Very balanced and fair article. I lived in Japan in the 1990s and many of the qualities that Ross describes were well in evidence then as well. Economically speaking, the "lost decades" line is a bit overstated. Yes, Japan definitely lost some ground relative to Korea and China, but in many other areas, esp culturally, it is surprising and noteworthy to see Japan gaining worldwide leadership (anime being a classic illustration). For a country that for so long prided itself on its sense of uniqueness, becoming a thriving cultural export centre is quite remarkable.
The state of the public infrastructure is amazing, the Shinkansen is a wonder and Tokyo's subway system is first-rate. The airports have also improved markedly from the time that I was living there, the biggest positive change being the expansion of Haneda, so that more international flights can go through there (Narita, being an hour and a half drive away from the Tokyo city centre, was a nightmare). Osaka's new aiport also excellent.
Also worth noting that this is a country that has full employment, comprehensive healthcare for all its people, the lowest income inequality and is one of the world’s leading exporters. This country also scores high on life expectancy, low on infant mortality, is at the top in literacy, and is low on crime, incarceration, homicides, mental illness and drug abuse. It also has a low rate of carbon emissions, doing its part to reduce global warming. In all these categories, this particular country beats both the U.S. and China by a country mile. Truly a magical place.
thank you for the kind feedback, I appreciate it. It's amazing you go to live in Japan. I think it's the only other country I'd want to live in for an extended period of time
As beautiful as this article is, I sheepishly admit that my real takeaway from it was "my god, I want a followup article where Ross talks about his favorite anime" :P
Ha, happy to answer here. As a kid I was very into the Dragon Ball universe and I retain a disturbing amount of information from those years. I remember the characters, the sagas etc. My other favorite anime were Bleach, Death Note, Paranoia Agent (a miniseries), and Attack on Titan. Eureka 7, for a while, may have been my all-time favorite. When I watched it when it aired in the US, on Cartoon Network, it connected with me in a very deep way. Another anime I liked was Rurouni Kenshin
This is a pretty great list! I've somehow never heard of Paranoia Agent, which is surprising because I loved Satoshi Kon's filmography as a teenager - definitely gonna check that out.
I find myself hitting a wall when trying to enjoy more recent anime just in terms of the art style? I think there's a real beauty to the animation in '80s and '90s stuff that digital art has never quite been able to capture, where everything is hand-drawn and there's a physicality and weight to every shot. I never really got into Evangelion in the same way some other people in my peer group did but that's a show that got a lot of mileage out of just... leaving cels on screen for twenty seconds.
thank you for a wonderful article on Japan, and your interest in it since childhood. When it comes to present day journalism, I wish I were either wealthy or at least upper middle class. I am a retiree who is caring for a husband with multiple ailments. I wish I could support the many people who write well, especially those on substack.
5 of the happiest years of my life. Just a marvelous country. And, yes there is much we coukd learn from Tokyo in terms of how ti run a city appropriate for the 21st century. Love your work BTW. Very happy subscriber
Excellent piece, however I had to take issue with one sentence here.
"It is not an accident that most major American cities lack a Japanese enclave, whereas Chinatowns and Koreatowns have flourished."
You're conflating the histories of tourism and immigration. The reason most US cities lack a Japanese enclave, in the 21st century, is because the many enclaves that did exist along the West Coast were systematically destroyed with the Japanese internment during WWII. Japan also industrialized earlier than Korea or China, and the waves of immigration from when Japan was a less wealthy society occurred earlier than corresponding waves in the other countries.
"For the first time since the fall of Constantinople, a non-Christian, non-Western power crushed the military of a Christian nation."
Not even remotely true. The Ottomans went right on crushing Christian militaries for another 600 years.
"Regardless, there is no honest justification of the obliteration of two cities, of erasing the equivalents of Baltimore and Cleveland."
Of course there is, it saved hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives by averting the need for an invasion of the mainland. More people died from the invasion of Okinawa than the atomic bombs.
I would ask you to reverse the scenario. Japan is plotting a land invasion of the US to end the war and get America to surrender. Instead of putting their troops in harm's way, they drop atomic bombs on Baltimore and Cleveland, where maybe you have loved ones - or maybe it's where you live. The US didn't have to kill *hundreds of thousands* of civilians. The Japanese military was, largely, killing US troops, not innocents abroad. Perhaps, if given the chance, they would have, but it was the US waging total war on a Japanese civilian population. The Japanese were waiting to see what the Soviets did and once Stalin moved on them, they gave in.
That really isn't the reverse scenario. As I already highlighted, the reverse scenario is more like the Japanese already invaded and conquered Hawaii and 2 million people died including a million Americans civilians. Do you understand how many Japanese civilians died in the invasion of Okinawa? If not I sugggest looking it up. It was in the same ballpark as the atomic bombings. War is a dirty business in the modern era. As far as them surrending based on what the Soviets did, that is just revisionist conjecture and it seems highly unlikely. Their situation was already hopeless and yet they were still fighting it out until the nukes fell.
Fascinating piece. However, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts upon the punitive nature of Japan's criminal justice system and its role in the societal behavior and relative lack of violent crime. The fact that it was referred to in just a single sentence housed within a paragraph is telling.
Also, the description of Japan's xenophobia would be, in many American liberals' minds, not only racist, but also clearly prohibited under the law. I completely acknowledge that it is unfair to judge any other country with a comparison to U.S. law; but, let's please not limit racism to the countries we feel comfortable criticizing.
The Japanese criminal justice system is bad and shouldn't be emulated. Japan's xenophobia is also bad, but is not simply "racist" which was my larger point - by the way, this doesn't make it any better. Japanese never subscribed to race science or racial hierarchy so much as they truly believed all foreigners - white, Black, Chinese, Korean, etc. - could imperil the nation. That's wrong. My sense is the mindset is slowly changing, but needs to change more.
Hope you will travel more. One week an expert does not make. Japan needs to end its pacifist constitution and be a full fledged country again. The US and the free world needs Japan to re-arm, re-assert itself and to increase her population with a strong culture that is more desirable than the rotting American one that is fixated on racing to the bottom in the name of equity. The US can no longer produce sufficient engineers, physicists, computer scientists from its native population. International students will realize how low academic standards have gotten in K-12 and universities. Japan can provide an important alternative if it recruits top global talent and use English in higher education as language of instruction. Let Japan rise again for the benefit of the free world.
Thank you for such a well written piece, from the first comma in the title, to the first sentence, to the longing for a world that could, yet may never be.
Japan is complicated. It's not a fascist country by any means. It simply has not reckoned with its fascist past like Germany, and there are far too many politicians openly nostalgic and even celebratory of the War years
I’m being facetious and glib but, there is the extreme xenophobia and structuring their market economy to achieve national goals and the domination of a single political party, and the God-Emperor as well as the outsized role of honor and seniority in society.
I don’t think the Japanese are evil or are going to try and make a second bid for an East Asian Sphere of Co-Prosperity, they seem to have given up on imperialism. Also, it clearly works for them whatever you want to call their system.
On a more personal note I’ve never met a Japanese person I didn’t like and I share much the same fascination and admiration of the country as you do. I would absolutely love to visit one day just for the food alone before even accounting for the great metropolises and scenic country and incredible culture, and I’m sure they’re very hospitable to any respectful gaijin tourist.
But still in the back of your mind I feel like there’s disquiets feeling you can’t quite shake coming from a multi-ethnic place like the USA that there’s just something a bit off.
A wonderful read. Honest (brutally at times) and thoughtful.
Japan's xenophobia, softly spoken of here, as well as it's colonialist past, would be vilified here at such a high volume it's almost impossible to imagine. Perhaps that's the price a country pays to have the wonderful things described in the article. I don't know, but one wonders.
I'm a train / public infrastructure geek. My wife would use the word 'obsessed'. I still wonder how Westchester county would have been much improved if the county fathers hadn't let the New York, Westchester and Boston railway go under in 1937. I can point out where the stations were, where the structures still stand ... I'm that guy. Your paragraphs on the high speed rail were fantastic. I wish we had something akin to that here - and this comes from a NYC railfan.
Yes, it's terrible to think of all the missed transit opportunities in NY. Engineers wanted rail lines down the LIE and over the Whitestone and Throggs Neck. Robert Moses killed those. Moses contributed to the end of the NYC subway expansion, though I think it would be simplistic to only blame him. Money was mismanaged, ran out, and car culture took precedence. When I was younger and saw the proposed 1929 expansion of the subway - all the lines never built- I became very furious and very sad. In Japan, you see what's possible. They keep building, expanding. A Shinkansen for the Northeast would be transformative. NY to Philly in 30 minutes.
If you want to install a Japanese style infrastructure, we wouldn't be able to afford it and never see it in two lifetimes because of the public sector unions that would suck up all the money while producing nothing. We will also need to either import Japanese people to live in NYC to operate and be the primary users of the system or dramatically change our culture where civil behavior is the norm instead of people killing each other and destroying public facilities.
Very balanced and fair article. I lived in Japan in the 1990s and many of the qualities that Ross describes were well in evidence then as well. Economically speaking, the "lost decades" line is a bit overstated. Yes, Japan definitely lost some ground relative to Korea and China, but in many other areas, esp culturally, it is surprising and noteworthy to see Japan gaining worldwide leadership (anime being a classic illustration). For a country that for so long prided itself on its sense of uniqueness, becoming a thriving cultural export centre is quite remarkable.
The state of the public infrastructure is amazing, the Shinkansen is a wonder and Tokyo's subway system is first-rate. The airports have also improved markedly from the time that I was living there, the biggest positive change being the expansion of Haneda, so that more international flights can go through there (Narita, being an hour and a half drive away from the Tokyo city centre, was a nightmare). Osaka's new aiport also excellent.
Also worth noting that this is a country that has full employment, comprehensive healthcare for all its people, the lowest income inequality and is one of the world’s leading exporters. This country also scores high on life expectancy, low on infant mortality, is at the top in literacy, and is low on crime, incarceration, homicides, mental illness and drug abuse. It also has a low rate of carbon emissions, doing its part to reduce global warming. In all these categories, this particular country beats both the U.S. and China by a country mile. Truly a magical place.
thank you for the kind feedback, I appreciate it. It's amazing you go to live in Japan. I think it's the only other country I'd want to live in for an extended period of time
As beautiful as this article is, I sheepishly admit that my real takeaway from it was "my god, I want a followup article where Ross talks about his favorite anime" :P
Ha, happy to answer here. As a kid I was very into the Dragon Ball universe and I retain a disturbing amount of information from those years. I remember the characters, the sagas etc. My other favorite anime were Bleach, Death Note, Paranoia Agent (a miniseries), and Attack on Titan. Eureka 7, for a while, may have been my all-time favorite. When I watched it when it aired in the US, on Cartoon Network, it connected with me in a very deep way. Another anime I liked was Rurouni Kenshin
This is a pretty great list! I've somehow never heard of Paranoia Agent, which is surprising because I loved Satoshi Kon's filmography as a teenager - definitely gonna check that out.
I find myself hitting a wall when trying to enjoy more recent anime just in terms of the art style? I think there's a real beauty to the animation in '80s and '90s stuff that digital art has never quite been able to capture, where everything is hand-drawn and there's a physicality and weight to every shot. I never really got into Evangelion in the same way some other people in my peer group did but that's a show that got a lot of mileage out of just... leaving cels on screen for twenty seconds.
thank you for a wonderful article on Japan, and your interest in it since childhood. When it comes to present day journalism, I wish I were either wealthy or at least upper middle class. I am a retiree who is caring for a husband with multiple ailments. I wish I could support the many people who write well, especially those on substack.
thank you for the kind words, I appreciate it!
5 of the happiest years of my life. Just a marvelous country. And, yes there is much we coukd learn from Tokyo in terms of how ti run a city appropriate for the 21st century. Love your work BTW. Very happy subscriber
Excellent piece, however I had to take issue with one sentence here.
"It is not an accident that most major American cities lack a Japanese enclave, whereas Chinatowns and Koreatowns have flourished."
You're conflating the histories of tourism and immigration. The reason most US cities lack a Japanese enclave, in the 21st century, is because the many enclaves that did exist along the West Coast were systematically destroyed with the Japanese internment during WWII. Japan also industrialized earlier than Korea or China, and the waves of immigration from when Japan was a less wealthy society occurred earlier than corresponding waves in the other countries.
"For the first time since the fall of Constantinople, a non-Christian, non-Western power crushed the military of a Christian nation."
Not even remotely true. The Ottomans went right on crushing Christian militaries for another 600 years.
"Regardless, there is no honest justification of the obliteration of two cities, of erasing the equivalents of Baltimore and Cleveland."
Of course there is, it saved hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives by averting the need for an invasion of the mainland. More people died from the invasion of Okinawa than the atomic bombs.
I would ask you to reverse the scenario. Japan is plotting a land invasion of the US to end the war and get America to surrender. Instead of putting their troops in harm's way, they drop atomic bombs on Baltimore and Cleveland, where maybe you have loved ones - or maybe it's where you live. The US didn't have to kill *hundreds of thousands* of civilians. The Japanese military was, largely, killing US troops, not innocents abroad. Perhaps, if given the chance, they would have, but it was the US waging total war on a Japanese civilian population. The Japanese were waiting to see what the Soviets did and once Stalin moved on them, they gave in.
That really isn't the reverse scenario. As I already highlighted, the reverse scenario is more like the Japanese already invaded and conquered Hawaii and 2 million people died including a million Americans civilians. Do you understand how many Japanese civilians died in the invasion of Okinawa? If not I sugggest looking it up. It was in the same ballpark as the atomic bombings. War is a dirty business in the modern era. As far as them surrending based on what the Soviets did, that is just revisionist conjecture and it seems highly unlikely. Their situation was already hopeless and yet they were still fighting it out until the nukes fell.
We should also be aware that the Japanese military killed more people in Nanjing in a week than both atomic bombs together.
Fascinating piece. However, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts upon the punitive nature of Japan's criminal justice system and its role in the societal behavior and relative lack of violent crime. The fact that it was referred to in just a single sentence housed within a paragraph is telling.
Also, the description of Japan's xenophobia would be, in many American liberals' minds, not only racist, but also clearly prohibited under the law. I completely acknowledge that it is unfair to judge any other country with a comparison to U.S. law; but, let's please not limit racism to the countries we feel comfortable criticizing.
The Japanese criminal justice system is bad and shouldn't be emulated. Japan's xenophobia is also bad, but is not simply "racist" which was my larger point - by the way, this doesn't make it any better. Japanese never subscribed to race science or racial hierarchy so much as they truly believed all foreigners - white, Black, Chinese, Korean, etc. - could imperil the nation. That's wrong. My sense is the mindset is slowly changing, but needs to change more.
Hope you will travel more. One week an expert does not make. Japan needs to end its pacifist constitution and be a full fledged country again. The US and the free world needs Japan to re-arm, re-assert itself and to increase her population with a strong culture that is more desirable than the rotting American one that is fixated on racing to the bottom in the name of equity. The US can no longer produce sufficient engineers, physicists, computer scientists from its native population. International students will realize how low academic standards have gotten in K-12 and universities. Japan can provide an important alternative if it recruits top global talent and use English in higher education as language of instruction. Let Japan rise again for the benefit of the free world.
Thank you for such a well written piece, from the first comma in the title, to the first sentence, to the longing for a world that could, yet may never be.
thank you, I very much appreciate that
I think your discomfort comes from the fact that they’re more than a bit fascist still.
Japan is complicated. It's not a fascist country by any means. It simply has not reckoned with its fascist past like Germany, and there are far too many politicians openly nostalgic and even celebratory of the War years
I’m being facetious and glib but, there is the extreme xenophobia and structuring their market economy to achieve national goals and the domination of a single political party, and the God-Emperor as well as the outsized role of honor and seniority in society.
I don’t think the Japanese are evil or are going to try and make a second bid for an East Asian Sphere of Co-Prosperity, they seem to have given up on imperialism. Also, it clearly works for them whatever you want to call their system.
On a more personal note I’ve never met a Japanese person I didn’t like and I share much the same fascination and admiration of the country as you do. I would absolutely love to visit one day just for the food alone before even accounting for the great metropolises and scenic country and incredible culture, and I’m sure they’re very hospitable to any respectful gaijin tourist.
But still in the back of your mind I feel like there’s disquiets feeling you can’t quite shake coming from a multi-ethnic place like the USA that there’s just something a bit off.
A wonderful read. Honest (brutally at times) and thoughtful.
Japan's xenophobia, softly spoken of here, as well as it's colonialist past, would be vilified here at such a high volume it's almost impossible to imagine. Perhaps that's the price a country pays to have the wonderful things described in the article. I don't know, but one wonders.
I'm a train / public infrastructure geek. My wife would use the word 'obsessed'. I still wonder how Westchester county would have been much improved if the county fathers hadn't let the New York, Westchester and Boston railway go under in 1937. I can point out where the stations were, where the structures still stand ... I'm that guy. Your paragraphs on the high speed rail were fantastic. I wish we had something akin to that here - and this comes from a NYC railfan.
Great article.
Yes, it's terrible to think of all the missed transit opportunities in NY. Engineers wanted rail lines down the LIE and over the Whitestone and Throggs Neck. Robert Moses killed those. Moses contributed to the end of the NYC subway expansion, though I think it would be simplistic to only blame him. Money was mismanaged, ran out, and car culture took precedence. When I was younger and saw the proposed 1929 expansion of the subway - all the lines never built- I became very furious and very sad. In Japan, you see what's possible. They keep building, expanding. A Shinkansen for the Northeast would be transformative. NY to Philly in 30 minutes.
If you want to install a Japanese style infrastructure, we wouldn't be able to afford it and never see it in two lifetimes because of the public sector unions that would suck up all the money while producing nothing. We will also need to either import Japanese people to live in NYC to operate and be the primary users of the system or dramatically change our culture where civil behavior is the norm instead of people killing each other and destroying public facilities.