Japanese Websites
They’re surprisingly ugly.
It’s surprising because for thousands of years, Japanese culture was interwoven with aesthetic ideals. The majority of Japanese art forms — from tea ceremonies to flower arrangements — follow the Zen ideal of minimalism, where each object has its place, each function its purpose.
Yet Japanese websites are full of dense text and banner graphics, a chaotic jumble of colors and anime icons. It’s like someone tried to fit the neon lights of Shinjuku on a page.
Speaking of, why is Shinjuku so brightly lit, anyways? Why does it seem like Japan is separated into monks, minimalism and meditation on one hand, and gaudy websites, wacky game shows, and cafes with girls dressed in frilly maid outfits on the other?
Before I explain, I think there are some socio-linguistic differences worth mentioning. In Japanese, you can’t do italics or bold, and you can’t CAPITALIZE, so web designers resort to graphic text or decorations. Further, Japanese consumers tend to view websites like info-pamphlets rather than interactive tools. Purchase decisions are not swayed by pretty images or catchy headlines (“The biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone”), but by lots of information.
When I told my coworkers that the company website would look much clearer if it were decluttered, I was told that Japanese websites are often considered ‘ugly’ by western developers because of cultural differences. The sleek ‘modern’ website I saw as allowing text to breathe is seen in Japan as devoid of substance and full of unused space. And in Japan, where there are so many people and so little land, nothing is worse than unused space.
Despite its massive structural changes over the past 150 years, Japan remains politically and socially conservative. Rank, especially in companies, is determined by seniority, since the eldest members likely have the most job experience and therefore the most competence. To propose a change is to disrupt the wa, or social harmony, which means you don’t fit in. In America, that means you’re kind of cool. Here, it just means you don’t fit in. You can join a counterculture, like the otakus, but you better fit in with them, or you won’t have many otaku friends.
This monolithic pressure to conform is apparent. All children are taught to write characters using the same stroke order, wear the same uniform, and use language in the same vague, phatic way. I saw a group of young woman on the street looking at a dog, each declaring it to be kawaii, ask amongst themselves if they thought the dog was ‘kawaii, ne?’ and respond that it was a kawaii thing to happen to all of them. To relay a personal anecdote about other kawaii things that have happened to them is to go beyond preserving the wa, and that’s showing off.
Of course, this drive to preserve social harmony has its benefits. When, say, Japanese pedestrians adhere invariably to traffic signals, accidents are rare. When every child is pressured to go to school and do well, you get a near 100% literacy rate.
But it also means I’ll have to keep tolerating ugly websites.
