this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 2 points 3 days ago

Yeah their whole shtick has been mimicking American corporatism et al since before the 80s. Aint working out for them.

There absolutely was an effort in Japanese businesses to imitate American businesses in the 1980s, but it was also very much a two-way street and it's important to keep this in mind. Some of the toxic work culture elements that exist in the US corporate world today were imported. Also keep in mind that learning about other businesses was more difficult at the time because the Internet wasn't a thing yet. Computers were barely getting local proprietary networks in very few, leading-edge businesses. If you wanted to learn about business operarions in another country you'd have to buy physical media (newspapers, industry journals, commentary books) or visit in person. It was slow and expensive.

Ultimately a lot of what you're referring to tracks back to Theory Z which was also called "Japanese Management".

In fact there has been a lot of cultural crosstalk between Japan and the US, going back a long time. For instance, baseball

Baseball was introduced to Japan in 1859 and is Japan's most popular participatory and spectator sport. [...]

The Japanese government appointed American oyatoi in order to start a state-inspired modernization process. This involved the education ministry, who made baseball accessible to children by integrating the sport into the physical education curriculum. Japanese students, who returned from studying in the United States captivated by the sport, took government positions. Clubs and private teams such as the Shinbashi Athletic Club, along with high school and college teams, commenced the baseball infrastructure.

When the digital electronics revolution came in the 1970s, Japan was both a competitor and a partner for the US. In the 1980s Japan's economy rivaled the US. Frankly, a lot of it did in fact "work out" for them, though it's difficult to separate the economic success from the electronics industry boom (how much of the rapid development of electronics was dependent on the corporate culture that had developed during the previous decade? how much of the business success was a result of the demand for the electronics products? how much of the demand was created internally by the businesses themselves? how would you even go about drawing lines between them?). The exploding popularity of video games (a side effect of the electronics revolution) resulted in a massive cultural export from Japan to the rest of the world, including the US.

And really the rabit hole goes way deeper. I highly recommend this video: Kawaii: Anime, Propaganda, and Soft Power Politics. by Moon Channel

So what you said is true, technically, but it is really a half-truth which projects the idea that the relationship was somehow one-sided, when in reality it was very much not.