/jp/ - Otaku Culture

The underlying reason that the Japanese need to tap American brainpower is to make up for the great weakness of their industrial juggernaut: the lack of basic research and creativity. Susumu Tonegawa, A Japanese-born researcher at MIT is highly critical of the absence of commitment to basic research in Japan. He contends that scientific concepts are essentially Western inventions and that Japanese culture remains a major block to true creativity. Scientific thinking, he argues, is a product of individualism, and "in Japan individualism has never been of personal value." After the war Japan failed to invest in basic research because it was too expensive and time consuming/ That tradition has continued. "The Japanese buy patents rather than developing their own technology, which requires enormous investment," says Tonegawa.