South Korea and China both adopted the Keiretsu model for conglomerates due to Japan's Flying Geese doctrine, yet both still have fairly robust software scenes.
If I were a betting man, my hunch would be the collapse of domestic financing during the Asian Financial Crisis and Great Financial Crisis.
Japanese asset managers who concentrated on tech like SoftBank, Nomura, and MUFG had better options in Asia (South Korea, China, India) or in North America (USA) to invest in with better returns compared to Japan.
This is why SoftBank has always been a prominent checkwriter in those markets.
I mean it is _better_ than Japan, especially after 2015. But Korean software scene is still pretty bad. I still have nightmares about ActiveX/IE6 era. It's just comes down to whether the management sees software as a product or as cost centre. When it is seen as a cost centre, they tend to start a chain of sub-contracts which is never a good thing for software quality.
South Korea and China both adopted the Keiretsu model for conglomerates due to Japan's Flying Geese doctrine, yet both still have fairly robust software scenes.
If I were a betting man, my hunch would be the collapse of domestic financing during the Asian Financial Crisis and Great Financial Crisis.
Japanese asset managers who concentrated on tech like SoftBank, Nomura, and MUFG had better options in Asia (South Korea, China, India) or in North America (USA) to invest in with better returns compared to Japan.
This is why SoftBank has always been a prominent checkwriter in those markets.