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Japan Loses Its Spot as World's Third-Largest Economy as It Slips Into Recession
(www.bloomberg.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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Kind of crazy to me. The country I associate very strongly with like… advanced tech, the digitization of business, and high educational standards seems to be really struggling to keep up with the global market.
I know an aging population and the minimalist culture is part of it but I am curious on what other factors are at play.
japan's economy has been stagnated for more than 30 years, that prosperous nation image is mostly fabricated by usa to contain the advance of communism in asia, same thing about korea, we have a image presented to us by a heap of cultural production that south korea is this prosperous and wonderful place.
ROK makes Japanese work-life balance seem well-adjusted and healthy. No amount of money would ever persuade me to take a job there.
But yeah, our economy has been struggling. We definitely had a period of growth, but the US would never let that continue if we became any real threat to them. US did the same thing when communist parties were growing here and they've never really fully recovered; our national pary has become soc-dem at best. I maintain some hope because at a local level there are still more socialist chapters.
I lived in Japan and there are aspects where it is ahead but other aspects where it is stuck in 1970s with its processes and bureaucracy. For example in Saudi Arabia you can renew your passport and get a simcard without leaving the house and promptly. Last time I did my passport was delivered within 3 days and the simcard within 2 hours. In Japan getting my drivers license required multiple visits to various government offices and lots of paperwork. Similarly for getting a simcard, except for visiting the government offices part. Japan does have a significantly better infrastructure and more advanced and punctual mass transit system though.
It's...getting better, albeit very very slowly like everything else here. I think the pandemic helped push things a bit. A lot more services are available online than they used to be. For example visa renewals you can actually do online now, though it requires you purchase some extra hardware for your PC that you probably don't have lying around (like an IC card reader).
This was their vision that they want to pass, but in reality their economy is still stuck with outdated production methods, and there is still a lot of bad bureaucratization in both the government and companies. Not to mention that with the agreements of Plaza Accord, destroyed Japan's competitive advantages over the US.
maybe but as of a few years ago many business processes still involve the fax machine
Hospitality IT in Japan here, we still heavily use fax. When we were opening the property they wanted me to get the fax lines setup as a higher priority than even getting the guest networks online.
We honestly don't want to use them at our property, but the issue is that many suppliers require orders be faxed. We buy almost 100% local and most of the vendors are older family owned businesses that won't take orders any other way, and so that means all other businesses basically are required to support fax as well.
How do fax even work in Japan? Is it kana only? I do wonder to what extent the use of such things there is because of the language.
Kanji works fine, though it can sometimes be a little bit difficult to read if the quality isn't great.
I don't think the language is a huge barrier, though the widespread use of personal seals over signatures might contribute some.
Well… yes… but if I had to choose a country to invest in between one that specializes in digitizing business and one that specializes in fax machines I’m probably choosing the former
Plaza Accords crashed Japanese exports so much they still can't dig themselves out of the hole, especially that their policies barely even changed since then.
The revival of China must've hit both Japan and the quislings hard, a decade ago most of our electronics were either japanese or korean, now they're chinese. Same for cars, they're slowly losing their market share with the emergence of chinese car brands.