The Creative Spirit in Japan Today

15th June 2009

“First time visitors to Japan often remark how creative the country feels,” explains Nicole Fall, the British Trend Director of Five By Fifty, an Asian consumer intelligence agency based in Tokyo. “However, I think creativity is often mistaken for how alien Tokyo can feel, rather than Japan itself embodying a true spirit of what's fresh, imaginative or innovative.”

James Okubo, a film director and producer raised both in Japan and Portland, Oregon agrees. He thinks the Japanese view of creativity is stuck in a time machine, “somewhere in the 80s.” He believes one of the main issues that shackles creativity is people's concern over what other people think of them or their work. “In Japan, people don't purchase something until it's peer-approved. I think people just don't want to take the risk to be the first one to do something. They'd rather have someone test the waters first and tell them it's safe.”

For creatives it makes it difficult to create something truly original because they feel like it has a much larger chance of being a failure. And the most risky aspect of opening a business according to Japanese born and raised Toshiko Kibe, the Director of Career Women's Forum, is the prospect of failure. Failure in Japan is practically impossible to recover from. “The most difficult thing is if I crushed the business once, it means no more chance in Japan. The US still has the next chance.” 

And it’s not only this fear that infiltrates Japanese society and makes entrepreneurship and creativity tough. It’s also Japanese office life that obstructs creativity. Characterised by unbelievably long working hours, relatively low pay, lengthy commutes on cramped trains and dwelling in tiny shoe box apartments - how can workers possibly find the time, space or energy to be creative?

“Westerners who moved to Tokyo to work, excited by the street fashions of Harajuku and who thought this translated into direct inspiration in the work environment, quickly realise that the crazy fashions and outré entertainment on offer is actually an antidote to how uncompromising and restrictive Japanese office life can be,” describes Nicole Fall.

While it’s demanding being creative in a rigid office environment, it’s even harder to be an entrepreneur in Japan, partly due to misconceptions of what a start up should look, feel and act like. James Okubo explains, “You need an office in a high-rise and 50 employees for just a start-up. The Japanese don't realise the office can be your living room and just you working the phones and no one else.” The excessively high start up costs, fixed costs, labor laws (that often favour the employee rather than the employer) and societal expectations are just too much to bear.

As the film director and producer succinctly states, “People generally look down upon successful, young individuals. Japan is all about climbing the corporate ladder - not taking the elevator to the top. That would be cheating.” These archaic thoughts and traditions have been in play for decades in Japan and CEOs (predominantly Japanese men in their 60’s and 70’s) are still running a sizeable number of corporations with this mindset.

Even if people do have aspirations to be more than a salaryman, people simply do not want to stand out from the crowd. The sentiment is encapsulated in the Japanese proverb, ‘the nail that sticks up gets hammered down’. In Japan, group consciousness and conformity comes before individual identity and creativity. And in any group culture, there are always rules, tacit understandings, processes, procedures, systems and codes of behaviour to follow. And of course, varying levels of bureaucracy.

James Okubo reports that in the corporate world, even in ‘creative’ industries like advertising and film, bureaucratic procedures stump the creative spirit. “Whether you work for a Japanese company or have Japanese clients, it always comes down to process, not progress.” Nicole Fall, who has worked in Japan for 11 years concurs, saying creativity in Japan generally manifests itself through kodawari (attention to detail) and the omnipresent pursuit of perfectionism. Toshiko Kibe also offers the thought that the Japanese historically are agricultural people, and farmers are always thinking about efficiency and improvement, not a big grand plan that comes about through messy processes and lots of trial and error. Put simply, it’s ordered process that rules in Japan.

So how to get around the process mentality? Todd Porter, the American curator of TEDxTokyo believes the Japanese should create new platforms and communities as part of an overall innovators ecosystem. “There seems to be little mixing across sectors in Japan so getting thought leaders from all of the different fields together is something quite rare. We launched TEDxTokyo as one early step to get thought leaders from different fields interacting and collaborating.” Many creatives working in Japan believe that once dynamic experimentation between industry sectors begins, it will be one link in the chain that leads to a new era of Japanese creativity.

The Tokyo-based curator is also excited by the future of creativity and entrepreneurship in Japan as the power of social media to connect passionate people increases. Also, two important global groups are preparing to launch in Japan. Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, one of the pioneers in the area of social entrepreneurship; and Youth Venture, focused on giving young people (ages 12-20) the experience of being a changemaker as early in life as possible.

But what of the country Japan? Where should it go from here? Sy Chen, President of CIA Inc./The Brand Architect Group, a creative consultancy with offices in Tokyo, Los Angeles and Shanghai, offers one view. He believes Japan needs to become the role model of an eco industrialised nation. “The entire nation has shifted their interest to the field of ecology, sustainability and development of electric car, solar battery, lithium battery and robotics this year. It is the government that is encouraging everyone to pay attention to these topics. With decreasing resource and manpower, that is becoming the critical move for the country to survive.” A role model eco industrialised nation? Sounds like the true spirit of what's fresh, imaginative and innovative.