[qurren]

> how Westerners idealize Japan

Westerners 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.

[kibwen]

> 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.

[jimbokun]

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.

[ajmurmann]

This is supported by looking at what happened to Hong Kong cinema that was huge till the early 2000s.

[makeitdouble]

> our government

We'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.

[lacewing]

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.

[kibwen]

> 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.

[lacewing]

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.

[Pay08]

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.

[kibwen]

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.

[eunos]

Laugh in Plaza Accord and 80s anti Japan scare. At one point American was more concerned with Japanese economy than Soviet lmao/

[ajmurmann]

Not being worried annoy the Soviet economy makes sense though

[eunos]

Is not economy per se. Japanese economy was putting more pressure than Soviet military in perception

[user____name]

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.

[ux266478]

> but I see plenty of idolizing of China and how it manages to solve big problems at speeds unseen

This 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.

[jimbokun]

The recent Abundance movement on the left argues strongly that progress has been held back by over regulation and bureaucratic processes.

[adamwk]

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 bed

[ajmurmann]

Isn't he for relaxing zoning? Arguably one of the main pieces of red tape leading to the housing crisis

[jimbokun]

Those law suits are made possible by the regulations.

[ux266478]

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.

[shimman]

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.

[jimbokun]

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.

[shimman]

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.

[com2kid]

> 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

Kind 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.

[ux266478]

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.

[com2kid]

> 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.

[mrkstu]

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…

[tredre3]

> 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.

[stevenhuang]

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.

[esseph]

Decade? At least as long as I've been alive and I'm very "mid-career".

[nradov]

Is the propaganda false?

[fooster]

by and large yes.

[ExoticTiger]

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.

[YurgenJurgensen]

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?

[pibaker]

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.

[wk_end]

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.

[trentnix]

> 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.

[eunos]

> little shoebox apartments the size of a Western bathroom

You mean, American bathroom.

Apartments in major Europe cities aren't that much bigger than Japanese but for sure the bathroom sucks.

[blowscum]

> 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?

[wk_end]

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).

[astrange]

> everyone else - namely blue collar and service workers - are doing worse and worse

* better and better

https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010

[user____name]

The US under trillionare leadership, certainly.

[robocat]

> part of the propaganda machine and what politicians want you to believe

Alternatively 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.

[jimbokun]

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.)

[h8hawk]

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.