The peculiar case of Japanese web design

Are westerners entering a period of “minimalism fatigue”? Anecdotally it seems like color and texture are slowly taking hold in designs, especially in works targeting a younger demographic.

Example: liquid glass, anything published by Taco Bell, the meme of making sites look like they came from Geocities in 99, etc...

I prefer the Japanese style. Information dense, yet clean. It reminds me of the web before Apple-style minimalism took over.

To contrast with a superficially similar style, Chinese web stores are also maximalist, but they tend to assault you with popup coupons, confetti effects, and other such things. Japanese style feels very efficient and utilitarian by comparison.

> While the nation is known abroad for minimalist lifestyles, their websites are oddly maximalist.

I’m not aware of this stereotype of Japanese minimalism. I guess there’s Marie Kondo, and some Japanese high-end dining tends towards minimalism. But then there’s manga, anime, kawaii, Nintendo, Sega, Miyazaki, etc., a lot of which is closer to maximalism than minimalism.

I think there are some important points missing.

Japanese society can adopt things fast the "keitai denwa" where created and adopted earlier than anywhere in the world but in 2025 most companies still use fax machines. The japanese society seems to have different citeria for adoption and depreciation of technology (compared to the west).

When considering web layout you have to consider traditional media layout for example magazines, newspapers, books, flyers or comics. With the japanese language it is possible to layout your articles (text) in different directions left-to-right, top-to-bottom and top-to-bottom, right-to-left. Magazines are read from (western)back to front. Basically there is more flexibility in layout compared to other languages but translating that tradition to the web is difficult today and historically was very difficult.

Most visited websites are news pages, those will be layed out more similar to a traditional newspaper. In japan they often adopted a column layout where in the west we adopted a more list like (row layout) format.

As stated in the article CJK characters are problematic, however the japanese text especially is confusing (because they tried to solve it early on) on the encoding side as there are a few standards that don't cooperate. Especially on the early internet due to technical limitations and a fractured technology landscape (different devices, and operating systems). Therefore a lot of websites that wanted more advanced layouts opted for (and still do) publishing images embedded in html for more advanced font and layouts.

Also most japanese primarily visit japanese language text websites and therefore don't come in contact with the western website design styles very often. A lot of non English speaking countries have this however in japan it is common because of the relative cultural separation. Most japanese just don't interact with companies people or media outside of japan often, a huge part of this is because they are a first world country that has a very low English proficiency. leading to the two styles evolving independently.

I don't like it. I feel like every element in the page is shouting at me, abandoning any notion of visual hierarchy. I wonder how Japanese designers regard that concept.

The funny thing is, Western minimalism is strongly influenced by Zen, which is diametrically opposed to this.

I believe this is a continuation of her video on the same topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ep308goxQ . It's been on my to-watch list for a while. I guess it's time to check it out.

I found this gem. Hadn't seen it on HN yet, so I thought I'd post it!

I've always found Japanese design fascinating

This goes beyond just web design. In Japan, UIs in general steer toward being information dense. At first glance they look positively ancient. And while they take some time to become familiar they seem to be first and foremost, functional. Frankly I wish we in the west would focus more on function and sticking with it instead of hopping to whatever the UI/UX trend of the day is. It seems to me that the more focus there is on UI/UX the worse the experience gets.

I personally think it’s a feature and not a bug that web minimalism didn’t impact Japan in the same way it did here in the West. Giant images everywhere, and hiding most complexity behind the ubiquitous ••• buttons, is hostile to discoverability and usability. Our motto: “Hide everything that isn’t specifically earning money, or vitally important to the funnel to maximize our KPI!”

I’m not pretending to understand the why better than the author of this piece - just saying I’m happy for Japan.

I took 3 years of Japanese in HS (96-99). About 2 years ago I was doing a lot of work with genai and japanese typefaces. It was wild digging into how different the japanese web is. Back in like 2005, it was common to stylize english text by embedding it in an image and then applying drop shadows, etc. By 2022 everyone does the vast majority of that within CSS. Not in Japan though, I couldn't believe how much text content is still in image form.

I think the answer is more obvious: The average Japanese web designer doesn't assume his user is an idiot, while western design is more condescending