Nations, as Benedict Anderson famously proposed, are 'imagined communities'. But 'the global' is also an imaginary horizon. When we think of 'the global', we think of something, and it isn't typically a planet. It typically involves something about trade, cosmopolitanism, information and financial flows, diplomacy. And it varies constantly. In the 1960s, to imagine 'the global' would most likely have included space satellites, that made a visualisation and a technological use of 'the global' possible. But now, we're far more likely to think of telecom cables or internet platforms.
It follows that nations aren't only imagined by their residents, but also, just as importantly, as components within the (equally imagined) global horizon. There is, as I explored here, an 'America' as imagined and constructed by Americans, then an 'America' as imagined and constructed by Europeans. And it recently occurred to me that one way in which 'the global' has been transformed over the past decade is in the gradual disappearance of 'Japan' in its formulation. How could an imagined nation disappear from our cultural, political and economic consciousness quite so rapidly, yet without us even noticing?
Japan's status as our (i.e. the West's) economic and cultural horizon peaked in the 1980s, a time when Clive James created an entire television genre dedicated to marvelling at strange techno-oriental practices, which supposedly avoided the charge of racism because the Japanese economic and social model was eminently so much more successful than our's. Rumours of hotels where you slept in a small capsule, mobile phones which could communicate with microwaves, vending machines selling used underwear (please tell me I didn't imagine that one on my own) animated pub conversations in Britain throughout the 1990s, even as the supporting social and economic model was dwindling under an economic depression. By the time that the UK show Banzai was launched as a kitsch play on such things, the reference points were fading from memory. The stupidly over-rated Lost In Translation was merely a coda (its primary cultural significance is to have nudged The Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine out of retirement for a few months).
When I dabbled in consumer technology research circa 2002-03, Japan still carried an exotic hint of our own future. Powerpoint presentations were not complete without some reference to what Japanese teenagers were doing with their mobile phones, no doubt generating a fair amount of apocrypha along the way (there was always one rumour about teenagers ringing each other, then hanging up after one ring, as a cost-free way of saying 'hello').
So much has changed. The depression of the Japanese economy meant that the wonks and economists lost interest in the model some years ago. Japan was a scarcely-noticed absentee from the global financial crisis, having been weighed down by its own collapsed credit system for nearly twenty years. The plundering of Japanese production techniques (just-in-time production, Total Quality Management) by American management specialists over the 1980s meant that 'Toyotism' is no longer the horizon of productivity, as these tricks have now spread. But remembering that phones-speaking-to-microwaves used to be our global future also throws our new global future into some relief. Here are a few ways in which the global is now imagined differently.
Firstly, we now imagine the global in terms of the rising BRIC economies. The future will now be produced by cheap and abundant labour, not by mysterious oriental tech-wizardry (NB I am trying to describe an imaginary, not a reality!). 'The global' is therefore a harsher, more primitive horizon than it used to be. It no longer represents scientific progress, so much as sheer scale of population. (Meanwhile, the concept of 'the third world' has also fallen away, due to a combination of political correctness and economic trends). One feature of this is that, where 'globalisation' used to be conceived as the partner to acute urban densification (with Tokyo as the iconic example), it is now conceived as the partner to a more primary process of voluminous urbanisation (with Mumbai as an iconic example), not unlike the urbanisation of Europe and the United States during the 19th century.
Second, and in combination with the first point, the internet now dominates imaginations of the global. Around the time of the millenium, companies such as Cisco started to run advertisements with Chinese and Indian children staring into the camera, asking "are you ready?" - ready, in this instance, for the emergence of a single, virtually free, global medium, which was no longer exclusive to wealthy or technologically advanced nations. Again, the global was now about sublime numerical scale. A decade on, it has become clear that the companies with most to gain from the internet are not those with the most far-fetched technological imaginations, but those with the greatest numerical imaginations. Google and facebook are mathematical business propositions, based on insight into what changes once things are measured in billions, not millions.
Thirdly, and relatedly, imaginations of 'the global' now include a somewhat different status for 'America', once 'Japan' is absent. From the mid-1970s onwards, the US became increasingly paranoid that Japan was "eating its lunch", taking American jobs by producing consumer goods and cars that American consumers then bought. The reversal of fortunes during the Clinton years changed all of that. 'Off-shoring' of US jobs went from being viewed as a 'threat' to a means of exploiting the huge new cheap labour pools that were opening up. Post-2008, the US has lost any pretence of being a financial hegemon, but it retains some status as a technological hegemon. 'The global' is now conceived in terms of the relationships between the US and the BRICs, and while dependence on Chinese surpluses means the US is scarcely in charge, nor does this balance of power look especially troubling for a US statesman.
In all these ways, the new imagination of 'the global', lacking Japan, has gone hand in hand with a new imagination of what our collective technological future looks like. The influence and status of Clay Shirky is a good indication in this respect - Shirky's expertise is in people, not in machines. As he says, it is when technology itself ceases to be remarkable that its social effects are most radical. This is quite the opposite of how 'the global future' was imagined during the heyday of Japanese tech exoticism.
If a single company defined the imagined global horizon in the 1970s and 1980s, it would have been Sony or Toyota - Japanese firms out-performing, out-thinking tired, Western competitors. Their prowess was best represented in making things that 'we' would scarcely even know how to use. Today it would be Apple - a home-grown US household name, that exploits Chinese labour and the lessons of American business strategy, to enable ordinary people to sit at home or in a cafe, idly toying with a multi-billion user medium. Their prowess is in taking the global, with all of its numerical sublimity, and somehow transforming it into a source of comfort.
Good piece - thanks.
One of the features of the 'disappearance' of Japan could be that its inability to get itself out of economic torpor means US and EU policymakers and media look away in alarm - what if we ended up that way? The linguistic, cultural and geographic distances between Japan and the West don't help in stimulating interest.
On the other hand, one obvious fact about the interminable Japanese 'slump' is that Japan has not collapsed into anarchy or scarcity or inability to produce and consume. It's functioning - and there seems to be no mass public discontent with the state of the economy (though I am keen to be educated on this). Could Japan be a secret counter-example to the worldview that sees prosperity coming only from high growth? Maybe the Japanese have in many ways decided that they don't want high growth lives?
Posted by: Ian C | February 25, 2011 at 03:08 PM
I think the comment from "Ian C" is the most accurate, concise, spot on explanation of the difference between the Japanese market and the American market. Here it is:"Could Japan be a secret counter-example to the worldview that sees prosperity coming only from high growth? Maybe the Japanese have in many ways decided that they don't want high growth lives?"
I say the answer to that likely rhetorical question is YES.
I've been traveling to Japan for business for nearly 10 years and I think this difference in approach is the chief reason why most American firms never really 'get' Japan. Their business motives and market DNA are fundamentally different from America's devotion to growth and scale. In Japan it's not about growth, it's about consistency and quality, often even to the detriment of the business.
I think that's also why, in terms of tech startups, Korea & China & Singapore will ultimately leave Japan behind.
reply
Posted by: Adario Strange | February 25, 2011 at 06:13 PM
"In Japan it's not about growth, it's about consistency and quality"
Sounds like Germany!
Posted by: Strategist | February 26, 2011 at 11:02 AM
Very insightful and capacious essay--and equally adroit comments. Thanks to you all.
I'm chiming in because I wrote a magazine article about Japan as a "counter-example" to the prevailing American growth-model in a recent issue of Adbusters magazine:
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/93/whats-wrong-being-no-2.html
It rattled more than a few folks, whose comments and complaints were most revealing. Sustained stability, consistency and quality are apparently threatening concepts.
Thanks again for the great post and comments.
Posted by: Roland Kelts | March 01, 2011 at 12:55 PM
A thought-provoking article, thanks. Though I think it says more about how the West formulates its ideas of 'the future' and 'the global' than it does about the current state of Japan.
"Could Japan be a secret counter-example to the worldview that sees prosperity coming only from high growth? Maybe the Japanese have in many ways decided that they don't want high growth lives?"
Nope - I think this is a red herring. There's no evidence to suggest that a shift in values is taking place. Feel free to also see my comments to Roland's article (linked to by the man himself above).
(No Roland, i'm not stalking you - it seems we both read the same websites.)
Posted by: Bobby Lingerie | March 01, 2011 at 01:42 PM
As someone who made a living out of investing in Japan for many years I'd say this was well observed. However bad things might get in my new life, at least I don't have to persuade investors that the Japanese equity market still looks sexy. Because it really isn't.
Posted by: Nick Mann | March 01, 2011 at 08:32 PM
Thanks for all these comments.
In reply to Bobby's that the post "says more about how the West formulates its ideas of 'the future' and 'the global' than it does about the current state of Japan"... I think I'm pretty explicit about that in the post. So yes, clearly.
Posted by: Will Davies | March 01, 2011 at 10:31 PM
The real problem with Japan is that is controlled by 100 families, the super-rich of Japan, and it remains a semi-police state in cahoots with gangsters. And it's not a real democracy yet. Until all that changes, it's sayonara, Japan.
Posted by: Danny Bloom | March 02, 2011 at 08:56 AM
Riiiiight....
If you are interested in reading a different opinion about Japan, you may want to look at the work of Ulrike Schaede of UCSD:
http://irps.ucsd.edu/faculty/faculty-research/ulrike-schaede.htm
She claims that a lot of the parts, materials and machinery used for the iPhone etc. are actually Japanese. See page 16 of http://irps.ucsd.edu/assets/001/500975.pdf
Posted by: Michiel | March 02, 2011 at 12:13 PM