Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48280561

Points: 30

# Comments: 10

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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...

Most 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.

Additionally Xiaomi and Oppo both developed entirely via private sector capital in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Furthermore, I listed other Korean and Taiwanese players that also continued to exist despite historically not being the mobile phone business until the iPhone announcement as well as Japanese players that were able to pivot and survive in a smartphone driven world.

The failure of Nokia itself highlights the failure of the European ecosystem.

Smartphones, AdTech, FinTech, Cloud, Fabless Chip Design, EVs, etc were all greenfield sectors in the late 2000s that any country could have staked a claim in. Plenty did, but the European states didn't outside of FinTech somewhat.

The crux of that issue is because there is a severe aversion to funding, developing, and incubating early stage founders and firms, and much of that stems from a mix of regulatory and policy failures within European states that make early stage ventures unrealistic or bias in favor of protecting large incumbents.

There was no reason another Nokia couldn't have developed in 15 years, especially given how a number of the brands listed either didn't have a mobile phone business or didn't even exist when the iPhone was launched.

Yet the biggest barrier for any sort of scale-out within Western and Northern Europe is bad terms and non-responsive local government.

There's a reason CEE states with more dynamics and business friendly administrations like Poland and Czechia converged so fast to Western Europe.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48233644

Points: 7

# Comments: 4

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48223252

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48194585

Points: 6

# Comments: 2

Also the fact that you reply to me on multiple occasions within 5 minutes is intruiging, as it is drastically anomalous.

Khayr, you aren't the only account like that.

I'm honestly disheartened by how much HN has degraded into Reddit now.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48155756

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

On the other hand, Kagame's execution on economic reform has been a failure when compared against Uganda, as Uganda [0] has a significantly more complex (ie. higher value) economy than Rwanda [1] despite also suffering a severe civil war in the 1990s and dealing with the Idi Amin's kleptocratic rule in the 1980s.

[0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/800/export-basket

[1] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/646/export-basket

[0] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locat...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/rwanda-exercises-comman...

A lot of Rwanda's success is overstated as well as I've pointed out before [1].

A better model from an LDC perspective would probably be Uganda.

[0] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locat...

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43375524

Starting from a lower base as well as weak institutions, weak capital markets, and political instability during the transition to democracy lead Malawi to underperform.

Additionally, Rwanda received massive amounts of foreign aid to a degree that Malawi and other African nations never saw [1]

Unsurprising that this is an OpenPhilanthropy blog.

[0] - https://countryeconomy.com/hdi?year=1990

[1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS?locat...

Entire generations of scholar-students ended up joining political movements, student politics degraded campus safety and cohesion, and society politicized to such a degree that state capacity degraded severely, and made most voters to view Singaporean and Malaysian (authoritarian) style "Asian Democracy" to be as a viable option. Heck, LKY, Goh Chok Tong, and other Singaporean policymakers mentored Narendra Modi back when he was CM of Gujarat.

A similar transition is slowly happening in the US as well.