Japan is just an awesome place. It's one of the only places I've visited where it's a massive culture shock - but unlike other places, where it's usually because they haven't quite got stuff together yet. They have everything just the way they want it, it's just totally different to the west.
For example (if you need one aside from trees growing out of other trees) the trash collection trolleys that other countries just see as a horrible dirty thing, in Japan play a happy tune as they go. I miss you Japan. When covid is gone I'll be back.
Edit: and I forgot about the talking, singing, massaging toilets!
It looks great on the surface, living in Japan is a different story though. They have it just the way they want it, but it's only through teaching people to be quite subservient and obedient from a young age. There's a lot of unhappiness, loneliness etc.
One thing I'd say about the Japanese is their incredibly resilient, like I've never seen a race of people who can put up with so much rubbish and not even complain at all. While it can be seen as a strength, In my opinion it's actually a problem, there's way too much apathy in Japan and in my view, Japan is going backwards, not forwards. They'll likely need another Meiji to get them out of the death spiral they're in.
All of that being said, I absolutely love Japan and the culture ad the people, it's truly fascinating and ancient and "special", I just think it's a shame it have this view of perfectionof Japan from the outside, but the problems are mostly going unaddressed and nothing changes for the actual people of Japan, who are so kind.
It's not politically correct nor polite to say this, but Japan's problem is their education and cultural system ingrains subservience to the point that Japanese people are subservient even to injustice. It's not just inefficiency Japanese people put up with, they don't do anything about corrupt and ridiculous politicians having their way through generations. They call it a tradition, but they are just afraid of speaking out because of peer pressure. It's like a mafia system. I know that I sound very broad and generalizing, but those who have lived in Japan for long enough would probably agree with this.
It's the elephant in the room, it's absolutely true.
It's like a hidden autocracy, people in the west probably think it's a democracy here. I mean, people can vote, but there's really only a single party with the same old ideas.
I once read that the reason Buddhism became popular in Japan so quickly is because it gave people a break from the rigid hierarchy everyone was used too. I often wonder why it's less popular now and whether that's an accident.
Here in Europe we have multiple parties, all of them full of liars who eventually implement the same old ideas anyway when in power. Our politicians and multi-party systems are there just to give an illusion of choice.
As far as I can see we're not so different from Japan, other than the fact we have more crime and our cities are dirtier because individualistic Westerners are too lazy to use rubbish bins.
One of the main reason there is one party in power is because of the American occupation. While the American wanted to get rid of the the most "rightist" factions of the elite for obvious reasons, they quickly change to fight communism (see the book "embracing defeat"). I don't think it is an especially inherent Japanese thing.
People can be very individualistic in Japan as well, it just expresses itself in a different way than more Western cultures. It is very broad generalization, but in the west we like to show ourselves as more individual than we really are, while it tends to be the opposite in Japan. Open conflict avoidance is certainly more common in e.g. corporations in Japan, at least in my experience. But that's a very narrow definition of collectivism.
I think it's the difference between an individualist and collectivist culture. I'd guess that especially the kind of people that would come to hackernews will have a hard time seeing the upside of collectivism and the downside of individualism (subservient having a strong negative connotation), but I think it's really mostly a tradeoff. Yes individualism is probably better for generating entrepreneurs. But you don't see things like people refusing to wear masks in Japan. There's lots of stories of things like Japanese people taking a long trip to return a lost wallet or picking up after each other at sports stadiums. I would say that in general there are more social obligations but also as a result more social trust. Probably if you grew up in a collectivist society then a lot of the things that you can see happening in the West will seem dysfunctional. Also I doubt more people are lonely in Japan than America, and some brief skimming the internet, research seems to support this.
You do see people refusing to wear masks, I'm at a cafe (need internet) and people don't have masks on extremely rudely right now. Even thought there are sign asking them too.
In my opinion, the issue with this collectivist society attitude is, very few people think for themselves unless they're explicitly told what to do. This has been the issue in Tokyo and Japan in general, it's wear masks, social distance, but get on a packed commuter train. People just do it, although it makes no practical sense and everyone knows it's stupid, it's just done.
Look at the case numbers in Tokyo though, not going well.
Well, having a mask in a packed train is probably better tgan no mask, so it makes some sense, when there is no alternative. (is home office enforced?)
But I get your point. People doing collective things is not necessarily good. "Hey everyone, lets go to war" Ok.
Regarding masks I don't think you can really compare what is happening in Japan to America. People screaming and getting kicked out of stores and airplanes. The reasoning is different also, I imagine in Japan it's mostly about laziness but in America it's more about freedom and not being told what to do.
Of course in the ideal world only the people that are correct would think for themselves or everyone would be correct all the time. But it doesn't work that way, usually people that think for themselves are wrong. When a culture has more people willing to go against the grain sometimes they will be right and make things better but more often they will be wrong and make things worse.
Eh, every nation and culture has their problems. It is not a binary situation, everything has tradeoffs. Japan be Japan because they do the things that Japan does, and so Japan has Japan problems, not American or European problems. European do European way of doing things, that's why they have European problems. America does too.
I found something similar of the shockingly unnecessary politeness that Canadians have, to the point that a US citizen might find it slightly creepy. Beneath the surface it's an oppressive circumstance for many, in Canada.
As a Canadian, I fully agree but will also say that it didn’t used to be like that.
Canadians held doors, helped each other, and apologized for being in the way because we had a deeply ingrained belief that everyone is equal. When every human being is equal to you, of course you would help, or point out TP on a shoe, or applaud their culture.
However, at some point in the last 20 years “Excuse me” has gone from “We both have an equal right to this space, and I had not noticed I took more than my fair share” to “I’m dirt, and not worthy of taking space at all”.
People who believe they are equal is perceived as “high and mighty”/ostracized, while people who believe they are dirt are welcomed as fellow commiserators to complain with.
Fair warning: I’ve lived in Canada my whole life, and have watched a lot of shifts that either break my heart or frustrate me.
The more crowded a place and the higher the population, the more formal the culture and the more you need mechanisms to protect your privacy and politely but effectively tell a zillion strangers to butt out.
The human mind is designed to work with a "tribe" of about 150 people. Above that and we have to layer culture and learned behaviors on top of innate traits to make the whole thing not implode.
I used to think this until I spent some time bouncing around East Asia. Tokyo is not even that dense relative to other high functioning Asian mega cities. Seoul is 3x, Taipei is 1.5x. They're much less polite places than Tokyo and manage to function really well.
The garbage trucks in Osaka were the cleanest garbage trucks I've ever seen. In fact, they were probably the cleanest trucks of any kind I've seen compared to the West.
Japan is awesome as a visitor, but there are some weird things going on. Some of the older grandpas are just straight up pervs, I think years of being subservient and closer to death, they just give up the charade. I was traveling in Japan with an ex who had large breasts and several old men would literally follow her around and stare at them with zero shame.
I was looked upon a lot until I cut my hair.
Glaring is a kind of bullying that goes around a lot there and it’s effective in making people conform. Only place in the world where I felt safe leaving my new MacBook in Starbucks while I go to the bathroom so I don’t think conformity is all bad.
I think it's more the limitless respect for age and seniority. It's kinda how Trump probably didn't start as horrible as he is now, but since people never told him to fuck off and he got away with it, it just kept getting worse.
In Chinese, boss is spelled lao-ban, teacher is lao-shi, wife is lao-po, and husband lao-gong. Lao means old. There are a lot more of these in the language. I wouldn't be surprised if its similar in japanese(at least considering the society itself)
The way I imagine it is, is that society is self-balancing in the sense that if you go out of line society reminds you that something isn't ok. But at some point in time when you're old the society just respects you for being old and gives you a pass whatever you do. In east asian societies being old might be one of those conditions. In the US it might be more related to how much money you have, and how successful you seem.
I swear Samsung (Korean) appliances took this to a different extreme with washing machines that proudly sing their end-of-cycle song that cannot be turned off without significant hacking.
I do wish backup beepers would be banned worldwide and replaced with white noise warnings.
I have one of those washing machines! It’s so pleased with itself when it finishes and is an amusing contrast to the Miele dishwasher’s 4 stern German beeps
Imagine if/when appliances have general AI. Will their cycle-finishing be cracking a joke or having an orgasm? And, will you have a choice as to which? Will they refuse to comply if you don't talk nicely to them, will they get passive-aggressive/maliciously-compliant, and will they hold a grudge?
Douglas Adams described automatic doors and elevators that emit small pleasure sounds as they opened decades ago (in the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy)!
Red Dwarf has an AI toaster that keeps trying to coax Lister into having toast and loudly complains about the misery of being a toaster that doesn't get to fullfil it's life purpose when he doesn't want any.
Or, say, your Samsung washing machine detects on your home network your Bosh fridge and try to use any vulnerability to brick it (and the fridge tries to brick the washing machine too).
Appliance war...
If people know this, it would be a incentive for consumer to buy all from the same brand.
If all manufactures knows this, they would need to pay more attention to security (or at least resilience).
My LG washing machine does the same. Additionally, Korean convenience stores usually play something like a midi Für Elise when the front door opens as opposed to a bell. Even luggage cars in airports do the same.
I have a cheap Chinese-made doorbell with eight tune settings. The first is Fur Elise, and the traditional "ding dong" is number eight. Any time the power goes off it resets to number one. Needless to say I have given up clicking the button and resigned to my fate as a Fur-Elise-Doorbell-Person.
I had a Samsung washing machine a few years ago. It had a button to toggle sounds on/off. Unfortunately, I still wanted some notification when the cycle finished so I just had to leave the sounds on. I kind of grew to like it but my occasional guests thought it was annoying.
I got a japanese rice cooker that would play cheerful songs once it finished. Cute the first time, but annoying after that. Fortunately they could be switched to simple beeps.
I have a water kettle that plays a song whenever it finishes boiling. You can turn it off... and it resets back on whenever you unplug it to fill it with water.
I agree. It’s very rare that you think “they should be doing it like this” when you’re in Japan. The super fast train ticket machines, the coloured lines in the stations that tell you where to go, the wash basins that drain into the toilet reservoir. How did Germany get the efficiency stereotype and Japan didn’t?
> It’s very rare that you think “they should be doing it like this” when you’re in Japan.
Then you probably haven’t been living there for long. There are tons of things to change, one of my biggest pet peeve being the lack of house insulation and inefficient warming options (reverse air-con, petrol burner instead of central heating). Another is having to sort recyclable material into different categories which are collected at different days (and just once a week) instead of having a dedicated common bin for them. Speaking of that, lack of trash bin in public space is very annoying too.
> How did Germany get the efficiency stereotype and Japan didn’t?
Because it’s a deeply inefficient society. Good results is achieved by throwing more humans, usually doing almost jack-shit, to problems. 10 workers cleaning the same square meter, 16 people on a task for few hours, 4 secretaries at a very small clinic, salaryman staying at work bot producing anything just to keep a good image, etc. I witnessed dozens of such examples. European countries are way more efficient in general in part because they know when to stop, and can’t afford to pay too much people being idle.
I got the idea the trash collection days are there for capacity reasons - there is simply not enough space to place separate containers for all the things that are being collected. Not to mention there often being no containers, just a designated spot on the ground where to put garbage in bags & anti cat net to cover it with.
Here in Czech Republic we have separate recycling nests each having one container for paper, plastic and glass. Some nests also collect old textile and electronics. And it actually takes quite a lot of space, not to mention not being the most tidy spot arround. And you still need to place your regular communal garbage bins elsewhere, taking up more space.
Why would you want the american system of recycling, where it literally just goes to the dump anyway? Separating clean recyclables is the right way to go.
Japanese business culture is quite inefficient and stuck on archaic social protocol observance, but many modern technological advancements are quite efficient.
Conversely, German culture is known for it's irrational clinging to cash opposed to electronic payment, obviously Corona is making it reconsider a bit.
In Germany, there is a large line where products are manually scanned, paid for in cash, return calculated, and handed back, and before this cash had to be acquired from the a.t.m.; only slightly to the west in the Netherlands, products are chipped and all automatically scanned when passing through a gate, and paying is quickly done with a no contact card.
You picked the one example of actual German efficiency: Stationary retail. Competition is so hard that prices are Eastern European while incomes are Western European. Those chains are also expanding world-wide. It is one of the few segments where American companies could not succeed in the German market, even though they have tried to (e.g. Walmart).
Not true whatsoever. Everybody in Germany (well I reckon more than 90% of people) use cash / debit cards ("EC-Karte") to pay at shops and for tickets / parking meters.
Just because Germans don't always use credit cards for small payments, it doesn't mean they are paying cash that they get out of an ATM beforehand.
And the millennial generation and younger use Apple Pay and similar systems on the same level as other countries.
The "Germans refuse to pay with anything other than cash" myth / meme isn't true anymore since about the early 1990s.
But the major places apparently really liked to accept cards - the only place I ever got to pay less (6% off!) by paying with card was in Yodobashi Camera in 2017.
In comparison here in Europe many smaller shops still refuse to take cards or you used to be charged extra when paying with card.
I dunno, I live in Europe in a place that now does weekly door-to-door garbage collection, and the system is pretty good compared to the old one. You just leave the correct trash outside at the correct time and they come pick it up. I can’t think of anything easier...
Well I live in Europe as well and there's a bunch of containers(paper, plastic, glass+metal, residual) outside of my house I can throw my trash in any time of the week[1]. No need to keep track of the right day.
So I'd say that's easier than your setup.
[1] Maybe don't throw out glass or metal on the weekend or during the night
So many things in Japan are terribly inefficient. They just get some things right that we don't out of sheer necessity. Those clearly marked subway stations are there because of the inhuman rush hour crush that is the Tokyo Metro at 5PM. No Western country would find that acceptable, there would be weekly demands to build more rail capacity.
> there would be weekly demands to build more rail capacity
As an American living in Japan, part of the reason I moved here is that I think I'd die waiting for any sizable fraction of Americans to demand more rail capacity! I'll happily choose a train full of sweaty salarymen over, say, rush hour traffic in Atlanta any day!
The American equivalent: demand more road capacity.
Rip out the trees! Rip out the bike lanes and side walks! Rip out a row of houses! MORE LANES! This really is generational, I only get it from baby boomer relatives and friends. X don't give a crap. And the younger generations say we should walk or bike everywhere. Will it last? Or will they be subsumed into this seemingly never ending Americana story line?
A friend of mine who visited Japan made this observation: "They had a person doing everything. If in our parking garage we'd have a screen pointing where to park, Japan would have a man waving a light stick."
My theory is that at least some of these people are needed for managing the rush hours or possibly big regular events such as fireworks festivals that bring in hubdreds of thousands of people.
So normally they might seem unnecessary yet their role might be crucial for directing the people flows during the rush hour.
I noticed this as well visiting several years ago. For instance, even though the process for hotel check-in and most other services was automated with these fancy kiosks, they still had two people behind the desk in case you needed help.
In the west, humans are becoming less employable as they're displaced by automation--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU is a good video if you haven't seen it, and it's from before AI/ML took off! Japan seems to have mitigated it by making automation an addition, instead of a replacement, in many cases. It's certainly not the efficient, capitalist thing to do, but maybe it's the better thing to do.
> How did Germany get the efficiency stereotype and Japan didn’t?
Everything in Japan still mostly relies on widespread use of fax machines due to their stubborn continued usage of personal wooden seals ("Hanko stamps"). Everyone at every level of management and burocracy has his/her own personal seal which has to be stamped on paper documents, which are then either scanned or sent via fax.
This and a general stubborness on giving up certain deeply rooted but antiquated habits is one of the main reasons Japan is not famous for efficiency.
I've lived in Japan for many years and its essentially a western nation with a stronger social conformity / shame culture. The sheer volume of Japan praise on HN is confusing to say the least.
I think shame is a really useful thing in the context of society and something I feel a lot of Western cultures would benefit from. I've never understood the "don't X shame me" thing, there are a huge number of things that people should feel shame for that I think western societies have normalised.
I haven't lived in Japan but I've spent a considerable amount of time there. I accept that Japanese people are much more socially conformist, but it's interesting from a visitor's perspective as I've always felt the cities there feel a lot less homogenised in a lot of ways. Tokyo has always felt far more of a city of people doing interesting and creative things than London, to me at least.
The US is at a point where it's far more of a shame-driven society than Japan.
One wrong move and you, your family, and your employer are trending on twitter and national news and apologizing for your entire existence while everyone publicly announces that they're cutting ties with you.
Japan has incredibly strong defamation laws, where half the stuff that hits twitter in the US would land people in trouble in court in Japan for trying to ruin someone's reputation (even if it's justified).
I never lived in Japan, I know about a few issues (from hikkikomoris, suicide rates to good old mafia) but there's something fascinating about that country. Tell me if I'm wrong but their sense of aesthetics, minimalism, precision is special.
I argued with a colleague who worked for a japanese import/export company, he said they were crude, dumb and sleazy.. mostly succeeding by hiring hard working foreigners. That's one viewpoint, but I've also seen documentaries about early semiconductor industry in japan, and while they lifted a few patents, they did do their own share of hard work to turn them into workable devices (to the point where Japan became a reputable country in the field, from audio to computing).
Same goes for animation, Akira was a masterpiece of detail. The gaming industry was great. Ancestral toolsmith (famous katana blacksmith process).. samurai code.
More recently the manufacturing paradigm (toyota/lean).
HN people are filled with Westerners fascinated by Asian culture, and then get disappointed once they realized that Asia being Asia and do not want to have the West problems by introducing diversity and PC talk.
Most Western nations could use more social conformity and shame culture to reduce antisocial behavior. I mean, that's the main reason why Japanese cities are so clean and safe compared to most European cities.
It's a great place to retire in my opinion. They are happy to give you a retirement visa if you have half a million in the bank. Japan can be a cheap, high quality, and very respectful place to be if you're a senior.
If the retiree brings his/her own pension, how could this be detrimental? An economy isn't production alone, there have to be consumers, too. Importing affluent retirees is essentially propping up domestic demand.
> I mean it is no coincidence Japan is they only country to ever get nuked..... Twice!
That's a terrible thing to say. Maybe people weren't friendly to you because you have a horrible attitude.
Saying that neighbouring countries hate Japan is more or less a cliche. It's like saying neighbouring European countries hate Germany. In fact, Koreans for example commonly go over to Japan for a weekend trip.
I spent half my time in Japan for several years (3 months there, 3 back home), I absolutely _never_ experienced anything like you describe. Even in areas where I was the only foreigner around. Small children would glance an extra time at me, but everybody else treated me exactly as they did treat others. If I looked like I had some problems people would stop and ask. Service in shops was never a problem. And, as someone else already mentioned, Japan is the only place where I would actually leave my PC on the table in Starbucks while visiting the bathroom. And I'll just repeat again that contrary to your Nr. 2 - I was always offered help if I needed it.
And it just may happen that I'll stay in Japan for my retirement. We'll see. In any case I'll go back as soon as, or if, the pandemic situation is over.
YMMV, but I have been living in Japan for the last two and a half years and I experienced the three things he described. Renting a place was particularly difficult.
Yup, that's why the Japan is content being Japan, and they don't care about diversity or PC talk so much like the West. Nail that sticks out get hammered.
Internet SJWs on HN respond to reality by downvoting. Yes!
This is nothing about ethnostate, it is just about being who you are as a people with culture. No need diversity, no need PC, Japan be Japan, that's all. Try going for a tour to the entire Asia, from East Asia to South East Asia and you'll know what I'm talking about.
"Deru kugi wa utareru" I believe? This is something cultural that continues to surprise me in the ways it manifests in society. Speaking as an American though I really can't be throwing stones.
I think you might misinterpret the meaning of this phrase if you think the U.S.A.-man should not be the one to criticize it.
It has nothing to do with race; there are many similar North-West European proverbs that describe a similar tendency that advise against attempting to be exceptional.
U.S.A. society is opposite; it is known to celebrate and encourage exceptionalism and to reward those that have achieved it, or were simply born so.
And even if your interpretation were true, I see no reason why your country of residence would præclude you from criticizing something you disagree with. — the man who feels responsible for the actions of other by association, I find is is also very often the man who assigns responsibility to the innocent by association.
Well you must've spent your life being rejected by the Japanese? It is not like the majority of Korean or Chinese wouldn't smirk at having their sons/daughters with black spouse or Japanese spouse (shocking I know right? but it is the reality, do you know?)? or dare I say, even Arabs, or whites, or south east Asians. There will be people who look down on other people, regardless of race and nationality.
For the record, maybe you haven't met a nice non racist Japanese person yet, that's why your reaction is like that. There are quite a number of mixed ancestry in Japanese society, most of them do fine.
Why, whenever Japan is mentioned, invariably the phrase “the west” is dropped in a context that seems to make it synonymous with “the U.S.A.” or “Anglo-Saxons” at best.
You will find that there are few “western” countries that are similarly interested in “p.c. talk” as the U.S.A. is. — that is very much a condition commonly associated with the U.S.A. culture war.
"Anglo-Saxons at worst" you mean; they have been extinct since the 11th century. I don't understand this right-wing dogwhistle to be honest. It doesn't apply to anyone in Europe or the UK because of its diverse peoples. And ironically, they were immigrants coming from mainland Europe.
Anglo Saxons did not go extinct any more than dinosaurs; they evolved.
“Anglo-Saxons” is a common term to refer to all descendants of the British Empire where English became the majority language.
There are several cultural commonalities of Anglo-Saxon nations; one of them would be it's aversion to swearwords on television and strict adherence to social protocol reflected in it's “p.c. culture”.
Why does everything related to Japan has to be framed as exotic, ancient and mystical ? I've got a forest of beech trees behind the house with trees that have been shaped into poles for five or six hundred years. We don't call it the 600-year old French technique of growing sticks.
The Japanese aren't some Elves out of The Lord of the Rings with wisdom forgotten by the mortal races of the Earth and a bone-deep sense of aesthetics. They're just people.
I have thought the same many times before. One part of the reason why is that Japan, since the Meiji administration, has been actively creating myths about the "unique uniqueness" of Japanese culture, i.e. that Japan is not just unique like all countries and cultures are unique, but "uniquely unique" - beating all other cultures at being unique.
Which of course is just an attempt to disguise the idea that Japanese culture is superior to all others to make it more easily digestible.
The effort of the Japanese government to project soft power through the "cool Japan" initiative (Anime, Manga, J-Pop, games, etc.) seems to work wonders on Americans, but a little less so on Europeans.
There's a great book that puts the hype around "everything Japan" in perspective: "Japan - A Reinterpretation" (ISBN 97806797451120)
The obvious problem with nationalism is that everyone is supposed to have their own nation that uniquely suits them, including the people that you are excluding from your own nation. This gets exceptionally contradictory when taken to the extreme.
E.g. Nazis trying to build an Aryan state, while simultaneously acquiring "Lebensraum", knowing that they are also acquiring people from other nationalities, which then have to be deported into another nation state whose nationalist people become angry. Of course this came with the twist that Jews are a nationless race and therefore should be incinerated.
It's the same thing with the refugee crisis. Nationalists in Lybia deport non-Lybians to Europe who end up as refugees there and then the local nationalists become angry and deport them somewhere else. It's a never ending shell game.
To be fair just a few weeks back there was an article on the front page about clothes dyeing techniques of the middle ages.
Everyone seemed pretty interested and curious about European middle age colourful clothing techniques and dye materials from plants etc. It all goes back to the HN guidelines 'the primary use of the site should be for curiosity'.
I don't dispute the point of trivia posts, I actually quite like them. What I have a problem with is the framing. I find cultural fetishism generally despicable, regardless of the culture that's being talked about. I get a minor aneurysm every time I see someone praising the "eternal robustness" of Roman roads, for example.
I agree with you 100%.
HN usually has better quality discussions than reddit (for example), but any discussion about Japan seems to have /r/anime level comments.
To be fair, the Japanese do the same with Western culture. You named France, here in Japan every cake shop is a "patisserie" or "boulangerie" covered in ridiculous amounts of French text. Heck, they even have this concept of the Paris syndrome for poeple who travel to France and experience extreme culture shock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome
Because it's distant enough from our own stuff that we're just used to. It's a sense of wonder we don't get from "our own" stuff because we're used to it, or we take it for granted, or it's not done by a retiree in his hundreds year old workshop.
But it's a matter of perspective, and of course what content farm sites will highlight.
At this point I use noscript for everything, and if the site doesn't work I lose all interest in the site. Quora gives an entirely blank white page saying "Please enable Javascript and refresh the page to continue" and I have to use nitter/teddit, but for the most part these blockups at least of things never bother me anymore.
It's an interesting one to discuss with arborists. In North America, there isn't a long history of pollarded trees, so the technique is generally frowned upon since it's essentially "topping", a universally derided pruning method.
European arborists who maintain historical trees are more familiar with pollarding, and commonly are asked to explain why they believe their continuance of topping is defensible as a modern or scientific technique in the care of trees.
Pollarding, according to Wikipedia, was first mentioned by a Roman poet 2100 years ago.
You could claim sort of convergent evolution, but I find it hard to believe that a 1500 year old Roman cultivation technique was reinvented in Japan almost exactly at the apex of China's naval power. This smells of corporate espionage.
> Also, how would Chinese naval power help Japanese foresters learn
A bit rusty on my Asian history, but cultural exchange between China and Japan has been going on for millennia. Writing, food (rice imported 500 BC), culture, religion. It wasn’t until the mid 1600’s that Japan shut down and did their own thing.
I came here to mention coppicing as well. In medieval Europe forests were highly managed or farmed, and this technique produced a steady source of straight poles that were used in various diameters.
Can you point me towards anyone using pollarding or coppicing to produce lumber? That's not at all what I was taught those techniques are for. It's hard to imagine the resulting shoots getting big enough to make boards out of in a reasonable amount of time.
Think furniture legs, tool handles, spears, bows and arrows, wooden spoons, knives and cups and so on. The bark was of interest for the tannin. The wood was also used for generating charcoal and tar.
That makes sense. I knew you could generate wood for fuel in this manner. I think I got my wires crossed and thought I was replying to a comment that suggested it was a form of lumber production. Lumber in my mind, and according to Wikipedia because I had to double check myself, is wood that can be milled into boards, which I couldn't imagine being produced from a pollarded tree.
Once you see coppicing it's one of those things you'll notice everywhere that was cultivated for a long period of time. I'm surprised at how straight the shoots would grow, and farmers were pretty good at managing and multiplying timber using this method.
I just responded to a sibling pointed out that Rome records pollarding for at least 2100 years, but pollard and coppice are also critical to First Nations crafts in the new world as well. I think the only reason it dates to 100 BC in Rome is due to the limitations of recorded history, not a lack of imagination.
I'd place reasonable odds that coppice/pollard are older than the written word. In fact this is probably middle stone age technology. How many decent spears can you make without pollarding? Let alone arrows, which you would need ten times as many of...
Since Japan appears to have already had long bows before recorded history, it's probably more accurate to say this particular variant of pollarding in Japan dates back 600 years, and is tuned specifically for creating posts (and beams?) which are defining elements of Japanese architecture. Pollard is great for making spears and staves, good for making fences (up to and including the posts), but not so great for making houses.
I just have never seen a pollarded tree that produced large enough shoots to be called a pole. A pole in my mind is 4-5" in diameter. Everything I can find says pollarded trees were used to produce fuel and small diameter wood for crafts.
It's closer to pollarding isn't it? But even that's more 'let's make the tree bushy at this height' than the 'let's have normal-looking trees above this point as a starting platform' that daisugi seems to be.
Pollarded trees in Great Britain are in many cases several times older than the average life expectancy of those species. It very much depends on the species of tree of course.
I think I once heard that most trees that coppice or pollard well are adapted to beaver predation. We just make a cleaner cut than the beaver.
It seems to require a lot more effort than traditional lumber and can't really be mass produced. I doubt the output/input ratio (whatever you consider as the input: man-hour, monetary cost, carbon footprint) is any better either.
In other words, I think it's more like a luxury, and I won't call luxury items "sustainable".
This doesn't seem to be a luxury method of producing general-purpose lumber, but a technique for producing special-purpose lumber. The alternative way to get similar quality lumber would seem to be logging old-growth forests, and in that light this method would certainly appear to be much more sustainable, even if it cannot satisfy all the demand for all kinds of lumber.
How is wood a "luxury" item. Fruit and nut orchards both require significant man-hour and monetary effort, they would also be considered unsustainable luxuries using these rules.
Handy template: <Japanese name for doing something>, ancient Japanese technique/art of <doing something>.
For example:
Aruku, ancient Japanese technique of moving around. Written as 歩く and literally meaning 'walk' is movement of feet Japanese have perfected over thousands of years.
I don't know why you got downvoted, but your comment is spot on. So many Western people have this weird fascination with Japan, like it's some kind of fantasy & cyberpunk wonderland. But when you live here... well, it's just a normal place with normal people, some cool technology (but nowhere like the 80's) and some really outdated practices.
> Done right, the technique can prevent deforestation and result in perfectly round and straight timber
It's annoying that this doesn't explain what the hell "done right" means. What does one have to "do right" to get perfectly round and straight timber out of it? Graft the right tree?
Also (this is easy to miss) the technique is performed only on clones of one mutant Sugi tree (Japanese "cedar", actually more closely related to redwoods but it's its own genus).
Japan logged nearly all of its old-growth forests around 1666 (Edo period), and only organized forest management brought it back from the brink of becoming like another Easter Island.
One of the weirdest things about going hiking around Kyoto is coming across valleys of identical trees spaced evenly in neat rows. Absolutely eerie feeling, I was so creeped out I didn't even stop to take pictures.
Uh, kind of? It has been shown that there was some contact between the Polynesians and the west coast of South America. The Kon-Tiki hypothesis is usually understood to be something like "the Polynesian islands were populated by a group of indigenous South Americans who drifted there in a boat", which is certainly not exclusively the case (an overall west-to-east migration to populate Polynesia is all but certain and corroborated by evidence across multiple scientific disciplines) and might still not even be partially the case, as the contact could have been Polynesians sailing to South America and back (as the paper's authors acknowledge).
Given that we know the Polynesians to have been expert navigators who explored basically the whole Pacific basin over the course of centuries, that explanation for the contact seems more plausible to me than the drifting-from-South-America explanation for the genetic admixtures reported last year; but even if you think otherwise, the hypothesis wasn't really "proven right".
I think you were a bit lax on the kon-tiki hypothesis. It didn't just posit the west-to-east colonization of Polynesia from South America, but that this was done be white-people originating in the middle east.
So while there is genetic evidence for contact between South America and Polynesia, that evidence is also evidence against the Kon-Tiki hypothesis.
Agree. Being touched by the image of an elder tree that was left to grow as it wanted without being attacked by silly people is a forbidden pleasure nowadays. There is always a damaged person that needs to cut it in the shape of a ball, or steal the wood, or ruin its health for no reason. Trees subject to this treatment live less years, decay faster and are also a risk for the people because the new replacement branches are prone to disassemble and fall after storms.
I always thought some of the vertical branches growing on this mossy Live Oak in Gainesville FL, were like small trees growing out of the moss on the larger, horizontal branches. They look atypical.
https://www.google.com/maps/@29.6527082,-82.3339247,3a,45.5y...
Asked my semi-professional tree dude. He says that the tree was likely heavily stressed 5-10 years ago and that may have forced branch development. May have been a combination of things. Maybe it had a bad season, someone pruned it, maybe something in addition.
I do not know about daisugi but I do recommend planting a tree or having a bonsai tree. Trees can offer you many lessons about life and decision making.
Sometimes you need to cut a branch to prevent it from completely drying out. And in life, sometimes you need to make decisions like these too.
Interesting idea, and having done some woodworking, I appreciate long boards without many knots, but the article didn't go into any detail about how it's done. "Bonsai techniques on trees" just isn't that descriptive.
For example (if you need one aside from trees growing out of other trees) the trash collection trolleys that other countries just see as a horrible dirty thing, in Japan play a happy tune as they go. I miss you Japan. When covid is gone I'll be back.
Edit: and I forgot about the talking, singing, massaging toilets!