Cream_SauceI agree with the rest of your post, but this statement... cmon man.
It's really not a statement. It's true and I have receipts. Buckle up.
The Japanese are not known for their inventions... They were a
feudal society until
1868 dude... by which time a shitload of other societies had invented all the industrial stuff.
During the years where they enforced a closed door policy, there were limited amounts of foreign scientific works trickling in, especially from dutch traders, but they were always playing catchup during this time. They were still building things like they did in 1668... or maybe even 1268...
Japanese inventions are either really old, traditional, and
super Japanese - such as sushi or katanas or kimonos - or they're really new, and... still
pretty dang Japanese such as the Emoji, or QR Code -which is used EVERYWHERE here- or... I guess the Selfie stick? Which, cmonnn
of course a Japanese invented the damn selfie stick lol they LOVE selfies here.
What the Japanese have been always good at, ever since the meiji restoration when they went from feudal to industrialized in like a decade - maybe 2 decades, is taking inventions from other places, and engineering/manufacturing the
FUCK out of it until it exists in every household.
Here's some examples...
Sony Walkman... reel to reel audio recording had been around since like the 30s or something, but all of a sudden it was in your pocket and you could listen to AC/DC on headphones while walking down the street. The 80s were the hype BECAUSE of Japanese ingenuity here.
Quartz Watches... The swiss invented the quartz clock, and the quartz wristwatch... but then Seiko, a Japanese company, made a quartz watch in 1969 and started making them faster than any mechanical watch, and cheaper as well thanks to automation... and all of a sudden a cheap watch went from 100$ in todays money to 10$ within a decade. You went from your cheap timex which cost you a whole days wages to a cheap Casio that took you an hour or two to afford. Nowadays you can get a quartz watch from the dollar store. Thats like less than what a penny was worth in 1969.
Digital Cameras... Kodak invented the digital camera in the 1970s for NASA projects... but they didnt really want to use them commercially because film has a high ass profit margin, and they wanted to retain that... but when y2k came around, and the digital imaging technology had been matured enough to be affordable in pocket sized cameras, many Japanese firms embraced it while other companies just, plain didnt. Kodak didn't really make cameras like the Japanese companies - even Fujifilm made cameras, both amateur and professional while Kodak got out of that game decades prior and focused on things like Film, Paper, Printing, etc... They were used to selling the products not the tools... and instead of seeing the writing on the wall, adapting, maybe being the market leader in memory cards or something, they tried to compete with Canon and Nikon and got stomped when those companies were able to manufacture their own digital sensors better than Kodak ever could. Now, if you buy a digital camera, its a Sony, Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, or Ricoh/Pentax. Sure, there are Hasselblads and Leicas out there, but their sensors are made by one of the aforementioned companies... hell, even the lenses are mostly made in Japan. Japanese firms completely dominate the digital imaging and optical markets worldwide to this day.
Cars? LOL The Japanese took that industry over HARD. so hard that now Subarus, Hondas, Nissans, and Toyotas are often assembled by Americans in America, Australians in Australia, and by Europeans in Europe.
So yeah. The Japanese are just... really good at taking something someone else invented or introduced, and improving the
shit out of it. It's a well-known ethos and they own that shit. They're
proud of that shit. Fuck, they didn't even invent
RAMEN - (the chinese did that
), but what's the food that got you through college? Top motherfuckin ramen... made by Maruchan or Nissin - Japanese firms. They don't care that they didn't invent it... they care that they made it better than you. They make other countries inventions so good you THINK they invented it.
America invented Baseball. Ohtani Shohei is now breaking the sport. That's Japan.
