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I am not a woman, but I think that the same sex parent comparison works as well for women with their mothers as men with their fathers. They probably place very different weights on different categories- men probably care more about their careers and how hot their wives are, and women probably care more about how rich their husbands are, how successful or polite their children are, or how tidy their house is, but I think it still matters.
I don't know if the following refutes or reinforces the point I just tried to make, and I don't know how universal this is, but I have noticed that my mother seems to place a great deal of weight in her life on the opinion of her father- or what she imagines what it would have been even after he died. He was a teacher so she loved school and became a teacher herself, and one of her most emotional confessions to me was when she mentioned something about her dad poking fun at her growing up.
I am getting a lot of pushback on my Japanese section and I am sorry about that. I really do love the country, I've been there 3 times, I grew up a complete Japanophile. I stand by my assertions, and if they sounded harsh, I don't really mean them that way. I just try to maintain a balanced opinion on the country and see it in the context of everywhere I've been, rather than some shining other thing that stands outside the critiques of time and objectivity. I actually am 100% on board with Japan's weird "galapagos syndrome" thing they have going on and basically would be happy if they went full sakoku again for the next 300 years as the rest of the world laps them in some kind of Amish larp and prohibited me and everybody else who isn't Japanese from ever visiting again. I mean I like novelty so why not. But why is Japan not innovating in a Japanese way? Why are they stagnating in a boring stagnant way? Like do it with some flair, I guess. AI is poised to change everything in gaming in a year or two, but Switch 2 has no AI features that I'm aware of. They just rehashed Mario Kart and jacked the price up.
I could write an entire other post about your last paragraph. Japan is stylish. You're not wrong if your point of reference is Western culture. But the spark of energy in the youth culture scene, I would argue, ain't what it used to be.
One thing is perfectionism. Standards are very very high, especially for anything consumer facing.
Another thing is the steady loss of expertise. Japanese success was heavily based on little family factories and on one room ‘factories’ that were essentially sweatshops. The latter especially aren’t really legal now and the former are dying off. The big zaibatsu corps may acquire them but they aren’t able to hold onto a lot of the ‘tactile experience’ the smaller guys had.
Plus the big companies are clunky and slow moving; they try for Western style agility but it doesn’t come naturally so they hire lots of foreigners and spaff money everywhere without much to show for it. Look at SoftBank investments (Mr. Soft) or the absolute shitshow that is Toyota’s ‘Woven’ startups.
But Japan is certainly trying! Look at the new Kawasaki robot horse, for example.
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It seems like a lot of your criticism is just that it has a lot of old people? Which, yeah, not nearly as many young people as it once did. In part because the birth rate dropped, but also in part because they just live a long time. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
SEA and Africa is where the "youth" energy is at these days. Especially Africa... I've never been there though.
Does Israel have youth energy? Utah? Both have very young populations for developed countries.
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