Can a sleepy Japanese town become Asia’s Silicon Valley?

20 comments

1. silicon becoming a sleepy little Japanese town, is also possible

2. Highly unlikely.

3. people forget silicon valley is because : Ultra rich investors + Very supportive CA government in 60s + 2 brilliant feeder schools (Berkeley & Stanford) + great weather all year + good quality base (agriculture, labor, connectivity etc)

4. With the tax rates? No. It could be the next Indian or Chinese outsourcing hub for manufacturing (not design) bc wages are so hilariously low here.

5. Have they moved on from windows XP yet?

6. > Can a sleepy Japanese town become Asia’s Silicon Valley?

   No.

7. Not with our gomi wages and the country take ages to adapt

8. Nice try, but no. And never will any Japanese town/city become any version of Silicon Valley.

9. I’m pretty sure Zhongguancun in China is already miles ahead as an Asian silicon valley. And even, you know, Silicon Harbor in Hong Kong.

10. Lol nowhere in Japan could because they don’t accept innovation or new stuff.

    They still berate me when I ask them if I can upgrade a framework or a tool in my company. I worked at 3 companies and they all did the same.

    They also don’t really want foreigner engineers working here. Or they want but they don’t really do anything for it.

    Can they do it with young Japanese only? Well yes but not many young people here are interested in tech.

    You can’t just create something like silicone valley with will and money. You need people, people who want to work and live there.

    Many countries tried this but failed miserably. Besides it’s too late to create a silicone valley imho. Work is remote now. Maybe a virtual one? lol

11. “No”

12. No

13. Could happen I guess but I see that as highly unlikely.

    Japan is great at things they already know. Innovation may have been their thing in the past (to an extent) but it is not anymore.

    Japan is obsessed with micromanagement, the room for creativity is non existent. At least from my own experiences and also talking to my friends within different fields. OfC there are exceptions but we all know the deal.

    Seems more likely that South Korea would step up and become the Silicon Valley of Asia if I would bet on any country in Asia.

    Also. Fax machines.

14. No….those 15-20 yr olds will move to Tokyo, be ground into unthinking, uninnovative automatons like every other salaryman in Japan.

15. My coworker had an online interview/briefing thing for this school a year or two ago. He said they talked a good game but had no idea what they were doing educationally.

16. IIRC, Japan doesn’t have good bankruptcy protection laws so they can go after your organs or ask you to work underground for 1050 years to make up for the debt

17. To be clear — this is a small amount of money, nothing like the investment that Japan put into RIKEN, facilities in Tsukuba and Wako for example. So

    >Can a sleepy Japanese town become Asia’s Silicon Valley?

    . . . is more than a little silly. Japan has made very big techno industrial bets before – “Fukoku Kyōhei” worked out pretty much as intended — but this isn’t one.

18. You can bring smart young students to the countryside, but can you make them stay in the countryside? I studied a semester in AIU and from my understanding Akita has the same problem, students from all over Japan come there but very few, aside from the ones that are actually from Akita, stay after graduation.

19. I was like “Oh that’s where there’s a satellite office from my company!” Then I realised the founder of this school is my CEO lol

    I hope it helps in reliving the innovation spark in japanese youth.

20. They’re off to a good start at least, with secured government funding, corporate funding and student interest. And that the founder is a startup CEO is likely another plus. From the article:

    > To build the school Mr Terada has secured 2bn yen ($15m; £12m) in donations via a government system called furusato nozei or “hometown tax”.

    > More than 30 companies are also now financial supporters of the forthcoming school. These are mostly Japanese but there are also some international ones, such as accountancy giant Deloitte.

    > big interest from prospective students, with more than 500 students from all over Japan attending briefings to find out about the first 40 slots.