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Japan tried to build an operating system for the entire world, then the US government intervened
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
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I know web design isn't really related to what the article is about, but if modern Japanese web design is anything to go by, good. Here's some random product (a phone case) I clicked on from the biggest Japanese online store (Rakuten), roughly the equivalent of amazon. Let me know if the product info seems well organized and easy to read, and tell me how long it takes to find the section that you can choose a different color and model (hint: it's not at the top or bottom of the page).
As a Japanese guy with a Western upbringing, the Japanese website bother me too, but it obviously doesn't bother people here enough that the companies need to change it. They just grew up with a different way of processing visual info.
After dealing with MS’s shit UX all day, that looks pretty good. It seems pretty average for a shopping site.
It's almost like they have another culture than North American or European...
And that culture is "random shit thrown all over webpages"? Japan still used a lot of faxes up until about 10 years ago. Maybe it's just that old people are mostly in charge of things and the society is still largely catering to the whims of random old men who aged into their positions rather than earning them.
I don't really understand what you're trying to say, here. Why does Japanese preference for web marketing bother you that much?
What do you mean by "web marketing"? In most countries they've moved onto web 2.0, but Japan is still mostly stuck in the past and lots of their sites look worse than random angelfire webpages from 30 years ago.
Have you considered that Japanese consumers like it that way?
Have you considered that they don't? Microsoft and google are all about anti consumer in service of ad revenue and selling user date in their products these days, but not many people are arguing that US consumers enjoy spyware and less functionality than we had 20 years ago.
Did someone ruin your day or something? What is your problem with web pages from another country? Why do you care?
Lol I live in Japan and the fact that their web webpages suck is a relatively constant thorn in my life here.
I live here, too, and I had a relative visit me from the states. He said the biggest shock was the information density of signage, so it's not just websites lol. Living here it has become invisible to me, but him telling me that made want to formulate a theory, something like: separate from literacy rates, literate people in Japan are somehow more literate than their literate counterparts in the US, so designers trust their audience not to be overwhelmed by high information density. On the other hand, websites and signage in the US look clean and sleek and simple to the point of feeling dumbed-down.
It's an interesting theory, but it's not so much the information density that bothers me, it's the explosion of graphics everywhere, which feels dumbed down to me in the other direction. Like on the rakuten page I linked, it's not good enough to list "3 awards" with bullet points and a small graphic, they need 2 screens worth of huge text next to trophies and stars. It's like they don't trust their customers to read something unless it's got giant text the size you'd find in books for literal toddlers and exciting or cutesy graphics to grab your attention. I get standing out in marketing, but it feels unfocused, like they couldn't decide on the couple things to highlight so you have to scroll past more than a dozen flashy banners to just click on the thing you're already on the page to buy.
On a separate somewhat related note, the literalness or overexplanation of the information also feels too much. Like they can't just have a simple title for a movie, manga, or webpage, they have to give a synopsis of the work in the title. Like how Pixar's Up becomes "Old Man Carl's Flying House". Or a site about the history of chocolate isn't just "History of chocolate and cocoa", it becomes "What's the history of chocolate? Also an explanation about the origins of cocoa". There's no extra info in that title, it's just longer.
I get that it's largely cultural, but if I could posit a theory it might just be like that because it's always been like that, rooted in how Japan is so slow to change. Ad company shacho rejects ads that don't barf colors because that's what he saw in ads when he was growing up. If I could make a somewhat skewed analogy, US TV shows through the 2000s had laugh tracks, but now if a show does that it feels lowbrow, almost bordering on insulting.
Yeah, that was pretty half-baked, lol. I totally agree about domestic titles for foreign movies. To pick another Pixar example, "Ratatouille" is like the perfect punny title, but "Remy's Delicious Restaurant" is so brain dead it makes me cringe...
Japanese customers genuinely do like it like that. Rakuten do A/B testing up the wazoo just like every other big ecommerce company.
I dunno, amazon japan doesn't look anything like that and I'm sure they do just as much testing.
It looks exactly the same as Amazon in every other country. That's a not a good counterpoint.
So amazon doesn't do extensive testing in countries other than the US?
see now you're just being argumentative and indulging in petty pedantic point-scoring mental gymnastics for its own sake.
how
ed: Allow me to expand: you think rakuten, a company with billions in revenue, does testing in the Japanese market, but amazon, another company with billions in revenue, refuses to do so? Who's doing mental gymnastics here to preserve their idealized image of Japan?
No the point is that a Japanese focused company can optimise for a design that works best in Japan without having to consider how other people would interact with it.
A multinational like Amazon has to balance what works best in a particular market with retaining a consistent identity across markets and having shared functionality between different locations.
Why would this be the case? If they want to maximize sales in Japan they'd surely provide the best format for the Japanese market, as any views from other countries would be minimal. Maybe if it were in Europe or another site that serves markets that are in close proximity to other ones, but no one's ordering things from an isolated island with a high population if other options are available. And even with varying options the format doesn't need to change.
I remember awhile back looking for hot sauce (as in something that's actually spicy instead of like tabasco bullshit, which is (or was at the time) uncommon in Japan), and the amazon options just listed sellers from the US with high shipping costs. So when Japanese people want foreign goods, why wouldn't amazon provide a format that "people want", while still pulling from other markets?
The fact that they don't do this leads me to believe that the rakuten layout isn't the only way to profit in Japan, and in fact might not even be the layout that most Japanese people prefer.
I dont speak Japanese. is it this?
Yeah that's it. They like to put it in the middle of the page for some reason.
If you view it on mobile its right at the top under the price
Yeah on mobile I think it’s okay. Still a bit overloaded but a far cry from what Japanese web pages can be like on desktop browsers. Sometimes they’re like web design stopped in 1999 and since then all they did was add more blinky banners around the actual content.
Every other Japanese site I've looked at had a lot more information density than this. Looks like they've been plenty affected by crappy modern design.