Japan is Awesome at Inventing, but Suck at Implementing

Oh Japan… You are so fun, wacky, and full of potential, and yet you keep squabbling your amazing potential away. We all know that Japan has some of the most interesting innovations, but I think you’ll be shocked to know just how many things had their birth in Japan.

The land of anime, bullet trains, and quirky vending machines has a knack for coming up with world-changing ideas—only to let someone else swoop in and reap the fame and fortune. So let’s examine the curious case of a nation that’s fantastic at inventing, yet all too often falls flat in making its homegrown technologies a global hit.

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The Selfie Stick: Invented in Japan, Perfected Everywhere Else

Let’s start with arguably the most cringe-inducing tourist gadget in modern times: The selfie stick!

Whenever you see tourists raising their arms to snap the perfect group shot, think of Hiroshi Ueda, a Japanese inventor who, back in the 1980s, created a telescopic rod to help him take pictures with his family while traveling. But guess what happened? Not much. The idea was there, and the patent existed. Yet, culturally, it never really took off. The patent expired, and eventually, someone outside Japan saw its potential. The concept reemerged decades later, became a global phenomenon, and left us scratching our heads: Why didn’t the nation that gave us the stereotype of asians taking pictures of everything cash in on this first?

Part of the reason is that Japan’s market can be cautious and slow-moving, with companies sometimes unsure how to scale or market a product beyond local borders. That hesitancy left the door wide open for other firms, mostly in China, to mass-produce, brand, and aggressively market the selfie stick. By the time Japan realized it had a cultural icon on its hands, the rest of the world had already associated this tourist essential with a “Made in China” label.

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The QR Code: A Japanese Invention Inspired by Go

Yes, that black-and-white square that you scan with your phone to open a menu or website was also born in Japan. In 1994, Denso Wave, a Japanese company, invented the QR code to track automotive components in factories more efficiently. Its design was directly inspired by the board game Go, with its black-and-white patterns optimized for fast reading and minimal errors—just like Go stones are placed with strategic precision.

But for years, the technology lingered in relative obscurity outside certain industrial environments.

Even though Japanese phones were among the first to get cameras and advanced features (please google the term “Galapagos phones” to see some of the coolest phones ever conceived), Japanese companies didn’t see the potential in QR-codes.

Instead, China drove mass adoption in the early 2010s through WeChat Pay and Alipay, using QR codes as a cheap, universal payment method complex enough to hold detailed security information. Meanwhile, Western businesses adopted them for marketing and authentication. Japan, despite its advanced mobile tech, failed to push QR codes beyond niche uses.

Then, when, the COVID-19 pandemic sealed their ubiquity, making them essential for contactless interactions.

Today, from restaurant menus to payment terminals to travel passes, QR codes are everywhere. Yet how many people actually know they’re a Japanese invention inspired by an ancient board game? My guess: very few.

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Touch Payments (NFC)

Speaking of payments, Near Field Communication, or NFC, is the magical technology enabling tap-and-go payments on your phone, keyless entries, and so much more. And yes, this too has some of its origin story rooted in Japan. Sony developed the FeliCa contactless smart card system in the 1980s and 1990s, which provided the foundation for many modern NFC applications. Even before that, certain forms of contactless payment technology were in use in select Japanese transit systems.

But, you guessed it: global adoption lagged because Japan never pushed FeliCa as a worldwide standard. Meanwhile, the credit card industry and smartphone makers—especially Apple and Google—bet big on NFC for payments, branding it as an innovation of their own. By the time tap-to-pay became ubiquitous in the 2010s, most people associated it with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Visa, not the Japanese train tickets that had quietly pioneered the concept decades earlier.

Today, tapping your phone or card at a register feels second nature in many countries. Ironically, though, Japan—the birthplace of NFC—still has pockets of cash-only retailers, where modern payments weren’t widely accepted until embarrassingly recently.

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So Many Other “Before-Their-Time” Innovations

It’s not just selfie sticks, QR codes, or NFC that got their start in Japan. Believe it or not, there’s a staggering list of innovations that were born in the Land of the Rising Sun but either never took flight at home or ended up overshadowed when foreign companies grabbed the limelight. Let’s take a look at some of these underappreciated trailblazers:

1. Karaoke Machines
   Perhaps the most iconic Japanese invention that got away—Karaoke was invented by Daisuke Inoue in the early 1970s. Inoue, a musician in his youth employed in backing business people who wanted to sing in bars, invented the machine as a means of allowing them to sing without live back-up.

   

   But guess what? He didn’t patent it. Soon afterward, others modified and mass-produced karaoke systems, taking the concept global. Japan is obviously still the spiritual home of karaoke, but the inventor lost out on the billions the industry eventually generated worldwide.

   But he was still recognized for his contributions, and in 2004, Inoue went to Harvard University to accept an Ig Nobel Peace Prize for "inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other."

2. Emojis
   Yes, the cute little characters that we spam in our daily texts originated from Japan. In the late 1990s, Shigetaka Kurita, working for NTT DoCoMo, developed the first set of emojis to convey emotional nuance in digital communication. But the idea basically remained a Japan-only phenomenon for years—until Apple and Google adopted the concept into their operating systems. Once emojis hit smartphones across the globe, they became an unstoppable pop-culture force. So while they’re mainstream now, few outside Japan realize the original “kaomoji” and emoji mania started in a Japanese telecom lab.

3. The First Consumer Digital Camera
   While Kodak in the U.S. gets much of the glory for pioneering digital imaging, Japanese companies like Sony and Fuji were churning out early prototypes decades ago. Sony released the Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera) in 1981—a still video camera that used mini discs for storage. Fuji jumped in with the DS-1P in 1988, considered one of the first truly digital cameras storing data on a semiconductor memory card. Despite this head start, it took companies outside Japan (and eventually a few Japanese giants too) to refine the digital camera for the masses. But that initial spark? Entirely Japanese.

4. Bullet Trains
   Japan’s Shinkansen trains debuted in 1964, setting speed and efficiency standards that mesmerized the world. Yet for decades, countries outside Japan either stuck with conventional rail or took a wait-and-see approach before eventually developing their own high-speed rail systems. The bullet train technology itself was an engineering marvel that could have been licensed or adapted in many places far earlier, but bureaucratic caution and high costs, on both Japan’s side and potential partners’, stunted its global proliferation. Ironically, some of the modern high-speed trains in Europe and China feel like they got more international media play than the original Shinkansen.

5. Sony’s Librie E-Reader (Precursor to the Kindle)
   Before the Amazon Kindle became synonymous with e-readers, Sony had already launched the Librie in 2004, three years before the first Kindle. It used e-ink technology, was sleek for its time, and worked well—for Japanese users. But limited content, a proprietary format, and lackluster marketing meant it never really took off internationally. A few years later, Amazon came out swinging with the Kindle, better distribution, easier purchasing, and a global marketing blitz—effectively cornering the e-reader market that Sony helped invent.

6. The First Mass-Market Laptop
   Toshiba’s T1100, introduced in 1985, is widely considered the first IBM-compatible laptop computer for mainstream consumers. This was at a time when portable computing was still a curiosity to most people. Despite the T1100’s significance, Toshiba didn’t fully capitalize on its first-mover advantage internationally—leaving American and other international brands to eventually dominate the laptop landscape.

7. Calorie-Counting Wearables
   Early “sports metering” devices were popular in Japan from the mid-1990s, with companies like Omron and Tanita producing pedometers and early wearable health trackers. Yet it wasn’t until Fitbit in the U.S. combined sleek design and smartphone integration in 2009 that the world truly embraced wearable health tech. Meanwhile, Japan’s advanced pedometers (some with integrated heart rate and calorie counting) stayed primarily in niche domestic markets, never pitched to a broader consumer base with the same vigor.

8. Virtual Reality Headsets
   In the 1990s, Japanese companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Sega experimented with virtual reality, aiming to bring immersive gaming to the masses. Nintendo’s Virtual Boy (1995) was the first real attempt at mass-market VR, promising stereoscopic 3D gameplay. However, it was a disaster—uncomfortable, visually straining, and lacking true immersion.

   Like many early Japanese VR experiments, it was ahead of its time but poorly executed. The lack of head tracking, monochrome red display, and awkward tabletop setup made it feel more like a tech demo than a true leap forward. It flopped hard, and instead of refining the concept, Nintendo abandoned it.

   Meanwhile, Western companies later perfected and popularized VR with Oculus, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR, proving yet again that Japan had the “bones” of the technology first but failed to implement it effectively.

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Why Does Japan “Suck at Implementing”?

Now, you might be wondering: If Japan is so imaginative, so cutting-edge in many respects, why does it struggle to spread these ideas worldwide? As an expert in the field of innovation, I’ve come to see a few recurring patterns:

1. Cultural Conservatism and Risk Aversion
   Many Japanese companies operate on consensus-based decision-making. While this approach can lead to well-thought-out products, it often slows down the speed of getting to market. The fear of failure or tarnishing a company’s reputation can stifle the bold marketing moves needed to capture global audiences.

2. Internal Market Comfort
   Japan has a robust internal market, meaning a successful product can do well at home without ever venturing abroad. But this can create complacency. If domestic sales are strong enough, why risk an expensive global push? This insular approach can cause Japan to overlook the broader potential of its inventions—until someone else seizes the moment.

3. Insufficient Global Partnerships
   Japanese businesses traditionally tend to focus on building long-term relationships domestically. International partnerships sometimes get overshadowed or remain limited to big-name collaborations (like between well-established giants). Smaller innovators, meanwhile, find it hard to secure the resources or networks to take their products abroad effectively.

4. Communication and Branding
   Let’s face it: marketing is as critical as inventing. Many Japanese firms (especially medium and small ones) struggle with finding the right pitch for global audiences. Language barriers, cultural differences, and an emphasis on technical specifications over lifestyle branding can prevent groundbreaking products from hitting prime-time.

5. Timing and “Galapagos Syndrome”
   The Japanese ecosystem sometimes evolves technology in isolation—tailored specifically to local needs—so inventions may not align with global norms until much later. This leads to missed windows of opportunity. By the time a product is ready for a larger market, an international competitor might already have introduced a more user-friendly or more aggressively marketed copy.

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The Grand Irony—and Hope for the Future

The irony is that Japan’s brilliance in inventing shows no signs of slowing down. The pipeline of ideas—ranging from advanced robotics to environmental tech, hydrogen-powered cars, and beyond—remains astonishing. But the question always is: Will they stick the landing this time?

My best estimation is that Japanese innovators will find new ways to collaborate internationally, perhaps driven by younger generations more willing to take risks and adopt global-minded strategies. We already see budding Japanese startups forging closer ties with Silicon Valley, Southeast Asia, and Europe—looking to launch products abroad from Day One. And with the rise of the internet of things (IoT), 5G, and AI, we may just witness a new wave of Japanese brilliance that doesn’t merely fade into obscurity at home.

In the end, Japan will always surprise us. It may still struggle to implement some of its biggest ideas on a global scale, but it’s precisely that quirkiness—the wacky prototypes, the passion for engineering, the relentless pursuit of precise perfection—that ensures it remains a wellspring of innovation. The real shame, of course, is when those inventions don’t make it to the rest of the world, or they do but under someone else’s name.

Yet I remain hopeful. Maybe the time is ripe for Japan to finally shake off its conservative instincts and claim its seat at the head of the global innovation table. After all, if a country can dream up the QR code, perfect the selfie stick decades before Instagram, and pave the way for tap-to-pay technology, it’s only a matter of time before it fully converts this endless ingenuity into unstoppable world domination—of the friendliest, wackiest, and most fun kind, of course.