Oh man, I remember the iPhone 3G debut in Japan. I sat in line over night outside of the Harajuku SoftBank for...27 hours (I think?) I even got to shake Masayoshi Son's hand at some point that evening, when he visited the line.
I remember local pundits predicting that the iPhone would fall flat in Japan because "people like the tactility of buttons" and that "Japanese women would never take to touch screens because their long nails would make it hard to use." Boy, were they wrong.
I was a combat sports journalist (and grad student) at the time, reporting on the twilight days of the kakutogi boom for an international MMA news site, and so the iPhone was a godsend of a reporting tool. That need to report at the speed of information was why I sat in that crazy line.
While I very much agree that billionaire oligarchs have made life pretty unpleasant in the West, it's interesting that it was one of Japan's own billionaires in Son-san that pushed to bring the iPhone to Japan at a time when the likes of NTT Docomo and KDDI were quite content with doing their own thing. While very Galapagos indeed, I wonder: do you think that the introduction of the iPhone to Japan was a good thing in the end?
Ironically the iPhone did fall flat, briefly, because it lacked emoji support! But Son quickly convinced Jobs to have his engineers create a makeshift pallette for Japanese users, and it took off after that. Come to think of it, that's another way the iPhone transmitted Japanese sensibilities, because that's when Apple and Google realized emoji needed to be standardized and included on phones all over the world. (The fact no Japanese companies even thought of doing such is another example of Galapagos syndrome!)
Good question as to whether it was a good thing or not. It certainly shook up the local market. And it's hard to imagine life without a smartphone today. But now, almost two decades out, we know that smartphones (or more to the point, app / social media platform makers) warp reality in ways that we're still grappling with. So it's certainly not an unalloyed good.
I didn't know that bit about the iPhone 3G launching without emoji. Somehow, my memory of it was that it was always there! TIL!
I just realized another example of Galapagos syndrome that strikes real close to home, for me, at least: helplessly watching the kakutogi industry allow itself to weaken and die in the 2010s, giving way to the UFC's eventual monopoly. At the time, international fight fans could not easily find or consume the rich variety of combat sports Japan offered because Japanese promotions (large and small) didn't bother (at least not much) to market their product outside of Japan AND would vigorously DMCA strike any fight footage that found their way onto YouTube.
That had the dual effect of keeping Japanese combat sports history shrouded in mystery for anyone who wasn't already following the scene at the time, and largely killing off potentially new domestic interest because they weren't on free terrestrial TV anymore; just costly live events or PPV.
Not coincidentally, (non-boxing) kakutogi only started picking up steam again around the time of the pandemic thanks to the YouTube-native MMA show, "Breaking Down," the brainchild of Kai and Mikuru Asakura.
In this way, I feel that Galapagos syndrome basically helped kill a multi-million dollar industry. Now that it's tailor-made for YT, however, it's kinda back.
That is really interesting. I had no idea about that, thanks for sharing the context. I know pro wrestling is huge here so it makes sense there would be interest in combat sports.
Galapagos is definitely not limited to the tech world. Another example I can think of is how Japan failed to capture the energy drink market. There’s no reason that the world couldn’t be drinking Lipovitan instead of Red Bull except for lack of vision.
I believe Japan’s core problem lay in the broad sense of “distribution.” Excessive DMCA enforcement was one symptom, but more fundamentally, even when things existed, there was simply no way to see them.
Streaming sites solved that for television anime, YouTube solved it for martial arts, and the iPhone solved it for lifestyle through mobile access. Now, with Sony’s involvement, anime as cinema has finally secured its distribution channel through theaters.
Great article. And I agree that Galapagos is not necessarily a weakness. I liken a lot of J-pop today to “Galapagos music” - charmingly out of touch with the rest of the world. Where else can kids songs like Paparika become popular? Or while K-pop plows forward with visual beauty, many J-pop singers like Ado hide their faces. Thanks for sharing your insights.
We only stumbled on your piece a few days ago, and it honestly hit us in a surprising way. We’re Gen Z in Japan, and we basically grew up getting washed over by vaporwave’s random sampling of Japanese anime, plus the whole global city-pop revival, almost like a reverse import. And yeah, we really did watch all of it on YouTube and the iPhone. We had no idea about Rolly until now, but it instantly brought back those super Y2K vibes. And of course there was AIBO, the little robot puppy. While big countries like the US, Russia, and China were developing AI weapons and drones, Japan was out here making dancing eggs. It feels oddly peaceful looking back on it now, in a very Galapagos kind of way 😇
We agree with Tomino-san’s point about creativity coming from doing your own thing, but we also feel that the older generation of Japanese creators could go all in on their work because the country was more stable and prosperous back then. Cool Japan didn’t really help improve working conditions in animation. Korea, on the other hand, built a national strategy after the 1998 crisis to take film and K-pop global. We love K-pop, but a lot of it is clearly made with American pop charts in mind. Japan trying to copy that would probably feel off and not very “cool.”
If anyone ever talks about a “Cool Japan reboot,” maybe the real starting point has to be the Galapagos conditions you describe, where creatives actually get the space and security to make weird things for their own audience first. (That’s how it feels from inside the messy labor conditions we’re dealing with as Gen Z lol.) Japan isn’t great at building platforms, but we are kind of good at filling those platforms with crazy, unhinged content without being asked. And we’ve heard plenty about how modest executive pay is in Japanese companies compared to the West. People used to talk about Toyota-style “family management” as a unique Japanese thing, but maybe if it evolves a bit, it could open up new possibilities. Of course, plenty of younger founders in Japan are starting to act like techbros too 😑
Anyway, this is just a messy, rambling comment from some lazy Japanese Gen Z artists who know nothing about economics or marketing. We’re making work about the memories of the bubble years and the lost decades, trying to say that maybe this long stagnation isn’t entirely bad. We’d seen the meme “Japan is really living in 2050” floating around and never fully understood it, but your piece finally made it click for us. It was full of hints we didn’t know we needed. Thank you so much for writing this! 😀
Thanks for reading. It is really interesting to hear the perspective of someone who did not necessarily experience Showa, or Heisei as an adult. I'm not sure if you are aware but this article was translated into Japanese, and got a lot of interesting comments from local readers. I really should circle back and translate some of them... In the meantime, here's the link: https://b.hatena.ne.jp/entry/s/econ101.jp/super-galapagos/
This was a really great read, thank you! I can only imagine what being in Japan when the iPhone launched might have been like. I also laughed at your description of Rolly, which to be honest, I hadn't heard of.
I remember hearing about the emoji issue that caused iPhone to fall flat in Japan for the first time a few years ago and being surprised that talented product managers working on that would miss that, but then I suppose Apple's strategy for a global phone didn't take that into account.
Great piece, Matt. I’ve been in Tokyo for 30 years, writing this at the bar in Propaganda (first time I’ve stepped in here in 20 years) and I earnestly hope that Japan’s creators and trendsetters continue not giving an f about the rest of the world and continue making what they love.
This is a really cool and refreshing take on Japanese culture. I liked it so much I read it twice. Well done, and thanks!
Oh man, I remember the iPhone 3G debut in Japan. I sat in line over night outside of the Harajuku SoftBank for...27 hours (I think?) I even got to shake Masayoshi Son's hand at some point that evening, when he visited the line.
I remember local pundits predicting that the iPhone would fall flat in Japan because "people like the tactility of buttons" and that "Japanese women would never take to touch screens because their long nails would make it hard to use." Boy, were they wrong.
I was a combat sports journalist (and grad student) at the time, reporting on the twilight days of the kakutogi boom for an international MMA news site, and so the iPhone was a godsend of a reporting tool. That need to report at the speed of information was why I sat in that crazy line.
While I very much agree that billionaire oligarchs have made life pretty unpleasant in the West, it's interesting that it was one of Japan's own billionaires in Son-san that pushed to bring the iPhone to Japan at a time when the likes of NTT Docomo and KDDI were quite content with doing their own thing. While very Galapagos indeed, I wonder: do you think that the introduction of the iPhone to Japan was a good thing in the end?
Ironically the iPhone did fall flat, briefly, because it lacked emoji support! But Son quickly convinced Jobs to have his engineers create a makeshift pallette for Japanese users, and it took off after that. Come to think of it, that's another way the iPhone transmitted Japanese sensibilities, because that's when Apple and Google realized emoji needed to be standardized and included on phones all over the world. (The fact no Japanese companies even thought of doing such is another example of Galapagos syndrome!)
Good question as to whether it was a good thing or not. It certainly shook up the local market. And it's hard to imagine life without a smartphone today. But now, almost two decades out, we know that smartphones (or more to the point, app / social media platform makers) warp reality in ways that we're still grappling with. So it's certainly not an unalloyed good.
I didn't know that bit about the iPhone 3G launching without emoji. Somehow, my memory of it was that it was always there! TIL!
I just realized another example of Galapagos syndrome that strikes real close to home, for me, at least: helplessly watching the kakutogi industry allow itself to weaken and die in the 2010s, giving way to the UFC's eventual monopoly. At the time, international fight fans could not easily find or consume the rich variety of combat sports Japan offered because Japanese promotions (large and small) didn't bother (at least not much) to market their product outside of Japan AND would vigorously DMCA strike any fight footage that found their way onto YouTube.
That had the dual effect of keeping Japanese combat sports history shrouded in mystery for anyone who wasn't already following the scene at the time, and largely killing off potentially new domestic interest because they weren't on free terrestrial TV anymore; just costly live events or PPV.
Not coincidentally, (non-boxing) kakutogi only started picking up steam again around the time of the pandemic thanks to the YouTube-native MMA show, "Breaking Down," the brainchild of Kai and Mikuru Asakura.
In this way, I feel that Galapagos syndrome basically helped kill a multi-million dollar industry. Now that it's tailor-made for YT, however, it's kinda back.
That is really interesting. I had no idea about that, thanks for sharing the context. I know pro wrestling is huge here so it makes sense there would be interest in combat sports.
Galapagos is definitely not limited to the tech world. Another example I can think of is how Japan failed to capture the energy drink market. There’s no reason that the world couldn’t be drinking Lipovitan instead of Red Bull except for lack of vision.
I believe Japan’s core problem lay in the broad sense of “distribution.” Excessive DMCA enforcement was one symptom, but more fundamentally, even when things existed, there was simply no way to see them.
Streaming sites solved that for television anime, YouTube solved it for martial arts, and the iPhone solved it for lifestyle through mobile access. Now, with Sony’s involvement, anime as cinema has finally secured its distribution channel through theaters.
YouTube also solved it for music -- City Pop as a genre would literally not exist outside of Japan without it.
Don't tell Haruomi Hosono! 😬
:)
Great article. And I agree that Galapagos is not necessarily a weakness. I liken a lot of J-pop today to “Galapagos music” - charmingly out of touch with the rest of the world. Where else can kids songs like Paparika become popular? Or while K-pop plows forward with visual beauty, many J-pop singers like Ado hide their faces. Thanks for sharing your insights.
We only stumbled on your piece a few days ago, and it honestly hit us in a surprising way. We’re Gen Z in Japan, and we basically grew up getting washed over by vaporwave’s random sampling of Japanese anime, plus the whole global city-pop revival, almost like a reverse import. And yeah, we really did watch all of it on YouTube and the iPhone. We had no idea about Rolly until now, but it instantly brought back those super Y2K vibes. And of course there was AIBO, the little robot puppy. While big countries like the US, Russia, and China were developing AI weapons and drones, Japan was out here making dancing eggs. It feels oddly peaceful looking back on it now, in a very Galapagos kind of way 😇
We agree with Tomino-san’s point about creativity coming from doing your own thing, but we also feel that the older generation of Japanese creators could go all in on their work because the country was more stable and prosperous back then. Cool Japan didn’t really help improve working conditions in animation. Korea, on the other hand, built a national strategy after the 1998 crisis to take film and K-pop global. We love K-pop, but a lot of it is clearly made with American pop charts in mind. Japan trying to copy that would probably feel off and not very “cool.”
If anyone ever talks about a “Cool Japan reboot,” maybe the real starting point has to be the Galapagos conditions you describe, where creatives actually get the space and security to make weird things for their own audience first. (That’s how it feels from inside the messy labor conditions we’re dealing with as Gen Z lol.) Japan isn’t great at building platforms, but we are kind of good at filling those platforms with crazy, unhinged content without being asked. And we’ve heard plenty about how modest executive pay is in Japanese companies compared to the West. People used to talk about Toyota-style “family management” as a unique Japanese thing, but maybe if it evolves a bit, it could open up new possibilities. Of course, plenty of younger founders in Japan are starting to act like techbros too 😑
Anyway, this is just a messy, rambling comment from some lazy Japanese Gen Z artists who know nothing about economics or marketing. We’re making work about the memories of the bubble years and the lost decades, trying to say that maybe this long stagnation isn’t entirely bad. We’d seen the meme “Japan is really living in 2050” floating around and never fully understood it, but your piece finally made it click for us. It was full of hints we didn’t know we needed. Thank you so much for writing this! 😀
Sorry for the long comment lol 😅
Thanks for reading. It is really interesting to hear the perspective of someone who did not necessarily experience Showa, or Heisei as an adult. I'm not sure if you are aware but this article was translated into Japanese, and got a lot of interesting comments from local readers. I really should circle back and translate some of them... In the meantime, here's the link: https://b.hatena.ne.jp/entry/s/econ101.jp/super-galapagos/
We totally missed that there was a Japanese translation...
ありがとうございます😀
This was a really great read, thank you! I can only imagine what being in Japan when the iPhone launched might have been like. I also laughed at your description of Rolly, which to be honest, I hadn't heard of.
I remember hearing about the emoji issue that caused iPhone to fall flat in Japan for the first time a few years ago and being surprised that talented product managers working on that would miss that, but then I suppose Apple's strategy for a global phone didn't take that into account.
Your advice for Japanese creators sounds wise!
Great piece, Matt. I’ve been in Tokyo for 30 years, writing this at the bar in Propaganda (first time I’ve stepped in here in 20 years) and I earnestly hope that Japan’s creators and trendsetters continue not giving an f about the rest of the world and continue making what they love.
great read ! thanks
Absolutely terrific, Matt.