"Japan has the 3rd highest GDP and, among OECD countries, the 3rd highest population (used to be 2nd in both). With efficient and reliable infrastructure, healthy food, and minimal crime, people can focus on their creative work."

"Japan has been influenced heavily by China, US, Europe, etc. over centuries."

"It’s also notable that the Japanese language is extremely flexible/expressive and includes almost all Chinese concepts/characters while also using a huge number of loan words from English, French, German, etc."

"Greater Tokyo is the world’s largest metropolitan area, with ~37 million people. (Osaka is ranked 10th). By riding in one of the world’s best public transport systems, any of those 37M people can easily meet up and share their ideas, paintings, clothes, robots, etc. whether at a huge event like Tokyo Game Show or a tiny informal meetup over beers."

"In Japan, it has been possible since about 50 years ago for a single creator with no track record and no money to test his/her creative ideas on a large population."

"This rapid, low-cost trial and error of creative ideas on a huge readership is the equivalent of having tons of people throw tons of ideas on the wall and quickly seeing which ones stick."

"Contrast this to most countries, where it often takes a creator’s track record and maybe some special connections (to e.g. a publishing company or a movie studio) and a significant commitment of budget to get creative material in front of a large audience."

"I’d argue that it’s hard for a given piece of online content to gain traction/virality in the vast ocean of content without creative industry pros supporting it, so the Japanese manga/anime/IP industrial complex is still an important differentiator for Japan."

"In contrast to some countries, where there is considerable pushback from regulators and gaming communities on the use of NFTs, people in Japan are mostly open to the use of NFTs, and the Japanese government is increasingly pro-NFT / pro-Web3 as well."

"Also, virtual Youtubers have taken off in Japan like nowhere else (the most famous one, Kizuna AI, has over 3M subscribers). Probably this metaverse/NFT-friendly environment is one reason why metaverse giant Animoca Brands was able to raise $45M at a $500M valuation for its Japan branch."

"Although this can arguably be in some ways detrimental to creativity (e.g. spend years perfecting how to cut sushi perfectly à la Jiro Dreams of Sushi rather than experimenting with new sushi dishes), in some other ways the shokunin attitude and mastery can lead to unique creative works that are quite hard for replicate due to the unique degree and combination of skills required."