alt Hacker NewsI'll preface this by saying there are lots of other factors at play, but here's an interesting one I can speak to personally:
Car culture. We're a very car-centric society, and the Japanese auto makers have been a part everyday life to 3 full generations of Americans now. Even most Baby Boomers are too young to remember a world without Honda or Toyota. Across all age groups, a lot more Americans grew up with a fondness for their family's Toyota than their family's Hyundai.
I grew up in middle America. Both my grandfathers were "GM Men" if you will. Partly by vocation, partly by culture. On both sides of my family, every car was either a Chevy or a Buick. When my folks bought a Honda in 2007, it was treated like a scandal. But yknow what? Now one of my cousins has a Hyundai, and nobody batted an eye. Things are changing, even for the "raise hell praise Dale" crowd.
Japan's car makers, and their other industrials have a 40-year head start on embedding themselves in the American zeitgeist. Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Yamaha, they've all been here a really long time. They're loved because they're familiar. That's a bias, and I think that bias colors the way we talk about east Asian businesses more broadly.
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Yep. Growing up in the 90s, Japan was the undisputed king of cool, affordable entry level sports cars. RX-7, Integra, Impreza WRX, et al.
Yamaha, Korg an Roland were the defining instrument producers of the 80s and 90s. Few things have altered the course of popular music as much as the TR-909 and TR-808, M1, DX-7, Juno, Jupiter. All of electronic music grew out of those.
The Walkman and Discman were iconic.
Honda was building P3 and ASIMO. The PlayStation 1/2 and Nintendo 64/GameCube were a thing.
I didn't even get into anime, the language or music from there until decades later. But all of the cool things came from Japan back then. Honestly, they still kind of do.
If anything Korean culture might be even cooler than Japanese culture in the US right now.
I keep writing this over and over again on HN: There are NO highly developed non-micro states that are not car centric outside of major cities. Yes, literally, Japan, outside of a few large cities, is incredibly car centric. Sure, the cars are small and cute, but it is defintely car centric!
They came for a single reason: To avoid import tariffs. Please stop romanticising this for any other reason.