily driven by Japan's unique, subtle classism. It's a highly collectivist society with strict age-based milestones and immense pressure to secure traditional employment. In Japan, your corporate affiliation often dictates your social standing.Related: In most of the world, carmakers separate out a luxury brand from their other products: Honda with Acura, Toyota with Lexus, etc. In Japan, they don't. The explanation I usually get is that the culture primarily associates luxury with "being attached to the big-name corporation". So you don't really improve on that by introducing another smaller brand, even one you build up as luxury.
See also the patio11 comment:
>>My salary was $30k, but there is some tangible value in having a pocket full of business cards which practically read "Attention, person who has just been handed this card: give the bearer whatever he wants. We're good for it. If you don't, we will remember." That status is very much not the same as the one you get if you combine two part-time jobs into the same level of income.
by SilasX
5/22/2026 at 4:51:59 PM
Are you saying that in Japan they sell Acura as Honda, and Lexus as Toyota?by QuercusMax
5/22/2026 at 6:23:07 PM
Acura has never been used in Japan. NSX and Integra are Honda models. Toyota introduced Lexus domestically in 2005. Their older Lexus models had Toyota equivalents, often as variants of the Toyota Crown which was their original luxury tier car.by kevin_thibedeau
5/22/2026 at 5:37:47 PM
Lexus didn't enter the Japanese market as a brand until 2005, prior to that all Lexus models well sold under the Toyota moniker in the Japanese market. I'm not sure about Acura, but the GP's assertion is largely correct in its directionality.by tristor
5/22/2026 at 6:08:34 PM
I can confirm this is true for Acura. I owned an Acura Legend and the same car was sold in Japan (well, the right-hand drive version) as the Honda Legend. I had seen pictures of them online in the 90s, but happened to see a Honda Legend in person when I was in Tokyo some years later.by tomwheeler
5/22/2026 at 6:19:09 PM
Acura is a brand made for North America. Just as in Japan, what you know as Acuras is sold in Europe as Hondas.by marek77
5/22/2026 at 6:10:42 PM
That is accurate. Acura and Lexus were brands created for the US market. The original Integra was badged as Honda in Japan and Acura in the US, for example. A TLX or whatever is just a top trim Accord.by redwall_hp
5/22/2026 at 4:03:15 PM
> if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain?Speaking for myself, I'd find that very interesting! I just stumbled over an article about it a few days ago, and don't think it's weird that different parts of the world would be interested in a regional business phenomenon.
by mhluongo
5/23/2026 at 4:27:39 PM
Working in japanese software company with Toyota.It's not at all like in the article, it's not horizontal, and very much hierchcal and rigid.
And it can be seen in japanese software, it looks like it was designed from request sheet without actually understanding why. It's often nonsensical and extremely convoluted.
Most of the good japanese software is actually developed in the west by subcontractors. For example Sony games
by amfern
5/22/2026 at 4:43:53 PM
> It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain?I'd be pleasantly surprised, very impressed and it would make me reach out to have an offline chat. Not exaggerating.
by deaux
5/22/2026 at 6:44:17 PM
Yes, objectively these characteristics of Japanese corporations seem like inefficiencies in the "free market".Lack of mobility across companies (no price discovery on wages), lack of specialization (no focus), age based hierarchy (anti-meritocratic). None of these sound good for a well-tuned system.
I suspect much of Japan's stagnation is due to this system.
by LZ_Khan
5/22/2026 at 4:58:53 PM
In Japan, your corporate affiliation often dictates your social standing.This is absolutely true in the US as well, by the way. People will treat you differently if you work for a FAANG company. People take a lot of pride in telling others they work for one. And we even have a word for someone who used to work for Google, for instance.
by booleandilemma
5/22/2026 at 6:21:44 PM
Yeah, a friend of mine from college works for Waymo (Google-adjacent) and I've overheard wives of local friends bugging their husbands to try and work him for an in.by neutronicus
5/22/2026 at 5:52:05 PM
In my opinion, this comes from the 70s and 80s where there was very real concern that Japan was going to surpass the US economically. Many companies in the US attempted to adopt Japanese methods in manufacturing and other areas, media then inherited further Japanisms. There is also an historic backdrop of westerners viewing Japan as a mysterious civilization on the far side of the globe dating back to the 1500s.by lumost
5/23/2026 at 6:50:16 AM
Thank you for this post. I am a "Westener" who lived in Japan for 6 years. Boy, was that eye-opening in terms of "the map and the territory". Basically nothing is what it seems to be - and unfortunately the positive things mostly turn out to be nationalism-motivated make-believe, wishful thinking, or only made possible by extremely lax attitudes to amassing public debt (any country could make the trains run on time if they were ready sell their future for it).Western Japanophiles, especially from the US, and even if they speak the language and have lived there, are mostly ignorant and their idea of Japan is a full phantasy.
by CarlitosHighway
5/23/2026 at 8:56:59 AM
The UK is in the process of spending £100billion of public debt to build a “high speed” train line to connect the northern cities to London. Except it’s been shortened in length to not connect those cities and will instead run only to Birmingham less than 200km away, keeps getting reduced in speed, and can probably be guaranteed not to run on time. So for me it seems like any county could make the trains run with infinite money, but in the country which invented the train we still can’t.by gizajob
5/23/2026 at 7:27:49 AM
I think it's the density of Californians, and that Japanese culture, food, second language etc. is popular there probably not least due to their relative proximity.If HN was Brit-dominated, while less romanticised perhaps we probably would seem oddly fascinated with say France, to our minority members elsewhere.
by OJFord
5/22/2026 at 6:40:19 PM
I think you need to step back and look at why those people write such things.There are people who romanticize Japan/Asia because they never were there and it is not attainable for them.
There are people who romanticize Japan/Asia because they have direct business interests to do so like selling dreams to the first group.
by ozim
5/22/2026 at 6:01:02 PM
Agree with the meta point. I worked in Korea and Japan and loved the culture but when I moved to the west I was surprised to see how people over here fantasize about their (imo inefficient) corporate cultures.This particular article was decently nuanced though.
by niyikiza
5/22/2026 at 9:35:56 PM
I think one thing that's happening is that they're good at things we're frustratingly bad at, and bad at things we don't even realize we're good at, so they get used as an example an awful lot.by BobaFloutist
5/22/2026 at 5:40:10 PM
I pretty much agree. While any semblance of a "horizontal" dynamic in Japanese software development was perhaps realized in embedded systems around 40 years ago (e.g., rice cookers with fuzzy logic, or, in a different sense of _lateral_, Gunpei Yokoi’s famous philosophy of "Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology"), software has traditionally been undervalued in Japan. This historical neglect has ultimately contributed to the decline of our consumer electronics industry. (Though personally, I still don’t see why a toaster or a fridge needs to be connected to the internet.)IMO, the tight-knit division of labor between Toyota and its subcontractors is a slightly different story from the broad diversification within a single corporation. While the latter was historically bolstered by strong industry-academia ties (often driven by university cliques), we rarely see this kind of broad diversification happening in recent years. That said, Japan's traditional "membership-based" employment system, combined with a cultural reluctance to shut down unprofitable business units, is likely what has allowed this diversification to persist for so long.
In any case, Japanese companies are currently struggling with the friction between their traditional corporate culture and the superficial adoption of Western concepts like DX, Agile, meritocracy, job-based employment, and a startup-centric mindset. I suspect Korea might be facing similar structural clashes, though perhaps you are adapting at a much faster pace.
by usagisushi
5/22/2026 at 5:46:30 PM
[dead]by jdw64
5/22/2026 at 4:11:12 PM
As someone who finds Japanese corporate culture interesting or even desirable in some ways, it definitely doesn't seem like the most efficient way to run a company. And I'm sure there are plenty of cultural aspects that would not be my cup of tea.by MetaWhirledPeas
5/22/2026 at 4:55:49 PM
I've worked for an American megacorp and the branch office of a Japanese company. The Japanese company felt a lot more humane on balance, though it doesn't express as well when I write it.The Japanese company had some rituals were a bit weird, but harmless/charmingly quaint like mandatory volunteer days, keeping a copy of the founder's precepts on my desk for executive walkthroughs. They also had some bad tendencies, like praising employees for being there at 6AM/8PM. If something didn't work, they'd give it a bit of runway to see if it could pull through before cutting back. When there were layoffs, it was the whole division failing (each division competed with the others). It's hard to imagine what kind of political statements would have been offensive to that employer, it was just a neutral job. Really, the worst part was subpar compensation (and I still felt spoiled compared to Japanese coworkers).
My next job was at an American megacorp. The executives would give a holiday speech about "social responsibility" and how well we were doing, then layoff a factory. The employer was constantly involving themselves with US national politics, but employees were expected to refrain from having political opinions of their own.
by AlotOfReading
5/22/2026 at 5:27:16 PM
> The employer was constantly involving themselves with US national politics, but employees were expected to refrain from having political opinions of their own.Reminds me of my first job in state government where the incredibly underpaid workers had to go through bureaucratic paperwork if they needed a second job to pay the rent (ostensibly because of the conflict of interest risk)
Yet the governor was a known slumlord. I’m sure there’s no potential conflict of interest there.
by blowscum
5/23/2026 at 3:56:30 PM
> The employer was constantly involving themselves with US national politics, but employees were expected to refrain from having political opinions of their own.During work hours or after work hours (for both)?
by parineum
5/23/2026 at 7:26:18 PM
Both. Though it's a bit hard to meaningfully distinguish the two when the president is showing up for photoshoots and regular meetings are held on what government official X thinks on topic Y.by AlotOfReading
5/22/2026 at 5:23:50 PM
Let me summarise your post: Pro-corporation, anti-employee.by throwaway2037
5/22/2026 at 9:28:07 PM
Not really sure how you got either of those, but you do you.by AlotOfReading
5/22/2026 at 4:22:22 PM
You’re right and that’s intentional. Japanese companies don’t optimize for efficiently but for longevity. Sometimes those things go hand in hand. Sometimes they don’t.by koliber
5/22/2026 at 4:39:29 PM
> It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HNMost HNers tend to be in their mid-30s to 50s so a lot of Japan-philia does appear to stem from an older mental image from the 1990s to 2010s.
> This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is that this system is heavily driven by Japan's unique, subtle classism. It's a highly collectivist society with strict age-based milestones and immense pressure to secure traditional employment. In Japan, your corporate affiliation often dictates your social standing...
The Japanese Keiretsu and later Trust Bank model is the norm in South Korea, Taiwan, China, and other Asian countries as well due to a mix of colonial, financial, and policymaking ties.
by alephnerd
5/22/2026 at 6:02:09 PM
I like Japan for its cuisine mostly.And people take pride in what they do, and try their best.
by ExoticPearTree
5/22/2026 at 6:25:47 PM
This is still a form of orientalism which OP is pointing out. Japanese people don't work better or worse than anyone else, and most commenters think all yellow faces look the same and thus can't differentiate between a Japanese, Chinese, or Vietnamese working behind the counter at a konbini let alone other services jobs where Westerners are most likely to interface with.by alephnerd
5/22/2026 at 6:59:24 PM
> and most commenters think all yellow faces look the same and thus can't differentiate between a Japanese, Chinese, or Vietnamese working behind the counter at a konbini let alone other services jobs where Westerners are most likely to interface with.This seems quite presumptuous, and not all that different from the orientalism you're accusing OP of.
by poncho_romero
5/22/2026 at 7:21:20 PM
Presumptuous yes. Orientalism no.Orientalism in the standard definition means the Western tendency to view non-Western societies in an "othered" or exotic gaze, be it in either a pedestaling or derogatory context.
Think yellow fever, weebs, ad nauseum conversations about Japan (and Asia in general) on HN and Reddit.
by alephnerd
5/22/2026 at 4:48:28 PM
You are correct. Japans system was ahead of its time back then and was heavily imported into Korea. The flaws I pointed out are not strictly a Japanese problem it's really an issue shared across all of East Asia.by jdw64
5/22/2026 at 4:47:01 PM
Can you expand on what's new post 2010?by dfedbeef
5/22/2026 at 5:44:28 PM
1. Japan has become much "chiller" from a work culture perspective, with hours worked being comparable to those of the UK and Ireland [0] thanks to regulatory changes in the 2010s.2. While conglomerates remain prominent, a new generation of large Western-style employers like Rakuten, Mercari, LY, SoftBank, etc have arisen and operate with American-style (and -educated) management, and the stereotypical "salaryman" lifestyle is on it's last legs.
3. Japan has quietly become an immigration driven society. A major reason behind the rise of Takechi's faction in the LDP as well as Sanseito is because of the post-2019 immigration boom [1]. Going from less that 1% overseas born residents to around 4% in roughly 5 years was a massive shift socially and impacted both blue and white collar employment in Japan.
4. Japan has culturally shifted to be accepting of an offensive military posture. You see this shift in Japanese media (eg. SnK, Nippon Sangoku) as well as Japanese foreign policy [2]. A more muscular Japan with a chip on their back is arising.
5. Younger Japanese are more open to calling out tourists and Westerners when they do weird or weeb s#it or treat Japan as their own Disneyland. They now treat Westerners the same way they treat other non-Japanese people now. The mindset shift I've noticed is an "us" (which now includes Koreans and Taiwanese) versus "them" which now includes everyone else.
----
Ironically, I think contemporary South Korea is closer to the image that HNers have of Japan versus Japan today.
[0] - https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html
[1] - https://www.cw.com.tw/article/5136468
[2] - https://www.foreignaffairs.com/japan/return-japanese-hard-po...
by alephnerd
5/22/2026 at 6:26:16 PM
I'd largely question the accuracy of point 1 IN PRACTICE. Japan is notorious for uncounted and unpaid overtime, vacation days no one takes, and paternal leave you'd better not think of if you don't want to instantly become your division's outcast. I worked in a host of countries, including the UK and Japan (the latter about a decade ago - I'd be surprised if things had diametrally changed since that time). The actual work hours are not remotely comparable. (In fact the UK is one of the locales where I worked the least in terms of actual hours. Much less than in France, where they're supposed to be slackers... So generally I call BS on these stats.)by marek77
5/22/2026 at 10:18:09 PM
Yes but 2 ends up being a good check on 1 in the higher productivity ends of the knowledge work economy in Japan. I'd disagree a bit in degree to what alephnerd says and additionally think a lot of the actual "zangyou" ("overtime") work that Japanese do today involves drinking with the boss or going on business trips, but think his comment is largely correct. I also think the insistence in Japanese doing on-site work in Japan leads to a lot of inefficiency that Western businesses and governments have largely left behind 10-15 years ago.I actually find the Western unawareness of how Japan has become an immigrant society, especially in service roles, to be hilarious. It's by far the biggest Japanese social change in the last 20 years probably up there with growing acceptance of LGBT lifestyles and is a massive, divisive political issue in Japan now. Also further goes to show how much idealized othering happens in these discussions.
The average konbini service worker a foreigner interacts with in Tokyo is going to be an immigrant. 12 years ago, I only met a handful of immigrant service workers.
by Karrot_Kream
5/22/2026 at 11:32:53 PM
> I also think the insistence in Japanese doing on-site work in Japan leads to a lot of inefficiency that Western businesses and governments have largely left behind 10-15 years ago.A lot of that is operational as well - historically, the only other country with a large Japanese speaking population was South Korea, but salaries there have largely aligned and the post-1990s generation switched to concentrating on English instead of Japanese fluency. China has started to fill that gap though (hence why Chinese immigrants in Japan are viewed the same way as Indians are in Canada).
Basically, a company that whose entire internal documentation, communication, archive, and processes were always in Japanese will always bias in favor of hiring Japanese fluent employees, most of whom live in Japan and are Japanese.
You see the same thing in European countries as well, but the difference is it's easier for a German or French company to find talent somewhere else that is German or French fluent (eg. Turkiye/Poland or Morocco/Romania/ respectively).
The newer gen companies have a strong English muscle, but those are also the kinds of companies that are happy shifting hiring overwhelmingly to India or ASEAN.
by alephnerd
5/23/2026 at 12:53:52 AM
Sorry I don't mean Japanese firms hiring Japanese workers, I understand that's largely due to language fluency. I meant how much in-person work happens in remote branches. So many Japanese shakaijin friends at Japanese companies are taking constant business trips around the country to do things that a video call and an email thread would do in the West. It helps that transportation in Japan is ubiquitous and cheap so it's fairly easy to go on-site, but it still ends up wasting a lot of time and productivity that I don't think Western firms have to deal with.by Karrot_Kream
5/22/2026 at 6:28:59 PM
See, this is the issue. Karoshi/unpaid overtime in white collar work largely ended as a practice in Japan by the 2010s due to legal changes and enforcement via the 2018 labor reforms and a tight labor market.Yet you see the same tropes peddled ad nauseum. I may as well use the same priors for Poland in 2026 as I would in the 2000s then when it was Europe's punching bag.
The reality is stuff changes.
by alephnerd
5/22/2026 at 4:31:10 PM
I'll preface this by saying there are lots of other factors at play, but here's an interesting one I can speak to personally:Car culture. We're a very car-centric society, and the Japanese auto makers have been a part everyday life to 3 full generations of Americans now. Even most Baby Boomers are too young to remember a world without Honda or Toyota. Across all age groups, a lot more Americans grew up with a fondness for their family's Toyota than their family's Hyundai.
I grew up in middle America. Both my grandfathers were "GM Men" if you will. Partly by vocation, partly by culture. On both sides of my family, every car was either a Chevy or a Buick. When my folks bought a Honda in 2007, it was treated like a scandal. But yknow what? Now one of my cousins has a Hyundai, and nobody batted an eye. Things are changing, even for the "raise hell praise Dale" crowd.
Japan's car makers, and their other industrials have a 40-year head start on embedding themselves in the American zeitgeist. Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Yamaha, they've all been here a really long time. They're loved because they're familiar. That's a bias, and I think that bias colors the way we talk about east Asian businesses more broadly.
by ryukoposting
5/22/2026 at 5:28:01 PM
> We're a very car-centric society, and the Japanese auto makers have been a part everyday life to 3 full generations of Americans now.
I keep writing this over and over again on HN: There are NO highly developed non-micro states that are not car centric outside of major cities. Yes, literally, Japan, outside of a few large cities, is incredibly car centric. Sure, the cars are small and cute, but it is defintely car centric!
> Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Yamaha, they've all been here a really long time.
by throwaway2037
5/22/2026 at 6:39:25 PM
> There are NO highly developed non-micro states that are not car centric outside of major cities.That's an argument. Lack of density means that public transportation is hard to have enough scale. But the US is uniquely bad at both density but also lack of transportation options. In countries like the UK and France (just because I'm familiar with them, I'm not claiming they're the only ones or it's something unique to them) even small towns have a regular bus or train connection to elsewhere. Might not be the best frequency, but it's there. In the US even multi hundred thousand people cities have literally nothing other than cars as an option.
So there are layers of car centricity. And considering most people live in cities, in countries like most of the developed world, the majority of the population has the option of at least decent transit. You know which countries are the exception.
by sofixa
5/22/2026 at 6:47:16 PM
Your response is excellent. > So there are layers of car centricity
by throwaway2037
5/22/2026 at 7:22:50 PM
>In the US even multi hundred thousand people cities have literally nothing other than cars as an option.I'd be interested in hearing an example or two of cities in the U.S. with populations greater than 200,000 that don't have a bus system.
by Jblx2
5/23/2026 at 1:27:23 PM
There is also a distinction between "has a bus system" and "the bus system is actually usuable". Say you want to take the bus to jury duty, but calculate that you would need to wake up at something like three in the morning to catch the so-and-so to downtown, and then another bus out to where the jury place is (trip time: multiple hours, assuming all goes well), in addition to the usual playing Frogger across a stroad or two, or even more walking to maybe find legal road crossing facilities for humans, assuming they exist. And that was in a city with a relatively good (for America) bus system.by tolciho
5/22/2026 at 7:56:10 PM
Arlington, Texas is an illustrious example. Almost 400k people and it has nothing.by sofixa
5/22/2026 at 8:14:06 PM
Interesting. Thanks for the example.https://arlingtonnetwork.com/arlington-mass-transit-rideshar...
by Jblx2
5/22/2026 at 6:52:29 PM
I think when people criticize America for being car centric, they mean that even urban and suburban areas often rely solely on car travel (e.g. Houston). Cars in rural/less developed areas are perfectly reasonable.by poncho_romero
5/23/2026 at 4:55:21 AM
I think the criticism is misguided. In Japan, Saitama and Kanagawa prefectures (north and south of Tokyo -- the commuter belt), huge swaths have very poor mass transit. They drive a lot! Pick any mid-sized Japanese city: Most people are drivers. There might only be two train lines in the whole city. With the exception of the three (maybe five) biggest cities in Japan, people living in suburban areas are all mostly drivers.by throwaway2037
5/22/2026 at 7:18:14 PM
> outside of a few large citiesYeah and this is the exact reason why people call the US car-centric. Only in the US the large cities are car-centric too. You just proved the parent comment's point.
> They came for a single reason: To avoid import tariffs. Please stop romanticising this for any other reason.
You're hallucinating. There is zero romanticization in the parent comment about why they came to the US.
by raincole
5/22/2026 at 6:52:31 PM
> They came for a single reason: To avoid import tariffs. Please stop romanticising this for any other reason.Where did I suggest they came for any particular reason? I just said they got here first. They've had more time to become entrenched in people's lives than the Korean or Chinese companies that followed. That's all! Nothing "romantic" here!
At no point did I indicate any nostalgia for the idiosyncracies of the "GM patriarch" family. Is that what you're suggesting?
And yeah, "we" is Americans. As evidenced by the sentence that starts with "I grew up in middle America."
I genuinely don't understand this comment. It's like you saw "we're a car-centric society," stopped reading, and started typing.
by ryukoposting
5/22/2026 at 8:20:32 PM
What? All of these companies have been major importers to the USA since the 80s or earlier. I don't see how tariffs have anything to do with how embedded Japanese electronics and cars are embedded into American culture.by yurishimo
5/22/2026 at 6:06:53 PM
Yep. Growing up in the 90s, Japan was the undisputed king of cool, affordable entry level sports cars. RX-7, Integra, Impreza WRX, et al.Yamaha, Korg an Roland were the defining instrument producers of the 80s and 90s. Few things have altered the course of popular music as much as the TR-909 and TR-808, M1, DX-7, Juno, Jupiter. All of electronic music grew out of those.
The Walkman and Discman were iconic.
Honda was building P3 and ASIMO. The PlayStation 1/2 and Nintendo 64/GameCube were a thing.
I didn't even get into anime, the language or music from there until decades later. But all of the cool things came from Japan back then. Honestly, they still kind of do.
by redwall_hp
5/23/2026 at 2:27:35 AM
As the owner of a Juno 106, I can't disagree. In the 90's, to me, it was Panasonic video gear that I found amazing. Had to take apart a couple of toughbooks tonight, and they are great little machines.Although, to me, what I've always loved about Japan is how they will take every medium that arrives on the scene and treat it with loving craftsmanship. From jazz to skateboarding to yo-yos.
by ompogUe
5/23/2026 at 4:58:19 PM
Exactly. There's a lot of value placed on expert craftsmanship or just...being an extreme nerd about some niche thing, as well as on the act of creating things. Whatever you're interested in, there's some random person in Japan who's really good at it.It resonates with me, because I get uncomfortable if I do too much passive consumption and am not making something.
by redwall_hp
5/22/2026 at 7:06:56 PM
If anything Korean culture might be even cooler than Japanese culture in the US right now.by jimbokun
5/22/2026 at 7:57:31 PM
I know what you mean. It's like I woke up one day and everything was Kpop Demon Hunters.by ryukoposting
5/22/2026 at 5:42:14 PM
Mondragon gets glazed on HN frequently. Just search and you’ll find many examples.by tschwimmer
5/22/2026 at 4:47:56 PM
This is the first I've heard of the Mondragon cooperatives, and I quick peak makes me want to learn more about them -- I'm enamored with the idea for coops.by pstuart
5/23/2026 at 4:29:32 AM
Not about the article but I have the exact opposite impression of HN treatment of Japan. It's largely expats complaining about living in Japan or Westerners comparing Japanese values to their own and always concluding the former is inferior, not just different. It feels like a modern form of imperialism to me. I'm surprised you get a positive impression (yes this particular article is an exception though).by pjjpo
5/22/2026 at 7:41:02 PM
The author discusses the zombie problem. I don't think the author is romanticizing this system. Instead, he is explaining why this system exists (as a result of WW2-era industrial reforms that were kept in place instead of discarded), and why that system naturally leads to a certain set of outcomes. West Germany also had to rapidly catch up after WW2 to suit America's Cold War purposes, and there are some similarities to J-firm structure there, but I'd be interested to hear the author's take on why it ended up somewhere else.by lern_too_spel
5/22/2026 at 8:55:40 PM
>While true for a few, the flip side is that it created a massive 'zombie company' problem—a heavily discussed issue in Korea and Japan that the West seems largely blind to.Oh, we're getting there. It's just a bit fringe right now, but Meta's $90 billion loss on VR and *gestures at various aspects of the Gamestop situation" and a few other incidents have people asking questions that are uncomfortable for the passive investmend fund crowd. Forget zombie companies; by many measures, America has a zombie economy.
by 59percentmore
5/22/2026 at 8:58:24 PM
Really? How much has that hurt Meta shareholder returns? Are most active fund managers delivering better results than passive index funds?by nradov
5/23/2026 at 9:07:03 AM
It’s that passive investing has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because regardless of the company situation the funds have to buy the shares at any price, which has made it simpler for incumbents to grow and stay growing while burning profitability to the ground. Hence why there’s been a recent change to the rules on the Nasdaq so SpaceX/OpenAI/Anthropic can be included on the indices 15 days after IPO rather than having three months of price discovery on the markets first before index funds start having to buy huge amounts of their shares and keeping their (likely imaginary) price afloat.It’s a huge structural flaw in the markets right now, yet it seems a flaw that isn’t really going to break anything which is weird in itself. I can’t help but feel that Wall Street is going to find the right place to kick at some point in order to have the whole house of cards come tumbling down for a while so they can buy cheap and negate/steal years of contributions from people buying index funds. Not sure how or when but I’m sure they’re working on it.
by gizajob
5/23/2026 at 2:50:43 PM
Well - there is a giant push to allow non-qualified investors to invest their 401k (and roth and whatever) into the private equities market - pre-IPO companies and such.I can't shake the feeling of a grand fleecing incoming - and honestly, most big financial companies I know are against it because the blowback of inevitably bankrupting the firefighters&nurses pension fund will be congressional hearings and piercings of corporate veils.
Seems like the feds are pushing for it - for reasons I cannot fathom.
by foobar10000
5/24/2026 at 3:57:44 PM
There is talk among the more conspiracy-minded folk that short exposure to companies that were supposed to go bankrupt, and then didn't, has been rolled into esoteric financial instruments that were sold to retirement funds. If these companies in particular weather a downturn, while everything else is bleedig profusely, it'll be like a double whammy; the short hedge turned into another knife.by 59percentmore
5/23/2026 at 10:10:29 AM
Besides your point but I learned about Mondragon on hacker news!by greazy
5/23/2026 at 2:05:01 PM
> In Japan, your corporate affiliation often dictates your social standingWhere does it not? As in which countries are not like this?
by jatins
5/23/2026 at 3:30:58 PM
The US doesn't."Social standing" in this case means if your girlfriend's parents will let you marry her. Not, like, who likes your LinkedIn posts.
by astrange
5/23/2026 at 3:54:05 PM
I don't know where most of my friends work and I barely understood what my wife does when we started dating.by parineum
5/22/2026 at 4:23:15 PM
I think I've seen the odd HN post about Mondragon that does portray it positively. Though I'm not sure I've seen one in at least several years.by Glyptodon
5/23/2026 at 3:05:56 AM
The article mentions software as an area where the Japanese don't excell doesn't work.by belviewreview
5/22/2026 at 7:28:35 PM
> romanticizing the MondragonAre they successful?
Japanese culture reflects certain western attitudes which make it stand out.
Do I detect resentment?
by groundzeros2015
5/22/2026 at 8:15:00 PM
> Are they successful?I'd say so. Not on all the branches of the cooperative, but it generates over €11 billion in annual revenue and employs more than 70,000 people with a very stable business. It might be a bit tricky to gauge success when the rewards and incentives aren’t quite the same as in your typical capitalist company, though.
by wklauss
5/22/2026 at 8:25:42 PM
Looks interesting! I would like to learn moreby groundzeros2015
5/22/2026 at 4:18:03 PM
Nothing of this is particular to Japan, it's only the way it manifests in Japan that is adapted to its rich culture. Zombie corporations, corporations with ties to the government, family owned companies, monopolies, cronyism, all of this has been a staple of Western capitalism for centuries.by coliveira
5/22/2026 at 8:10:32 PM
> It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality.In his science fiction novels, Kim Stanley Robinson frequently incorporates the Mondragon economic model to explore post-capitalist, worker-owned, and cooperative societies. I'd say KSR is a decently well-known S/F writer, so at least some westerners (and I'd assume many in this site) have already some idea of it. But I'd say it's true that it's easy to romanticize these kinds of singular situations and brush over the problems they might have.
by wklauss
5/22/2026 at 6:02:38 PM
I've thought a lot about (and I don't mean this in a derogatory way) the weebu phenomenon. I remember encountering it first in college when I met people who were in an anime club. It wasn't for me but my philosophy generally is "let people enjoy things".I will say that it often goes beyond "idealizing". I'd use the word "fetishizing".
I've wondered how much of this stems from being disaffected by the modern (particularly Western) world. I worked with an ethnically Chinese guy who was a massive weebu and that always struck me as odd given the Japan-China history.
Japan has always rubbed me the wrong way: misogyny, racism and denial about Japanese war crimes in WW2 mostly. Also the salaryman work culture. I see videos from Japanese workers and life honestly looks miserable. It's also a country that is dying. The samurais, ninjas, Ronin, shoguns, etc are cool though. Japanese history is fascinating.
My hot take here is that China is actually what people idealize Japan to be. China has the most competent government in the world and it's not even close. It's not problem-free. Nowhere is. But the transformation in the lives of ordinary Chinese people over the last few decades is unbelievable. China pulled ~800 million people out of extreme poverty.
It could be worse than Japan too. I think South Korea is that. As a non-Korean from the outside looking in, South Korea looks like a dystopian run by aristocratic (chaebol) families where the birth rate is the lowest in the world and it's in fact so low that if nothing changes, South Korea simply won't exist in 3 generations.
by jmyeet
5/22/2026 at 7:23:20 PM
1. It’s hilarious that your version of “cool” Japan was immeasurably worse in terms of things like misogyny, racism and war crimes than modern Japan.2. Post WWII Japan set the benchmark for pulling its people out of poverty in an astonishingly short period of time.
3. There have always been foreign, exotic cultures people have romanticized. The Romans romanticized Greece and ancient Egypt.
by jimbokun
5/23/2026 at 2:07:39 PM
I don't think the parent commenter is arguing that living in feudal Japan was cool, or idealizing it. They are just saying Japanese history is fascinating, which it is. Just like ancient Roman is fascinating, or ancient Greece, but I wouldn't want to have lived there.by the_af
5/23/2026 at 2:22:42 AM
[dead]by Lamires
5/24/2026 at 10:17:47 AM
Korean birth rates are one of the very few that are rising in the rich world. So something is going right.by sunrisetiger
5/22/2026 at 8:06:16 PM
Japan will remain Japan regardless of how outsiders choose to view it. I’m not sure why China or Korea need to be brought into the discussion for comparison. Saying this as a proud Sansei living in America.by ExoticTiger
5/22/2026 at 6:17:35 PM
Are you angling for an 'Honorary Korean' title? You know too much about Koreaby jdw64
5/22/2026 at 7:08:08 PM
My form of autism is going on deep dives into political and history topics and I'm not gonna lie, I've watched a super-long video essays on the 4B movement, neo-confucianism and the chaebols. This [1] I think was one of them.I've never been to South Korea. I'd like to go to Seoul. For me though, South Korea is a cautionary tale in what happens to a country when a handful of families get to control all the wealth, all the good jobs, all the good university places and so on while the working class gets squeezed ever more. There are cultural issues here too that are distinctly Korean, namely that women are expected to have a demanding job AND have children, look after those children and take care of the house (traditionally).
by jmyeet
5/22/2026 at 7:19:07 PM
I agree with most of your points. However, I can't quite agree with idealizing China completely (frankly, I don't think any government in the world is all that great). China has its own deep structural issues, such as the massive disparity between Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, the grueling 996 work culture, and the 'Tangping' movement. That being said, I can absolutely vouch for your deep understanding of Korea.by jdw64
5/22/2026 at 8:22:18 PM
So 996 is still a thing but the government is trying to stamp it out [1]. Tang ping is also something the government is dealing with (agree or not) [2]. One of the big problems in China right now is youth unemployment [3], which is (IMHO) related to Tang ping. That is, for a lot of young people (in the world, not just China) feel hopeless, like they have no future. This is exacerbated in China because of the gender gap (30+ million more young men than young women) as a consequence of the One Child Policy.Young people in general aren't stupid (again, in general, not just China). They can look around and see they have limited opportunities, will probably never own a home, won't ever be able to retire, will have crippling debt (for college in the US), etc so it's natural to look around and say "what exactly is the point?" and, in some cases, just opt out. In the US you see this with things like "van life", moving to cheaper countries, tiny homes or just spending all your money on experiences because, to you, you have no future. I thin kreligion historically played a huge role in getting people to do those things anyway. But now, why would Alfred Q. Zoomer live paycheck-to-paycheck doing a shitty job just so Jeff Bezos can have slightly more money?
China at least has invested in eliminating poverty, building infrastructure (eg the high speed rail network) and transforming the lives of everyday Chinese people. Like I see Tiktoks from a rural Chinese woman who works in a shoe factory for $11/day but only really spends $1/day to live. She lives in a modern house (20+ years ago it was a rundown shack), has Internet, watches live streams, rides everywhere on an electric scooter and pays for everything digitally (of course).
Part of China's current woes are that Xi Jinping quietly just popped the real estate bubble and declared that houses are for living, not speculation. That market has been correcting itself for years ever since. But that's a long-term good.
I'll take the transformation of Chinese lives (not just in Tier 1 cities) over what's happened in coal mining country, the Rust Belt and agricultural communities in the US. It's not even close.
I suspect your information might be out-of-date because I've seen videos of tourists in Tier 3/4 cities (let alone Tier 2) and honestly it beats most US cities. There's no official list of tier cities but Chongqing is widely considered a Tier 2 city. Chongqing is widely called the "cyberpunk city" [4].
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/china-...
[2]: https://thediplomat.com/2026/05/why-china-treats-lying-flat-...
[3]: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinas-youth-jobl...
by jmyeet
5/23/2026 at 1:53:52 AM
[dead]by Lamires
5/22/2026 at 7:24:04 PM
God forbid people learn about the world outside their everyday experience.by jimbokun
5/23/2026 at 2:11:59 PM
The parent post meant it as praise. Why the snark?by the_af
5/23/2026 at 4:28:39 PM
> But the transformation in the lives of ordinary Chinese people over the last few decades is unbelievable. China pulled ~800 million people out of extreme poverty.By abandoning the policies that put them in poverty.
The story of China in the 20th century is largely one of missing the bus of the progress that was happening around them. The mechanization of Japan enabled the atrocities you mentioned because China refused to see the writing on the wall (from a balance of power perspective, Japan doesn't get a pass for what they did). Then, when they finally do have a revolution, they end up joining up with the group that weilds absolute power and causes catastrophic famine.
In the 21st century, they've slowly begun adopting western policies and are reaping the benefits while eroding their previously disasterous national policies.
The CCP has become more prosperous as it's become more like Hong Kong.
by parineum
5/23/2026 at 2:04:07 PM
South Korea is partly replacing Japan with this Western idealization, right? Kpop, K-everything. And it's also a dying country, like you said. And also a mirage, the K-pop phenomenon which looks cool from the outside is all about exploitation, extreme control, and unhealthy fandom obsession from the inside.by the_af
5/22/2026 at 3:59:53 PM
Did you read it? I can see how you can come to this conclusion devoid of context. This is actually a topical article - mainly because it is a surprise to many that a toilet company could be one of the biggest winners in the AI pick-and-shovel trade. These names have just recently been hoisted into the spotlight. It's not really a romanization but an explanation of why.by reedf1
5/22/2026 at 4:01:14 PM
Did you read the entire article? There is a whole section on where western model excels. The article is not about romanticizing Japanese culture, but to tell a story about how and why Japanese and American firms tend to differ. I am sure that it paints in overly broad strokes at times, but I really did not get the impression of idolization, idealism, or even oriental mysticism.by SubiculumCode
5/22/2026 at 4:16:38 PM
I did read it, but my impression remains the same. While the article does contain critiques of the Japanese system, as an East Asian, I feel it completely misses the actual underlying dynamics.I know the author isn't trying to paint Japan as a utopia. The reason I call it 'romanticized' is because the author claims Japan's success in precision parts is driven by 'horizontal' and 'collaborative' practices. That just isn't true.
In reality, this system is largely sustained by the ruthless squeezing of subcontractors (for the record, I am Korean, but I actually like Japan), which is a massive social issue there. It’s very difficult for me to understand how anyone could view this structural dynamic as collaborative or horizontal.
If the author had concluded that their success in these niches stems from being an extremely vertical society where defying your superiors is simply not an option, I would have fully agreed. That aligns exactly with what I have experienced firsthand.
by jdw64
5/22/2026 at 4:33:28 PM
> is because the author claims Japan's success in precision parts is driven by 'horizontal' and 'collaborative' practices. That just isn't true.> In reality, this system is largely sustained by the ruthless squeezing of subcontractors (for the record, I am Korean, but I actually like Japan), which is a massive social issue there.
Well that's just like your opinion...man. I think you're both singularly wrong. Trying to attribute a single factor to a highly complex system is a fool's errand.
If your conclusion is correct "ruthless squeezing of subcontractors" are there other cultures whether there is true and the country has been successful in precision parts? Otherwise, it's pretty impossible to conclude the causality.
by mbesto
5/22/2026 at 4:36:01 PM
[dead]by jdw64
5/22/2026 at 4:34:31 PM
[dead]by jdw64
5/22/2026 at 9:17:31 PM
It’s Stockholm syndrome. Japan really spanked the highly established U.S. auto and electronics industries in the 70s, and many people now look to kaizen, Kanban, etc as serious cope.by hammock
5/22/2026 at 9:36:51 PM
As a westerner (UK) I massively idealise Mondragon and wouldn't find it weird if anyone else did. Cooperatives are fascinating and the question of workplace democracy needs more consideration.by hkt
5/23/2026 at 8:29:19 PM
I’m not sure what you’re on about Mondragon is the ideal organizationI’ve been promoting it and its organizational structure for a decade on this website and I’m one of the oldest members on HN
by AndrewKemendo
5/24/2026 at 4:09:47 AM
I have noticed that when Japanese megacorps get brought up on the internet, people will admire how cool it is for a company to make so many things. But when a Korean megacorp who makes the same variety of stuffs get brought up, it's all about how evil and oppressive the late stage capitalism chaebols are. There is definitely a double standard when it comes to Japan.by pibaker
5/22/2026 at 8:36:59 PM
> how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain?Have never heard about it until now, but just looking through it, sounds great!
by esseph
5/22/2026 at 11:42:59 PM
> It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize JapanReplace 'Westerners' with Americans and you are spot on.
I have never met any European that glorifies any part of Japan (I'd see Asia as a whole), most of them will tell you how the tall buildings make them feel little and how the society is beyond oppressive.
Whatever meritocracy exists in capitalism is ironed out by those rigid hierarchies.
I am not sure what is appealing about Japan, Korea or any of these parts of the world, to me they are full of plastic, sugar and late stage capitalism that makes the Americans look as socialists.
I do strongly suspect that a certain type of male likes these places for reasons I cannot even hold in my mind for more than a few seconds.
by stein1946
5/23/2026 at 2:00:12 PM
> I have never met any European that glorifies any part of JapanDidn't France use to be quite Japano-phile? (At least for movies and anime/manga, but also cuisine). Or is this outdated knowledge now?
by the_af
5/22/2026 at 10:51:41 PM
> It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HNI think HN'er are smart enough to not idealize everything about Japan.
For example you can be in awe about how clean and safe the country is and how precisely on time all subways train are without idealizing toilet that stream water up your arse.
by TacticalCoder
5/23/2026 at 1:54:21 PM
> without idealizing toilet that stream water up your arse.So without idealizing the one Japanese thing that is inarguably good?
by the_af
5/23/2026 at 1:46:27 AM
“Weeabo crap” was also my take on the article.by wileydragonfly
5/23/2026 at 8:39:27 AM
[flagged]by Sharon617
5/23/2026 at 8:45:33 PM
[dead]by michaelt
5/23/2026 at 1:31:06 PM
[dead]by huflungdung
5/22/2026 at 5:09:35 PM
[dead]by wotsdat
5/22/2026 at 4:39:37 PM
[flagged]by busterarm
5/22/2026 at 6:29:33 PM
Unions are a poor solution to a worse problem. It's like if your roof was sagging, so you propped it up with a rotten log. You might be tempted to remove the rotten log, but that just means your roof caves in. Unions exist to antagonize company owners to keep them from indulging in their worst excesses when it comes to abusing their employees. Removing the union just means unleashing that unchecked power. A better solution isn't to disparage unions, it's to champion corporate structures that grant direct ownership to their employees, to move away from the outdated feudalist structure and towards a democratic structure. This makes unions obsolete.by kibwen
5/22/2026 at 7:46:19 PM
Or don't move into a house with a sagging roof. Most of the companies that I've worked in my adult life were perfectly fine places without any collective bargaining or ownership.And I made orders of magnitude more money as an employee in those situations than I did otherwise. The average salaried employee's work grievances are petty to annoying and outside of that either wouldn't be solved with collective bargaining (or ownership shares) or would be solved via the legal system.
by busterarm
5/22/2026 at 8:19:19 PM
It is in the nature of gravity and entropy that every roof starts sagging eventually. Congratulations on your good fortune, but the vast majority of people are not and will never be in your position.by kibwen
5/22/2026 at 8:35:47 PM
well over half of us workers report being satisfied with their job.Also, it's a job. It's not servitude. you're trading your labor for money.
by busterarm
5/22/2026 at 4:41:08 PM
I think more so the issue with the union rhetoric is that it’s all or nothing. Yes there are bad unions. But also, collective bargaining can form a safety net, and there isn’t much of an alternative when things go south in an industry.by bobthepanda
5/22/2026 at 4:42:53 PM
I agree.But I'm drawing the parallel between situations where people like a certain work culture that they have never experienced because it conforms to their larger worldview.
It's mostly projection and doesn't meet with reality.
There's a lot that I like about aspects of Japanese work culture but I'm sure that I would find it stifling.
by busterarm
5/22/2026 at 5:02:54 PM
I'd be interested in hearing your experiences. Are we talking mob association? Arm-breaking thugs?by djeastm
5/22/2026 at 5:14:33 PM
What is this, the 1970s?No, far more basic negligence and corruption. Negotiating deliberately bad contracts and collecting bribes. Diverting hours and cushy roles to union reps and their personal friends. Overwhelmingly siding with management against employees (which is what you think they're going to be there NOT to do). The kind of day to day petty shit that over time makes your job intolerable.
Oh and that one time in the retail baker's union (BCTGM) when they defended and successfully reinstated an employee who was terminated for _literally urinating in the cake batter every day for months and feeding it to people_ because it wasn't explicitly stated in the contract that they could use video evidence to terminate people.
If your union is protecting people who commit literal fucking crimes and dangers to public health, no, just fuck you and your union.
by busterarm
5/22/2026 at 6:45:22 PM
Your example is exactly the same problem as "admissible evidence" in a court of law. In the USA, it's very common for evidence to be rejected because the collection of that evidence was itself illegal - this is intended to protect the integrity of the system in general, no matter how heinous the alleged crime in a specific case.So I'm sceptical: was the union really defending that specific employee, or were they trying to prevent a precedent from being set that could be used against other, more upright employees?
by seabass-labrax
5/22/2026 at 7:12:18 PM
Termination for criminal activity is covered in the CBA's "just cause" clause. The union could have let the termination slide without setting any kind of precedent. Instead the union defended the employee as a flex.The union knew that they had sympathetic arbitration and it was the early years of retail store surveillance being used against employees rather than common criminals (this was decades ago). I doubt a similar case would go the same way today.
by busterarm