It’s hard to think of a company that’s changed our lives over the past decade more than Google. In their quest to organize the world’s information, they added at least ten points to everyone’s I.Q. and gave us access to a global world brain that few but the most foresighted science fiction writers could have imagined. It’s fun to hit the Google website and see what pops up in the search box when you start to type something, and in the case of Japan, the searches people are making are quite cool to see. While some of the results are unflattering — why is Japan so weird and perverted? I have no idea what you’re talking about — most of them indicate that Japan is viewed as a special country in the world, one that’s clean and safe and possessing an excess of “Gross National Cool.” I’ve always been amazed at the large cultural impact Japan has had on the world relative to its size, and how some of the most mundane things become innately cool when they’re associated with Japan.
So, what do you think? Why is Japan viewed as such a cool country by the rest of the world? Is it Japan’s status as an island nation? (England, too, has projected an incredible amount of influence into the world over the centuries.) Related to the “mystery” we perceive when something is very complex and different? The fact that Japan closed itself to outside contact for 250 years?
Why is Japan so weird/successful/cool? Gugure! (that’s “Google it!” in Japanese).
