Ask HN: Why are techies so interested in Japanese culture?

I think the fascination comes from an early introduction to Japanese culture, even if we're not aware. Japan probably has the largest cultural footprint in America for Eastern countries. A lot of cartoons I watched growing up were Japanese anime. Then there was Pokemon. And Nintendo. And Playstation. And the Mario Brothers. The list goes on for geek entertainment. I think the question could be juxtaposed with "Why do other countries have a fascination with Western culture?" - Hollywood, our entertainment industry. Or why is Soccer/football the most popular sport in the world? - people have access to it all over the world starting at an early age.

The quintessentially Japanese focus on Mastery underpins the global obsession. Think about it! Or just watch The Last Samurai for the hundredth time ;)

If you're in your 20's or 30's, you'll probably remember when you were young that Japan was synonymous with technology. The best electronics were made in Japan and they were at the forefront of innovation. That is not really true anymore (although Japan does still lead in areas like robotics) but the stereotype persists.

It's just observational bias, really. Though Japan gets more exposure in tech media than, say, the Philippines.

Maybe the question can be reversed—anime/manga/video game fans are usually drawn to technology because of the content in the media and also because these people tend to spend a lot of time online and may see tech as a "natural" thing to do.

Very few countries are successful in exporting culture at all.

For instance, the EU is requiring that 20% of content on Netflix be European in origin and considering the population size and economic weight of Europe that is more a guarantee that Europe doesn't get shut out instead of a level playing field.

India has a huge movie industry (which is unusual enough) but it gets almost no attention from outside India except by expats.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Trap

Another aspect is that Anime has developed a postmodernism that is very different from the navel-gazing postmodernism of Hollywood which could be characterized by the movie "Pulp Fiction" Anime is easy to relate to, if you are inclined to relate to it, is because it is about a very small world. When you see anime for the first time (for me some early inputs were "Star Blazers", "Urusei Yatsura" and "Nadia") it looks like a huge world. Nadia in particularly uses the trick of making it seem like the world gets bigger in every episode.

After you have seen enough anime you realize that Ataru Morobishi, Usagi Tsukino, and Haruhi Suzumiya all go to the same high school, that the monsters in "Nadia" and "Neon Genesis Evangelion" look the same, etc. It's not about a large universe, but it is really one of those closed spaces that Haruhi wants to move into.

Moved from SF to tokyo. Japan happened to be one of our bigger markets (among doing well/better in asia).

I was a gamer who grew up in Michigan, so I saw the downfall of the automobile scene at the hands of toyota among others as well as lived and breathed japanese games.

Japan's dominance is all too familiar in that space.

Tokyo today tends to not be very good at software. That coupled with the tech scene here trying to revitalize itself (see the work by 500 startups japan as a great example) is an interesting time to keep an eye on the culture as well as the country to see if it can rebound.

It's definitely a combination of things but that with the vastly better quality of life here has lent itself to what I believe is a big interest from a lot of people. As mentioned in other comments, japan also knows how to export its culture well.

I'm not sure it's 1 thing but a bunch of small things that make a difference here.

Not sure if that helps or not.

It could be Zen Buddhism.

I wouldn't say HN is a strict part of geek culture or that trend (while Reddit et al. are). As far as the manga etc obsession goes - many geeks have long had a penchant for all sorts of Fantasy [0]. And the Japanese managed to capture a lot of that "market". That obsession is almost solely directed at the parts of Japanese culture that are acutely distinct from Western culture, hence it might feed into the craving for fantasy.

There's also I think a separate trend of people (who might happen to be techies) that like East Asian countries (Kor, PRC, HK, Spore, Taiwan, Jap etc) for certain cultural values [that are actually mainstream] (tho of course it can still be based on unrealistic assumptions).

[0] I'd even venture to say it's a defining feature. Or that it's worthwhile to make it so.

Because it's new and very different.

Techies are interested in Japanese culture, for the simple reasons, techies are hungry to know more and understand new things, and because they see a lot common interests with Japan, and moreover, things that bring similar but yet novel developments, these techies feel japan brings something new to be discovered. Yet, they feel like they can relate to it, like they do in the West.

Lets look at history, even before world war 1, the Japanese government was developing an inspired European military strategy, more and more in fact till well we know what happened in WW2, it's not to far from the Napoleons, and English rule for example. Now this is the interesting thing, Japan did not just acquire western technology and throwed it away, they actually culturally integrated it, but they used it to their advantage even way before the culture shocks of today, and by doing that, well they excelled in it.

The Japanese culture since the 60s and more so today has had a fusion of cultures, which today the young generation of Japan, feel much more Americanized and westernized. As the youth of Japan, today is more and more Americanized,they also feel partially like they are missing out, because so much of what they like comes from America, or other western countries. Japanese techies are as curious as the western techies, why we share the mix. Whats happening in the western world? Well the same thing is happening On the opposite side, here as well in the western world, we feel we are missing out on new and interesting things, which go hand in hand with what techies or other non techies like. As the Japanese culture has brought commonality and newness to many industries, think products such walkman (that device even blue Steve Jobs mind), think anime's(stuff that makes physicist dream big), think ruby(programming), think videogames(biggest entertainment industry). And today, science and many more areas of expertise, share a lot of curiosity and interests with the western world and the rest of the globalized world. I would say this is due to simple reason that the Japanese culture has merged with the western culture to some point and that produces very interesting stuff, mixes are always very interesting and unique. So to close my thoughts, I would say the world is in a better place, because of this relationship we have between the West and the East, and we are hopefully moving towards a unified, peaceful and interesting human civilization type 2, referencing Kardashev Scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

Techies are naturally curious , wanting to know more about everything. Now, japanese culture is so deep and vast that it just stokes their curiosity. Another factor could be the huge amount of technological innovation that came from Japan.