Japan’s Slow March Towards Innovation

Akihabara News (Tokyo) — In the second episode of the Akihabara News podcast Japan Startup Megaphone, neuroscientist Kenichiro Mogi speaks about the different approach that Japanese society and culture has taken towards innovation.

Mogi is a writer and broadcaster who has written nonfiction books regarding the brain and its functions. He also works as a senior researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories.

Innovation is in itself disruptive, he notes, explaining that disruptive innovation leads to “breaking the status quo and challenging the social norm.” He continues, “Japanese people are not good at that,” which can be seen in the examples of the nation’s reluctance to accept firms such as Airbnb and Uber.

One cause for this lack of disruption is “really strict regulations involving the government,” which it “is not ready to relax in any significant way.” Mogi believes that this factor has caused the country’s economy to suffer greatly.

He also contends that, in Japan, the “number one priority is conformity.”

“No matter what your principles might be, privately you are not supposed to express it in public. In Japan there is this famous expression, honne and tatemae. Honne refers to your true heart and tatemae refers to the social self that you are supposed to put on in front of people,” he says.

Mogi further explains that there is a “tradition of not saying too much when you make actions, and those people who speak too much are not so respected in society.” Even in politics, “they don’t really state their case with many words in public, and they are minimalist when they come to public speaking.”

This lack of public discourse is another element which causes a struggle for innovation.

On the other hand, Mogi observes that “on the cultural front Japan is actually very good at disrupting the status quo. You can probably mention manga and anime which have been relatively… free spirited expressions.”

He also references historical examples of rapid disruption of the status quo at the time of the Meiji Restoration and after the Pacific War.

However these may be exceptions because “typically that kind of really rapid social change would happen only from situations becoming really, really dire, and you know people cannot put up with the status quo anymore.”

Another aspect of innovation is kaizen, which is the tradition of modifying concepts and processes from overseas for use by Japanese society.

“Traditionally, Japan has actually incorporated many Chinese cultures into Japan and refined them.” Japan is in a strategic position between China and the United States, allowing it to “cherrypick the better aspects of Chinese innovation and spread it to the world.”

In terms of the future, Mogi explains that there are “two levels.”

“On the individual level, I think Japanese society is making progress, but on the systemic level, especially in politics, they are really stagnant.”

“The greatest challenge is education,” he contends, “I see many talented young people, but they waste their time cramming for entrance exams… the real key is reforming the Japanese education system.”

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