Category: japan |日本 | 일본

Yōkoso – welcome to the Japan category of this blog. This blog was inspired by my love of Japanese culture and their consumer trends. I was introduced to chambara films thanks to being a fan of Sergio Leone’s dollars trilogy. A Fistful of Dollars was heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.

Getting to watch Akira and Ghost In The Shell for the first time were seminal moments in my life. I was fortunate to have lived in Liverpool when the 051 was an arthouse cinema and later on going to the BFI in London on a regular basis.

Today this is where I share anything that relates to Japan, business issues, the Japanese people or culture. Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Lawson launched a new brand collaboration with Nissan to sell a special edition Nissan Skyline GT-R. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as Japan.

There is a lot of Japan-related content here. Japanese culture was one of odd the original inspirations for this blog hence my reference to chambara films in the blog name.

I don’t tend to comment on local politics because I don’t understand it that well, but I am interested when it intersects with business. An example of this would be legal issues affecting the media sector for instance.

If there are any Japanese related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • China crackdown + more things

    MACAU DAILY TIMES 澳門每日時報 » Hong Kong | Thousands flee for UK, fearing China crackdown – What’s surprising is not the content of the article itself. There are plenty of pieces in the English language media around the world about the fear of a China crackdown due to the Hong Kong National Security Law driving Hong Kongers away. (The reality is less likely to be a China crackdown and more likely to be a progressive anaconda-type squeeze.) I am surprised to see this article in the usually tame Macau media. Which left me with the question why? My initial thoughts were that space constrained Macanese could take up some of the slack in Hong Kong as locals vacate? If so it would solve problems in the housing market and the need to build additional infrastructure in Macau.

    Hong Kong Bar Association’s new chair on national security law and China | Apple Daily – I can’t see Mr Harris’ tenure ending well, given his lack of alignment with the line of travel on Hong Kong’s national security law. We might see a more forceful China crackdown on the legal sector, than just the mainland media criticism so far

    Next generation of horseshit | The Ad Contrarian newsletter – more on why life stage is more important than generations

    Merrick Garland Wants Former Facebook Lawyer to Top Antitrust Division | Prospect – this could be good for Facebook

    Majority of B2B advertising is ‘ineffective’ | Marketing WeekOf the 1,600 B2B ads shown to a sample of 6 million people worldwide over the past four years, 75% scored one star or less on System1’s FaceTrace emotional measurement tool – so ineffective in brand building, but potentially effective in terms of performance marketing? We don’t know

    QAnon Is Alive and Well in Japan – The Diplomat 

    China-Australia clash may be more about Beijing’s economic fears than a coronavirus probe | South China Morning Post 

    Today’s jet fighter designers don’t get the point – Asia Timesthe cockpit itself is “beautiful,” full of screens that allow you to bring up an incredible amount of information about the fighter with just a few finger swipes, and customize the data to tailor it for the particular mission. The F-35 is the first to use touch screen technology. Unlike switches, which take up permanent cockpit space, touch screens allow the same LCD screen space to be instantly repurposed, the report said. One minute, a display could be used to pull up data on an aircraft’s fuel reserves, and the next, it could help target an enemy position on a mountainside. That goes a long way toward simplifying the cockpit and not overwhelming a pilot with wall-to-wall physical switches, dials, and single-use displays, the report said. But the problem with touch screens, the pilot explains, is a lack of tactile feedback. Switches have a nice, satisfying click that instantaneously lets the user know they were successfully flipped, the report said. The anonymous pilot reports failing to get a result from a touch screen about 20% of the time – the need for haptics has never been clearer

    China Raises Threat Level Over Rare Earths — Radio Free Asia“Rare earth ore exports are limited in value, and the global demand for raw materials is relatively low,” said Liu Enqiao of Anbound Consulting. But Liu added that the decline “might be partly due to China’s tightening of regulations on strategic resources” under the country’s new export control law, which took effect on Dec. 1.

    Asian Fans Turn Their Back on Korean Pop Culture – The Chosun Ilbo – a lot of the problem seems to be down to overexposure and the Black Sun club scandal

    Mystery surrounds huge rise in Huawei executives’ social media followings | Financial Times – they aren’t the first corporate to be apparently caught astroturfing and won’t be the last. The New York Times tackles this from a different angle point out how accounts like this were used to lobby against 5G decisions against Huawei in Belgium – Inside a Pro-Huawei Influence Campaign – The New York Times 

    Facing the Jackpot with William Gibson | Ploughshares at Emerson College 

    The EU must protect the right to privacy and not attack end-to-end encryption – interesting that so many vendors came together on this. Its also interesting that its missing big tech names

    US-China tech war: former Google chief and others call for action to handle ‘asymmetric competition’ from Beijing | South China Morning PostUS tech group, formed in July 2020 to tackle ‘the most difficult questions regarding US competitiveness with China on technology’ also includes Jared Cohen. Report calls for determined action to tackle tech competition with China and says a certain amount of ‘bifurcation’ is inevitable

    Elderly woman DJ becomes online sensation in China | South China Morning Post – to be fair she’s about the same age as a number of big name DJs in the west. Pete Tong is 60, Carl Cox is 58, Junior Vasquez is 71, DJ Hell is 58 and Georgio Moroder is 80.

    Artificial Intelligence Will Define Google’s Future. For Now, It’s a Management Challenge. – WSJmost of Google’s problems related to AI are rooted in the company’s approach to managing staff, adding that science, and not ideology, should guide ethical debates. “Google is the coddler-in-chief,” he said. “Their employees are so coddled that they feel entitled to make more and more demands” regarding how the company approaches AI and related issues. – TL;DR – millennial and gen-z Googler snowflakes preventing the company from creating amoral shareholder value

  • Ahistoric technology & things that caught my eye this week

    Wired magazine had an interesting article on revisiting old technology magazines. The idea was that while in some ways technology has progressed. In other ways, good ideas got bypassed. There are a number of Good ideas that might have more currency now. There is a contrasting ahistoric technology view held by some Silicon Valley luminaries.

    The ahistoric technology viewpoint ignores things that are right in front of us. Fuzzy logic and early machine learning (based on software neural networks) desktop software do much the same things (with less computing power and network bandwidth) that Google and Apple do now.

    Bret Victor gave a presentation ‘from 1973’, showing the fallacy of the ahistoric technology viewpoint. These ideas will be of more relevance to the audience of programmers, but you can grasp the gist of what’s going on.

    One of the reasons I stuck with the Mac platform was that small development houses and lone programmers built useful software based on similarly niche concepts.

    Now these software applications, alongside web services that have been developed in a similar way, like Newsblur and Pinboard are a key part of my workflow.

    McDonalds Japan have a reputation for doing localised products to appeal to Japanese consumers. The flavours and the marketing are grounded in Japanese culture. They have tapped a well loved manga Touch (published during the 1980s) for an advert to promote the 30th anniversary of the chicken Tatsuda burger.

    https://youtu.be/vFJE_7atc30
    McDonalds Japan

    More on Touch here.

    The Oxford Union is trying to keep its programme of speakers going via online sessions. Including Hong Kong exiled dissident Nathan Law.

    Oxford Union

    Finally Asian Boss appealed to viewers for donations as they are struggling financially and are likely to shut down soon without money. This raises questions about the effectiveness of monetisation on YouTube, even with a lightweight structure media organisation like Asian Boss.

    Should you wish to do so, you can donate directly to Asian Boss here.

  • Collapse OS + more things

    Collapse OS — Bootstrap post-collapse technology  – a vision of dystopian technology that fits right in with William Gibson’s more recent views of the future with the Jackpot. A slow moving systemic collapse due to global warming, flooding, pollution, global conflict, terrorism and pandemics

    The battle inside Signal – Platformer – Casey Newton has pulled together an interesting portrait of Signal and how its developing as its user base scales

    Gay Dating App “Grindr” to be fined almost € 10 Mio by Norway due to passing on information to a variety of services

    Myopia correcting ‘smart glasses’ from Japan to be sold in Asia – Nikkei Asia – interesting design approach

    $2 Million for T-Shirts? How Supreme and Nike Cracked the Auction Market – WSJ – natural extension in the change in luxury consumers

    Online retailers are playing a risky game with the UK high street | Financial Timeslike Arcadia and countless rivals, Debenhams had underlying conditions stemming from over-enthusiastic cash extraction. CVC, Texas Pacific and Merrill Lynch acquired Debenhams in 2003 in a £1.8bn leveraged buyout that needed just £600m of equity. The trio then extracted more than £1bn via property sale and leaseback agreements and floated it again for almost the same price in 2006 – the Times makes a really good case with regards private equity excesses. Other examples outside the retail sector include TWA and Eircom

    Hacker leaks data of 2.28 million dating site users | ZDNet – another day, another site hacked

    Element sees fivefold increase in signups after Whatsapp privacy debacle | Sifted – its more like a Slack or Teams rival

    Japan’s anime goes global: Sony’s new weapon to take on Netflix | FT 

    Sony Tries Sink-Or-Swim EV Gambit  | EE Times 

    Jim Slater and the warning from the 1970s that we ignored – BBC News – a very brief piece in the BBC Online reflecting on the legacy of Slater Walker. The reality is that there needs to be a far deeper reflection on the effect of his asset stripping model had lighting a touch paper that led directly to deindustrialisation, populism and Brexit.

    “Marketing is what you do when you have a sh#tty product.” – Christopher Lochhead – not particularly smart viewpoint, though great product and service design really helps marketing and helps reduce the amount that needs to be spent due to word of mouth. A second thought occurred to me, people with this mindset are building the entire martech stack….

    WHO Caught Between China and West on Frozen-Food Coronavirus Transmission – WSJ – the irony of the cold chain also distributing vaccines as well as the virus is an interesting one

  • CES 2021

    CES 2021 – the Consumer Electronics Show usually sets the tone at the start of the year for consumer-oriented technology. It usually fills up Las Vegas’ hotels and conference facilities.

    CES 2021 went online only. Like attending online conferencing the experience was lacking. Networking and informal conversations aren’t something that technology has managed to solve.

    Consumer electronics manufacturers didn’t let the virtual nature of CES 2021 put them off though. LG and Samsung went gangbusters rolling out new products. One can understand their enthusiasm based on CTA research for US TV sales in 2020:

    Televisions: Households channeled discretionary dollars into upgrading TVs in a record-setting year for shipments in 2020. CTA expects steady demand for displays in 2021 as TVs remain the centerpiece for entertainment in homes. Television shipments will drop 8% to 43 million units in 2021, the second-highest volume on record, while revenues will decline just 1% to $22 billion. Growth areas for TVs in 2021 include sets over 70-inches (3.3 million units, up 6%) and 8K Ultra High-Definition TVs (1.7 million units, up 300%).

    U.S. Tech Industry Revenue to Jump 4.3% in 2021 After Record Year in 2020, Says CTA

    According Parks Associates, smart TVs were the most popular devices for streaming content. This has been on the rise since 2018. This offers a business opportunity for TV manufacturers and also a potential point of differentiation.

    2101 - CES 2021
    Based on research by Park Associates

    TV vendors were looking at differentiating their products from the increasing amount of competition.

    Looking at the change in TV design; where there is less distinction from the display technology, cabinet or frame design, even OS (with Android) has become commoditised – new sources of differentiation become important.

    LG has been soldiering on with with version 6 of webOS, originally derived from Palm’s attempt to meld HTML 5 web service based apps on top of Linux during the mid to late noughties. (It was also interesting that Samsung didn’t do a similar thing with their Tizen OS; which is derived work done by Intel and Nokia on Linux for mobile and consumer electronics applications.)

    Google Duo tried to get a jump on Zoom by having support in smart TVs. TVs were found to be supporting multiple voice assistants which implies that there has been a stalemate amongst the major players. Whether or not that will result in voice service customer us promiscuity in the home is an interesting question.

    On the hardware front, Japanese manufacturers Sony & Panasonic were promoting the use of onboard machine learning to optimise image processing in real time.

    SWAS – screen with a subscription

    LG expanded its support of content streaming services to include streaming games platforms. Looking at the Parks Associates data, one can understand why they think that the games console market is ripe for disruption.

    Samsung looked to get into the digital art market, with subscription based imagery available on its Lifestyle TV line, which look like a picture frame when off. This is only three decades after Bill Gates Xanadu 2.0 home was filled with digital art. He patented the e-picture hanging in 2003.

    Samsung has gone into coopetition with Peloton with new functionality within the Samsung Health function on its TVs. But also integrating with the fitness training service. The camera and machine learning provides guidance and advice on form for exercisers. This mirrors where Apple has gone with its fitness offerings that are included in the Apple One subscription.

    Sony doubled down on its content business with the Bravia CORE streaming service for its top of the range TVs. A few things with this announcement:

    • CORE uses up to 118Mbits/sec for ‘IMAX enhanced’ content
    • It is initially only a 2-year project, which implies that it might be a reaction to COVID limited box office numbers rather than an ongoing Netflix killer

    It is also interesting that Sony is still hamstrung by its different lines of business and hasn’t launched a streaming games service in its TVs for fear of cannibalising PlayStation sales.

    Other revenue streams on screen

    LG Shop Time 2.0 built on the Shop Time app launched late last year. ShopTime allows you to buy what you see on screen with 1-click in partnership with the Home Shopping Network. Korea has a large TV shopping culture, with mobile commerce and TV experience integration, so this move seems to be a logical progression.

    TV shopping integration with m-commerce - QR code
    Picture I took on a trip to Ulsan in 2012, TV home shopping integrated with mobile commerce by scanning QRcode to buy item currently being sold on the show.

    However the launch of Shop Time 2.0 is a decade on from the pioneering work by Japanese media house Girlwalker; that mixed live and streamed entertainment with 1-click shopping. Their Tokyo Girls Collection and Shibuya Girls Collection events set the standard in this kind of retail experience.

    Samsung TV Plus focused on new targeted advertising capabilities with its own DSP and DMP solution. Ad tracking provides a record of everything that you watch on TV for better ad targeting.

    SWAS and the other revenue streams change the game for TV manufacturers at CES 2021. Previously, a TV was once in a decade purchase. Now manufacturers have the opportunity in the upfront purchase and in multiple recurring revenue streams. The increased amount of technology in the devices, implies an expectation of faster upgrade cycles. However device security and data privacy still don’t seem to be issues on the radar of TV manufacturers.

    AIoT – artificial intelligence of things

    In the same way that fuzzy logic made its way into consumer electronics from rice cookers and cameras to lifts, connected machine learning is now taking a similar path with variable results. Machine learning seemed to feature in CTA Innovation Award Honorees across categories at CES 2021.

    The COVID-19 factor

    CES 2021 itself went virtual because of the pandemic. And two trends became apparent. Machines replaced service staff with devices like an autonomous shopping trolley that would follow the consumer around a supermarket. The second was disinfection, with UV light used as a the go-to germ-killing technique. LG had a number of robots for aiding in hotel room service functions such as delivering items including food packages. There was also a bot for sterilising empty rooms with UV. Accessories company Targus won an award for its UV-C desktop disinfection lamp.

    More information

    U.S. Tech Industry Revenue to Jump 4.3% in 2021 After Record Year in 2020, Says CTA

    CES 2021: TV Brands Seek Differentiation Amid Competition – Park Associates

    Technology autopsies – renaissance chambara – on the long suffering webOS

    Gates patents e-picture hanging | ZDNet

    Sony’s new Bravia CORE streaming service goes big on IMAX Enhanced movies – What HiFi

    Use Your LG TV to Make Purchases Directly From Popular Video Retailers QVC, HSN and Others – Yahoo! Finance

    Tokyo Girls collection: shopping with a Japanese mobile twist – renaissance chambara

    A few thoughts on innovation – renaissance chambara – primer on fuzzy logic

    CES Innovation Awards

  • Christmas songs and other things that caught my eye this week

    Cheddar put together an interesting study into popular Christmas songs. I really like that Cheddar put their sources including The Wall Street Journal and other news sources. I’d love to see more people do this on YouTube videos. The start of popular Christmas songs took off with recording music and the move away from religious music to a more secular family festival celebrated in America.

    As the clock ticked down to Brexit finally happening, I watched the late Darcus Howe’s three part series White Tribe using the All4 service. Looking back two decades, you could see effects of the Thatcher administration which accelerated the decline of the British industrial heartland without thinking about what came next beyond shopping malls, loft apartments and garden festivals. The schism in society that fuelled Brexit was readily apparent. The void of what being English meant, was again apparent during the head-scratching paean to the NHS that was the London Olympics opening ceremony. What I thought was most remarkable is that White Tribe is very consistent with what I saw in John Harris’ series for the Guardian Anywhere but Westminster. All of it in retrospectYou can watch the full series of White Tribe here.

    In common with other organisations from design agencies to the Irish government’s department of foreign affairs; Japanese airline ANA celebrated Christmas with a content focus this year DO: Bring Japanese Christmas Home ‘Tis the season… – ANA. The content is unusual as it focuses on secular Japanese Christmas traditions including Christmas songs. More Japan related content here