Pretty comprehensive article by the Japan Times that touches on aspects I haven't seen mentioned in other pieces on this topic. Talks about a lot more than just visual density too, like the use of images instead of text, the use of mixed scripts in Japanese, along with product design, TV advertisements, signage in general, technical requirements of CJK fonts and Unicode, etc.
Even before the Internet...
- TV shows filled with captions, chyrons, digital on-screen graphics, banners and snipes.
- Print ads hanging inside trains with a bomb of pictures and/or walls of text.
- Flyers, handouts, pamphlets with every centimeter of space covered with something.
The online world is no different.
Japan pioneered overstimulation before the digital age
As someone who has never lived in Japan, I find it ironic that opposite things can be true about Japan.
Japanese internet is very maximalist but at the same time, this is the country that exported to the rest of us the concepts of Zen garden, elaborate tea ceremonies, or even in modern times with Marie Kondo’s methods which are known to be minimalistic culture.
Unironically this is why I think Zen Buddhism, tea ceremonies and judo were developed and do so well there — Japanese people need these mindfulness techniques to unplug. Judo and Zen, particularly meditation, were recommended to me as someone with ADHD. And it really works. I also gravitate towards chaotic job sites (ERs, kitchens) because of the ADHD, and if it wasn't for the mindfulness of martial arts and Zen, think I'd be going insane.
Yep. If I've learned one thing about Japan, then it is that Japan is a country of contrasts.
My favorite is the variety shows with an unbelievable amount of redundancy:
Sometimes you get lucky but most of the time it's just 1) They show an unfunny clip of something normal and expected happening
One good thing about it, I don't need to turn the volume up to watch TV shows!
Good for elderly people like me.
Yes!!! Great points. I've read sociolinguistics papers and done some research on Japanese variety shows' use of on-screen テロップ "telop", or superimposed subtitles, and how the stylization of them communicates metalinguistic aspects and identity markers about speakers & the situations themselves. This is all super fascinating and fun to look at.
To me it’s super fascinating trying to read a Shonen Jump magazine and its ads - Such a comolex and saturated composition
YES!!! I actually saw a Twitter post a few months ago analyzing the cover design for Shonen Jump, how it's first designed as a pencil-and-paper sketch and then digitized, and more and more stuff is added in. Apparently the guy who does the layout got sick for a couple months and it was very clear it was temporarily being done by someone else instead.
Do you know where I could read such papers? Sounds fascinating
Yes, here you go!!!
Telop, Affect, and Media Design: A Multimodal Analysis of Japanese TV Programs (Sasamoto, Hagan & Doherty 2016)
https://doras.dcu.ie/26626/1/Sasamoto%20et%20al_2017.pdf
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1527476416677099
Superimposed Agenda: A Multimodal Comparison of Telops in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese Television Shows (Bai & Lin 2022)
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/5p3qt
And some other related ones that I've referenced in the past:
"Cool" English: Stylized Native-Speaker English in Japanese Television Shows (Furukawa 2014)
https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/multi-2014-1010/html
"Stupidest of all the primates": The role of English in Japanese television (Furukawa 2014)
https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/japc.24.2.03fur
Feel free to DM if you have problems finding free copies of any of them :)
TIL the word "chyron"
I've heard the word before but would not have guessed that spelling
Sounds like a Bugatti.
Bugatti Chyron.
I read "chyron" and immediately thought of the Zentradi squad commander from Robotech. Hehe
I thought of an Italian sports car.
Not to mention the sheer cacophony whenever in a retail store. Donki, I'm specifically talking about you - but any retailer is a constant loop of jingles and aisle-based screens constantly blaring ads.
I casually just turn down the volume on those whenever I can
Every supermarket has CD players scattered around with awful jingles on repeat at max volume. I've been really tempted to turn a few off.
I remember one that was so loud it was completely distorting the audio and I couldn't even shop in that aisle because the incessant screeching was hurting my ears, and I don't have sensitive hearing at all.
At least the Donki song is melodic and has multiple stanzas.
Can't stand the 8-bit synthesizer conbini jingles.
My most memorable moment was visiting Bic Camera and that little robot that does the rounds on the sales floor singing the store's jingle somehow ran off the floor onto the carpeted area where we were looking to buy a stick vacuum cleaner.
The robot ran over to an upright vacuum cleaner on a display and parked there in front of it. Spent five minutes serenading it with jingles.
We were touched. The salesperson didn't seem too amused though.
We did wind up buying this impressively light Hitachi vacuum though. Not the one that apparently was the robot's girlfriend.
I was watching a korean show in youtube, they too put a lot of phrases in their videos
Looking is one thing but what actually culture shocked me was the service DOWNTIME at night for websites like booking tickets and such
That one is actually so ass backwards its crazy to me. Is there any rational reason for this that I'm simply missing?
It's because if the user has an issue, there is nobody for them to call to resolve it. Same reason why some bank ATMs still close at night or during national holidays.
Please note that I think the above reason is absolute nonsense, but I don't make the rules!
Well, not just that, it really simplifies maintenance and updates if you can just say "yeah sorry you can't use the Web site for 8 hours." A lot of engineering effort and infrastructure spend goes into doing zero-downtime solutions.
Yeah I have to say, as a tech professional, I have mixed feelings about this particular quirk of Japanese culture because oh how I wish I had a nightly maintenance window and my users didn’t cry about it
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I disagree, I think it's better to have the service available at all times and deal with inquiries and issues between set opening hours. I dont think there is anything wrong with having to wait to make an inquiry. In addition, what about customers that work irregular hours and might only be available during the evening/overnight time? Not very respectful or considerate for those people, is it?
As for working on systems, that's why we have staging and local development. The only time the live service should change is when the update is actually ready and has been tested thoroughly beforehand. Besides, I'm not sure ATMs or most booking sites really require maintenance frequently enough to use as a reason to shut them down overnight?
It's obvious that this is the best solution because it's what the majority of services do anyway. It's only a few weird holdouts that still have 8 hours of maintenance every night.
The dwarves running the server's wheel are unionized. They sleep from midnight to seven. That's also why you pay more to get money from an ATM at night. It all goes into overtime for the little people.
That's not it. Japan is one of the first country to have centralized interconnected banking network called Zengin.
Zengin was created in the 70s when network was still expensive and it was created by NTT Data. It had a lot of limitations like operational time and character limit.
Zengin is upgraded but you have to pay more for operation outside working hours. Understandable because Zengin is a complicated business. It's basically a clearing house where you have to ensure the other party receive its money.
The infrastructure is updated but the artifacts remain. Good luck convincing all the hundreds banks and financial institutions to upgrade their system, and good luck convincing all the entities connected to banks to follow suit.
Now you know why ATM has operational hours, and why there's 30 characters katakana limitation for your name in many online form.
This Zengin must be the dwarf king then! The final boss. Jokes aside I've learned something new. However the bottom line is that there is always a perfect logical reason for why everything is stuck in 1985. Honestly I'm not gonna fight it, I'll watch them succumb to the dwarves.
You'll like this: https://mangadex.org/chapter/40bd8fe8-72be-4353-933a-838b76a278f7
"Creatures of the Machine Age", a chapter from panpanya's Ashizuri Suizokukan
Cute ☺️
The ATM version of this behaviour is the absolute nuttiest, though.
It’s supposed to coincide with human customer service. If nobody will be online to handle your complaint in a timely manner then the website or service is offline until there is. Same with banks, etc. everything is tied to real human work hours.
This happens in Hawai'i too. Certain government websites go offline overnight.
This always gets me booking Shinkansen tickets or hotel rooms from the UK in the afternoon!
Complete mismanagement and incompetence. There's no reason for this in 2025.
Same in the UK for some (a small amount) of services.
Really? I can't think of many examples. The only time I encountered this was when booking an NHS GP appointment and they had the online appt form locked to office hours.
Mainly DVLA
i live here and i still find it weird tbh, especially considering how mobile-first this country is
But yeah, all agreed.
Companies I worked for who wanted to expand in Japan always failed at understanding the intricacies of bad Japanese web design, but who the hell cares when that's not what the users want.
Saving cost on UX research for a specific market, thinking that the one-size-fits-all model works in English so it'll work the same in German or French. Big surprise, it doesn't, and Japan is even worse.
Top it up with half-assed translations and it's the winning combination. People who are in charge have no concept of localisation vs translation, and they look at translation as a cost instead of an investment, ending up with absolute shit quality translations but hey, the work is delivered, and the stakeholders can't proofread any target language, so it's as good as done.
They eventually abandoned the Japanese market after a while without surprise, blaming this and that but never questioning their own approach.
99% of Japanese websites just have a button that does Google Translate, even for important information on government/city websites.
And then nothing translates because every button and element on the site is actually a jpeg. I fucking hate Japanese websites with a passion.
This is the main issue! With auto-translate built into browsers now, they don't even need the 'translate' button. They just need to stop making everything a bloody image!
And that will never happen because CJK fonts are a complete clusterfuck.
Still though! Just give me raw text, and I'll figure out the rest!
They aren't. It's the same as any other font.
Yes, 50 MB per font is surely exactly the same as English.
They are 15 to 35 mb typically which is larger than English, however it's still overwhelmingly smaller than multiple jpegs that they use typically.
Also, there are many Japanese fonts that are far smaller that are standard for govt websites and fall in line with standard internet internet practices.
Take the japanese immigration website, which is an example of a Japanese site done right. 8 Japanese fonts, and several in dozens of other languages, all images have translations on them, and the page weight is 3.87mb.
Also. Font size doesn't matter after the first time you load the site as it's stored as cookies for later on. Shared cookies at that meaning all websites after that use said font won't have to download it! Unlike pictures which ofc each webpage would have their own of.
Generally agreed, but one technical nitpick: caching fonts and cookies have absolutely nothing to do with each other; they are two completely different things with different purposes.
Fonts are an asset (a file like any other) that have to be downloaded; and once downloaded, the browser will most likely cache it (keep a copy of it), so you don't have to download it over and over again on subsequent site visits. Cookies are small text files that a website can ask your browser to write to your disk, which can then be read on subsequent page visits by that same websites. The most common use is a "session ID", which is a unique (and temporary) identifier that allows the website to "remember" you. That's how most logins work, for example. Without cookies, the website would "forget" who you are in between two page loads. However, they can also be used for tracking, statistics, analytics, the like. That's why there is now the distinction between "essential" or "functional" cookies and others; if you deny a website the use of any and all cookies, chances are that core functionality will break; but you can (and arguably should) always deny the use of any non-essential cookies, as they usually just benefit the operator of the website but not you.
…w…what?
mobile-first in terms of usage, not user experience obv
Good that someone went in depth research and explanation on the difference. Interesting enough, Chinese sites also trend towards busier look like the Japanese, so it’s not just “Japan is different from rest of world”
Maybe because of the Chinese character usage?
My understanding is that it’s absolutely because of the higher information density of Kanji and Hanzi.
Yeah but Chinese sites work.
I don't mind information density, necessarily, but so many websites are terrible about organizing that information into a sensible hierarchy. I particularly hate how online storefronts cram so much info into the title of a product. It's crazy how things like generic USB adapters will include an (obviously incomplete) list of compatible smartphones into the product title.
Part of that is to try and game search results. That way, someone who searched for "iphone charger" and "ipad charger" and "thunderbolt charger" all head to the same "iphone ipad thunderbolt charger" product. (I can't remember if those are all compatible. It's an example.) I wouldn't be surprised if sites like Amazon provide what search terms are most effective to end up in a sale of a product, and then the sellers update their title to try and improve it further.
Oh for sure, I get why sellers do that and would probably do the same in their situations. Places like Amazon and Rakuten are at fault for not structuring their sites better and giving sellers the right tools to properly organize and categorize their products.
Pretty fascinating! Thanks!
Beyond the very weird UI, there does not appear to be a common understanding of UI. Each website enforces its own peculiarities. It’s all like one giant captcha.
"Comments poured in, and responses popped up across various platforms. Know-it-all bloggers, speculating vloggers, LinkedIn designers and smug Redditors — both the disdainful and the defensive — chimed in with theories, all attempting to get to the bottom of Japan’s confounding web aesthetic."
...I feel attacked.
Google still advertises its search engine here. Asked my Japanese wife why is Yahoo so popular despite being an overloaded mess? She mentioned that Google just has a search box, while Yahoo is a full portal with everything, so it must be better because it does everything.
From the people who are famous for “less is more” :)
It's also because Yahoo! just got to the Japanese market first, and people remember that & trust them as a result. Same with why Yahoo! Auctions is way more popular than eBay, etc.
Yahoo got every market first, including the US :)
True, but Yahoo! catered to Japan-specific requirements, other companies notably did not.
My favorite line from the article:
"Digital design manages to feel both wildly overthought and underthought."
I feel like walking into a Yodabashi Camera gives you an idea, like, every inch covered in some kind of text, a looping store theme song set to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and a guy literally with a megaphone trying to get you to try out cell phone service. Hard to imagine American consumers going to such a store and not coming out screaming.
Even Donki is sensory overload.
Using the free wifi in Japan often makes me worried cuz all their sign up pages look straight up made to hack you
There's one in Nagoya with a captive portal that still offers sign-in via mixi.
Yes, completely agreeing with points raised. And the pages would look even weirder with the auto-translation, my conclusion is even the top Japanese web designers do not know how to think out of the box. Searching for information from a hotel website, for example, it's super frustrating. For all of the texts cramped into every little available space, it's still difficult to find relevant information.
Yep. But this is just Japan as a whole...
(Except for very rare, isolated cases, e.g. Nintendo.)
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I have never seen a Japanese person complain about western web design. They seem to have no trouble adapting. Looking at this discussion alone however proves that we at large just cannot wrap our head around Japan's design 😅 So I wonder: who is it really who cannot think outside of the box?
In fact, when they switched to a “sophisticated Western-style web design,” sales apparently fell, so for retailers this design is the superior one.
Yeah, well, I still prefer it to our whitespace-infested modern Western web design, where all you ever see without endless scrolling are one or two lines of information, and everything gets put in boxes, cards or whatever – each of which, of course, gets its own ample whitespace padding again.
To me, that's the analog to texts where each sentence gets its own paragraph, or tabloid headlines. I guess I just have no taste. At least I can still use Reddit in the old design.
I do too!
The day they take this away will be the day I stop using the site.
Yeah, that will be a sad day. I don't know if I'll continue using it then, either.
Because attention to detail is inherent in Japanese culture, customers actually read. In fact, if they care about your product, they will read every single line of information you provide. Providing ample information is considered “shinsetsu”—a way to show respect to your customers.
However, claiming that Japanese design lacks aesthetic consideration or attention to detail is completely wrong. If you look closer, you will see that every design involves multiple layers. Big, colorful elements are there to catch your attention. If you are interested, you can dive deeper by reading the smaller text. Look into every corner, and you will find helpful information you didn’t even know you needed.
Murder is actually really frowned in Japan. It goes against the traditional concept of 生きる, which means "to live".
It's interesting how Japanese physical world can vary from information heavy neon lighted Shinjuku/Akihabara to quiet and calm zen temples, but that variety is not visible in the digital world.
i absolutely DESPISE text being done as images. that's a practice that needs to go the way of the dinosaur, immediately.
In addition, Weird Ads wording can pop out as Japan has no advertising law. Anyone can claim to be 'best in Japan' 'highest' 'oldest' etc with a small line of disclaimer 'Based on our own investigation'
Another thing is speed. With a VPN I can achieve much higher download speed with my internet ISP sometime...very primitive ISP behavior...
This is interesting given the laws about product design, e.g. you can't show food on a package as larger than it actually is inside, and only 100% fruit juice can display a picture of cut fruit on the label while 95% can display a whole but unsliced fruit, etc.
Japan's websites are the way they are due to mismanagement, lack of expertise, and dated technology. These articles try to explain it away but the truth is these websites are just designed and built poorly and very dated.
Websites in the west don't need regular downtime, don't fail nearly as regularly, don't have unhandled error states, aren't brittle, and they are faster to load, easier for users (Japanese and otherwise) to find things, and in general a lot more thoughtful and intuitive than the information design found on Japanese websites. Much of good design is universal with relatively tiny differences on the edges.
I don't think this article is trying to justify anything, or say it's good, just explain why it is the way it is.
Yeah the "Japanese" style of web design is not some unique cultural artifact. I don't feel "weird" using it so much as like I stepped into a virtual time machine to the late 90s/early 00s when I first started using the internet. It's simply dated and bad.
Fortunately not all companies are clinging to it, feels like it's slowly getting better. Very, very slowly.
Why Japan's internet looks shit — unless you live here
Fixed that for you. Its so awful and I don't think any excuses such as wanting information density makes any sense when other aspects of Japanese advertising and design are very minimal and pristine.
I quite like the information density and Brutalist look.
But stuff like broken links, half-width/full-with still messing things up, forms erasing themselves if there's an error, images instead of text, and of course websites shutting down overnight, etc. all are annoying and terrible.
I miss some aspects of the "old" internet myself, like the stripped down and more conservative look before we all got absolutely obsessed with having fancy movement and graphics all over the screen. Things loaded snappy, were less likely to break or get obliterated by browser config issues. Now some web pages devour more device rendering resources than you need to run some early 3D video games.
Exactly!
Like most things in Japan, it became the "traditional" way to do it so they will never change, never try to improve it, never attempt to "modernize" it.... Etc... Chouganai
I love this information density. I have the feeling Japan is designing for the "power user" first, and this is not a bad thing. They don't shy away from setting a learning curve when the experience is superior in the end over having it simplified at the start.
I wish we in the west would think more often than that.
I love the information density too... but still admit the sites are by and large terrible hahaha. Shame people are relentlessly downloading you just for sharing an opinion though.
always thought japans adverts and such was so different
Everything in Japan is weird haha, but in a positive and creative way. Even research papers and articles are well designed with graphic elements and well-designed charts and tables.
That's...kinda ironic given how Japan's writing system more or less demands careful attention for obvious reasons. And while there probably are video games with the sort of visual clutter you described out there, they do by and large tend to be more conscice with just about every piece of interface including text having some sort of a function.
This is coddling establishment practice. Japanese web design and more generally digital infrastructure is straight up dangerous, particularly for SMEs, but also for the entire economy.
Sure it’s a culture thing or a quirk or whatever, and that’d fine if it didn’t completely hobble practitioners’ ability to do efficient business. Look under the hood of some gargantuan percentage of domestic businesses’ web presence and you’ll be shocked by how structureless it is.