The simple answer is that Japanese software isn’t crap. It’s good in a ton of places that matter but might be invisible to consumers. Also in places that are visible: We play tons of video games developed in Japan, Nintendo might be the very best game studio on Earth. LINE was way ahead of its time too, it was a very innovative chat app that was synergistic with cell phone hardware in many ways that mattered like payments security, but maybe there isn’t enough space for chat apps to differentiate themselves and their success is driven by chance.
To me, one reason is that in some markets inside Japan, people do not yet pay for software. For example hardly anyone in Japan pays for Spotify subscriptions. However they do spend in gacha games. So it’s not as black and white as, tangible versus intangible goods. There’s no broad strokes generalization about a cultural difference that is persuasive to me. The article talks about stuff that is basically ancient history or industrial policy, which is also interesting but unpersuasive. I bring up the Amazon logistics software as an example of the possibility that even stoic hardware companies are software companies, and people like Zojirushi, so then it is sequiter to say, we’ll actually Zojirushi is good at software. So really we mean “bad at making globally important social media apps” which is a totally different thing than “bad at software.”
To me, one reason is that in some markets inside Japan, people do not yet pay for software. For example hardly anyone in Japan pays for Spotify subscriptions. However they do spend in gacha games. So it’s not as black and white as, tangible versus intangible goods. There’s no broad strokes generalization about a cultural difference that is persuasive to me. The article talks about stuff that is basically ancient history or industrial policy, which is also interesting but unpersuasive. I bring up the Amazon logistics software as an example of the possibility that even stoic hardware companies are software companies, and people like Zojirushi, so then it is sequiter to say, we’ll actually Zojirushi is good at software. So really we mean “bad at making globally important social media apps” which is a totally different thing than “bad at software.”