[JohnBooty]

Growing up, I had a friend with a Japanese parent. She had supernaturally neat handwriting, produced with various impossibly cute and meticulous-looking Japanese pens and stationary over the years. I felt like some kind of clumsy, nasty barbarian in comparison.

Japan is, of course, just a place. The people there are ordinary humans. Fetishizing a particular culture is both cringeworthy and genuinely harmful. Their country and society have plenty of problems, just like any other. There is nothing magical about Japan or any other place.

However. If all that remains of their civilization in 10,000 years is a curiously well-preserved Japanese stationary store, perhaps buried Pompei-style and frozen in time... future historians may conclude otherwise.

[rayiner]

> Japan is, of course, just a place. The people there are ordinary humans. Fetishizing a particular culture is both cringeworthy and genuinely harmful. Their country and society have plenty of problems, just like any other. There is nothing magical about Japan or any other place.

Japan, by your own description, isn’t just a place. It’s the place of a people who share a long and deep culture. If you substituted New Yorkers for Japanese in Tokyo, it wouldn’t be like Tokyo for very long! (Feeling like a “clumsy, nasty barbarian” is certainly an apropos description of how I feel returning to New York after visiting Tokyo.)

Most Japanese wouldn’t describe Japan as “just a place.” A Japanese acquaintance of mine (a law professor) and I were once discussing the issue of government corruption in Asia. My acquaintance dug into some 400 years of Japanese history to explain why it had less problems with corruption than China, next door.

Of course it’s not “magical”—just as there is nothing magical about Apple under Steve Jobs. But it is an achievement—the achievement of a group of people who share a particular culture. When my dad was born in 1951, Japan had a GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power) similar to Bangladesh’s today. Within a generation they had become a first world country. You shouldn’t fetishize their culture, but it’s okay to marvel at their achievement!

[JohnBooty]

Very well-said.

I certainly do not mean that Japan is "just a place" in the sense that the nasty, slightly unkempt area behind my garage is "just a place." Japan is the sum of thousands of years of culture and achievement. I truly marvel at many things about Japan.

I did my best (in my admittedly hurried and casual post) to be clear that fetishization is what was to be avoided, and not appreciation.

Often, particularly in the 90s/2000s, one would see Japan fetishized as some sort of magical place of technical advancements, weirdo tentacle porn, cute and submissive women, etc. That sucked for a number of reasons too obvious to type out. That's the sort of thing of which I'm dismissive, not the sort of informed and genuine appreciation you expressed.

[unmole]

> My acquaintance dug into some 400 years of Japanese history to explain why it had less problems with corruption than China, next door.

Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong are closer to China in terms of both geography and culture without having problems with corruption. It's almost as if 400 years of history has very little to do with it.

[rayiner]

Hong Kong was long a British colony. Taiwan and Singapore are tiny island nations, with founding generations small enough to retool the culture and institutions. The founder of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, was deliberate about reshaping the country’s culture because he was adamant that “culture is destiny.” https://paulbacon.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/zakaria_lee.pd...

[unmole]

And Japan is an American protectorate whose constitution was written by foreigners. So, what?

[rayiner]

So was Afghanistan. But a short duration of military dominance and writing words in paper can’t change the culture of the people. Colonization, as with Hong Kong, or a generation of top-down rule over a small population, as with Taiwan and Singapore, can. Again, read Yew. He was deliberate and methodical about all this, and has written and spoken widely about what he did to transform Singapore.

[forgingahead]

Great comments, though one small nitpick: For Chinese names, the surname goes first, so for "Lee Kuan Yew", his last name is "Lee", not "Yew". He's often abbreviated as "LKY" for locals though.

Interestingly, LKY was known as "Harry Lee" until he became active in politics, upon which he went by "Lee Kuan Yew" to apparently help endear himself to the local Chinese population. He took Mandarin lessons well into his old age as it wasn't the language he spoke at home. I think most of his counterparts overseas knew him as "Harry" (Thatcher, Kissinger, etc) and even his wife called him "Harry" per biographical accounts.

Lee was undoubtedly a product of the British system - an English-educated ethnically Chinese man, straddling both sides in order to navigate those early years.

[swsieber]

I dunno. That suggests that it's not culture and it's not geography... So what's left? Genetics and history? I'd pick history, the accumulation of aggregate choices.

[tptacek]

I don't understand the premise, where Japan is supposedly uniquely high-integrity. It ranks around the United States in metrics of corruption, sometimes higher and sometimes lower over the last 20 years, and historically was significantly worse than it is now. It's about as corrupt as any of the many countries on this planet that have the rule of law.

[unmole]

> I'd pick history, the accumulation of aggregate choices.

So, Japan doesn't have corruption because it hasn't had corruption for 400 years?

[moogleii]

> My acquaintance dug into some 400 years of Japanese history to explain why it had less problems with corruption than China, next door.

That's a bit suspect considering a lot of pre-WW2 Japanese governments were based off Chinese models (not to mention, as another commenter mentioned, there are other examples of Asian governments with low corruption, maybe even less than Japan's). In China's case, if we're going back hundreds of years, I suspect the explanation is a bit more complex, you know, having to deal with all that sheer area in the age of horses, no natural sea barrier against foreigners, not to mention a population size that easily dwarfed Japan's (and most countries in the world).

[colechristensen]

One of the things attractive about Japan is that it actually does have a lot of unique culture in a world otherwise somewhat dominated by a global culture, when you are actually different there are bound to be several things about your culture which others see in awe.

One of the disappointing things (not that there aren’t awesome things) about traveling across the US is all the things which aren’t different even though separated by thousands of miles. I recently moved back to Minnesota from several years in California and often get the strange sense that I’m still there because I’m in an environment so familiar that I think I’m in Sunnyvale for a moment. (Walking through a shop or doing this or that… the snow though is a bit of a differentiator)

[JohnBooty]

Yeah. It's depressing when you fly 3,000 miles across America and hey, there's another shopping certain with an Applebees and a Target, exactly like the place you just left.

[whoevercares]

As a Chinese my friends and I are always amazed by the contemporary Japanese art, music and movies. I attributed the success partially to the democratic system and remain hopeful for our own culture.

Their cultural marketing is also great

[eru]

Japan had interesting art and culture before their modern political system, which largely stems from post WWII.

Btw, there's a reasonable argument to be made that constraints are what drives creativity. From my own experience, East Germany had much better political jokes than West Germany. Mostly because you didn't need a carefully worded joke in the West, you could just open a newspaper.

Compare also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo and http://d7.drunkenboat.com/db8/oulipo/feature-oulipo/para/oux...

(Just to be clear: I vastly prefer to live in a free society.)

[moogleii]

I agree constraints can generate creativity, but is there evidence that constraints generate more of it? It seems like no. This is all difficult to quantify, but if I were to attempt to paraphrase history and try to quantify anyway, at least from a Western perspective, it seems like the cultural output of free "Westernized" countries vastly exceeds those from restricted places (Russia, China, etc), or it could simply be because we free countries mainly import and exchange with other free countries and just don't know what Russia or China or Iran are up to culturally. Without going out of my way to dive into Wiki or to find foreign shows/films, I can't say I come across Russian culture very frequently beyond rough stereotypes (or dash cam videos /s), and Chinese culture seems vastly misunderstood or is a complete unknown in the US. Neither really come up in the day to day, or even month to month of daily life. I probably encounter Japanese and European things daily.

As for the parent comment, I think he's alluding that pre-modern Japanese art and culture had a lot more overlap with pre-modern China's, which makes it somewhat less notable from a Chinese perspective (e.g. something like England vs Australia; different, but there's overlap).

But post WWII we see a massive divergence in cultural export and exchange (e.g. England or Australia vs the US). South Korea is another example (I've actually seen Japanese entertainment consortiums lamenting at the perception that the S. Korean entertainment industry seemed to be better funded and more able to export their culture). Just looking at Chinese history, the golden age of creativity and inventions seemed to occur when there were more freedoms (which I would argue is pretty much any era prior to the PRC since their control is unprecedented in conjunction with modern technology). Granted it was the olden times, so there were more things to be discovered, but it seemed like China back in the day was on a roll (off the top of my head, movable type, paper, matcha, bonsai, porcelain, celadon, silk, gunpowder)

[JohnBooty]

    I agree constraints can generate creativity, but 
    is there evidence that constraints generate more of it?

It's hard to talk about evidence for something as subjective as creativity, right?

I think the strong general consensus is that the right kind of constraints can indeed foster innovation - think of the constraints imposed by, say, early video game consoles. Or forms of music that grew from various constraints - the energetic DIY ethos of punk, or how hiphop thrived within the constraints of working with turntables and early electronic tool vs. live instruments.

Of course, the kinds of constraints matter. I think you're talking about societal constraints. I would guess that they generally have a much more negative effect on creativity.

[eru]

> Granted it was the olden times, so there were more things to be discovered, but it seemed like China back in the day was on a roll (off the top of my head, movable type, paper, matcha, bonsai, porcelain, celadon, silk, gunpowder)

You seem to be throwing together all of pre-PRC China into one big blender?

There have been lots of different dynasties and long stretches when China was not unified. Many of these dynasties were more different from each other, than some dynasties might be from the PRC 'dynasty'.

Tossing all the achievements of thousands of years into one bin, and comparing them to what has been produced in the last few decades also seems a bit off.

Most (or all?) of the examples of inventions you describe predate the Qing dynasty.

The last emperors before the republic and later the communists were off the Qing dynasty.

China was perhaps at its biggest sophistication compared to the rest of the world during the precocious Song dynasty. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_dynasty#Economy

Song China was arguably the first 'modern' country in the world. Where 'modern' is used in the historian's sense of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_history#Modern_history

[whoevercares]

Well even in PRC it’s widely recognized that we saw a boom of high quality cultural work in early 90s - peak of Chinese rock band, movies from the fifth generation Chinese directors, mainland/HK/Taiwan music. This time coincide with the time CCP’s control is loosen

[5eb03cb8]

I am glad I grew up when I did and got to see that. Since 2010 it's war movies and tepid hip-hop and fifteen remakes of the same historical dramas.

[JohnBooty]

    there's a reasonable argument to be made that constraints 
    are what drives creativity

It has often been said that budgetary and technical constraints were the genesis of many of the visual trademarks we see in Japanese anime/manga. I am no expert (just a fan for many years) but certainly of the belief that this is the case.

[sombremesa]

> Japan is, of course, just a place.

You allude to this later in your comment, but it really isn't when it comes to paper (and to some extent, cardboard).

The irony in your comment re:fetishizing is that TFA talks of traditions whereas you say things like:

> She had supernaturally neat handwriting

[JohnBooty]

When writing that sentence, I had hoped it would be clear that I (a) was describing my naive childhood perspective and (b) was employing some lighthearted hyperbole.

I also hoped that the second paragraph would really drive that home, sans subtlety.

("Maybe they'll even think it's funny," I dreamed)

I therefore chose not to insult the reader by further clarifying that she was a pretty regular-ass person, not some kind of magical exotic creature. We were friends for quite a few years and folks tend not to be friends with weirdos that fetishize them.

I even heard her fart once (which would have really confirmed her non-ethereal nature) but she swore it was her seat making some kind of noise so let's give her the benefit of the doubt.

[hungryforcodes]

I thought that last phrase was very cleverly worded.

The author obviously has an appreciation for crafting advanced stylistic prose in English.

[artdigital]

There are still places here that require you to submit a handwritten resume for that matter

[eru]

I wonder if there are resume ghostwriters you can hire for that?

I imagine you'd send them the text and a sample of your handwriting, and they'd produce a neatened up version that's close enough to your handwriting that someone could believe you'd produced it with enough care.

(Cheaper versions would just give you a generic neat hand, without customising it to your own handwriting.)

[Aeolun]

Don’t forget you need to submit a new one for every place you apply.

It does show a certain kind of dedication I suppose.

[nyolfen]

appreciating is not something ‘genuinely harmful’

[JohnBooty]

Yeah, I agree. Appreciating = great.

I would certainly hope that there is fairly large and self-evident gulf between appreciating and fetishizing.

[nyolfen]

how would the term 'fetishizing' apply to a discussion of paper culture?