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Japanese firms tried to compete with newcomers like Samsung on cheap capital and manufacturing prowess instead of product innovation. They kept producing formerly world-beating products that now lose money year after year. Forty percent of Japan's electronics output still consists of consumer audio-video products and semiconductors.

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Seventy-seven percent of Japan's entire electronics output now consists of parts and components that often go into other firms' products. Yet a cost breakdown of Apple's iPod or iPad or Samsung's Android smartphone shows that the real money does not go to the parts producers but to the product inventors. Japanese firms are competing against Samsung when they should be competing against Apple, Intel and Microsoft.

Japan Manufacturing Innovation

A year after the Fukushima reactor catastrophe, we can start to estimate its effects on people’s medical and mental health. Curiously, it’s the mental impact that we can predict best. As a recent Green Blog post by Matthew Wald explained, the medical effects are expected to be too weak and widely dispersed to measure. According to one theory, the increased radiation received by hundreds of thousands of citizens will cause an increase in their cancer rate — but an increase too tiny to detect amid the large number of cancers that will occur anyway. According to a rival theory, radiation at these low levels will cause scarcely any cancers at all. Scientists just don’t know.

The psychological impact, however, is plain. Precisely because damage from very-low-level radiation cannot be detected, people exposed to it are left in anguished uncertainty. Many believe they have been fundamentally contaminated for life. They may refuse to have children for fear of birth defects. They may be shunned by others who fear a sort of mysterious contagion.

Nuclear Uncertainty Radiation Fukushima Japan Measurement Health Mental Mental Illness Psychology Trauma

One obvious alternative to the hypertrophic Western model, which has been eagerly adopted throughout the Sinosphere and Southeast Asia, is the low-rise, tightly-packed Japanese urban model. With 35 million people, Tokyo may be far and away the world's largest metropolis, but it's relatively squat compared to towering cities Shanghai or Hong Kong – its tallest skyscraper doesn't even break 250 meters, while Chicago has 12 taller than that.

Urban Planning Japan West East

Nuclear Energy Japan Disaster

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa - a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara - has marshaled compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan's surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack. It also raises provocative questions about nuclear deterrence, a foundation stone of military strategy in the postwar period. And it suggests that we could be headed towards an utterly different understanding of how, and why, the Second World War came to its conclusion.

WWII War Japan Atomic Bomb History

What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. A small number of Black Swans explains almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives.

Black Swan Prediction Nuclear Japan

Tokyo has been able to essentially buy the support, or at least the silent acquiescence, of communities by showering them with generous subsidies, payouts and jobs. In 2009 alone, Tokyo gave $1.15 billion for public works projects to communities that have electric plants, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Experts say the majority of that money goes to communities near nuclear plants.

Nuclear Economy Japan Green Energy

Earlier this week the Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced that Japan was no longer seeking to source 50% of its energy needs from nuclear power and terminated plans for 14 new nuclear facilities.  What might this decision mean for Japan's ability to meet its current carbon dioxide emissions reduction target of 25% below 1990 levels?

Green Energy Nuclear Japan

given the present state of technology -- and the sheer impossibility for Germany to magically reduce its energy consumption by a quarter over the next couple of years -- we are staring at the tragic possibility of yet another dash for coal as Germany phases out its nuclear capacity. If we are still serious about dealing with climate change -- as the environmentalist George Monbiot is -- we would do well not to go ballistic on atomic energy just yet.

Nuclear Green Energy Energy Japan

In the clip above: Nancy Grace, my absolute favorite television personality, goes to war with a CNN weatherman over fears that radiation leaked at Fukushima is an imminent mortal threat to people in the continental United States.

Science Religion Japan Radiation

Ellen, a friend of mine who’s a student at Reed and Senior Reactor Operator at the Reed Research Reactor, has been spending the last few days answering questions about radiation dosage virtually nonstop (I’ve actually seen her interrupt them with “brb, reactor”). She suggested a chart might help put different amounts of radiation into perspective, and so with her help, I put one together. She also made one of her own; it has fewer colors, but contains more information about what radiation exposure consists of and how it affects the body.

Data Data Visualization Radiation Nuclear Japan

Censorship Singapore News Egypt Japan

Gender Gender Stereotype Japan

Japan Enlightenment Hiking