Setting Sun: How Japan Fell Behind In Dance Music Technology 

Japan was once the main creator of technology for dance music. How did the country that gave us the TR-909, CDJ and S950 lose its position in the market?

In 1989, at the peak of Japan’s economic bubble, 32 of the world’s top 50 companies were Japanese. Today, there’s only one, Toyota. Nowhere is this massive change more keenly felt than in music technology. At the end of the 20th century, the vast majority of the gear that we used to make, DJ and consume dance music came from Japanese companies. Now you’re more likely to listen to music made with a German DAW on an American or Korean phone. How did it come to this?

To find out, we spoke with some of Japan’s biggest music technology and software companies, including Roland, AlphaTheta, Sonicware and DOTEC. Please note that many of these interviews were conducted in Japanese and subsequently translated into English.

The Bubble Was The Peak

The Japanese economic miracle, which began in earnest in the 1960s, saw the country rise from the devastation and destruction of the post-war period to become the second-largest economy in the world by the 1980s. This period saw companies like Roland, Pioneer DJ (now AlphaTheta), and Sony taking over all aspects of dance music production and consumption. (For more on this, please see our earlier article, How Japanese Technology Shaped Dance Music.) 

Japan was the world leader in dance music technology in the 20th century.

In early 1992, the bubble burst, and the economy stagnated. The country has never fully recovered. This has affected the companies that create the gear that helps us make dance music, and it’s tempting to put the blame here. While the economic collapse did have an effect, it’s not the only one, as Matt Alt, Japanologist and author of the book Pure Invention, explains. 

“It isn’t really any surprise that Japan fell behind in making gear,” he says, “as it was ahead of other advanced nations in transitioning into being a post-industrial society.” While the Bubble may have been “the peak of manufacturing wacky stuff,” he stresses, the country soon pivoted away from making things and into another, softer sector. “It’s less a dropping of the ball and more the fate of every advanced society as their populations age and they become service economies rather than manufacturing-based.”

[quote align=right text=”In 1989, at the peak of Japan’s economic bubble, 32 of the world’s top 50 companies were Japanese”]

Slow To Change

As Japan moved towards becoming a service economy, its companies floundered, slow to change. “We were overconfident, convinced that existing technologies would continue generating profits,” says Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony from 2012 to 2018, in an article for Japanese newspaper The Mainichi. Sony consumer products dominated throughout the late 20th century, but around the turn of the Millennium, things changed. Think of the rise of the Apple iPod and iPhone, and the general move towards a more digital world. “We were slow in integrating the transformative impact of digitalisation and network technologies,” Hirai says in the same story.

AlphaTheta was “ahead of its time.”

Driven by digitalisation, DJing changed drastically in the 2000s as well. Many companies couldn’t weather the change. AlphaTheta did, however. When asked to explain how, Shogo Suzuki, the Executive Officer/Executive Manager, Business Planning Management Division, at the company, stresses, “AlphaTheta was successful because it was ahead of its time. [We] did not stick to the CD, which had been its own success story, but continued to offer products in a form that matched the trends of the times, such as USB and laptop.” Bucking the trend, AlphaTheta, unlike Sony, saw the writing on the wall and was able to adapt. 

Behind On Software

Music production software development is an area where Japan was particularly slow out of the gate. “Japan has been somewhat behind on software because we were good at manufacturing, but not really [good] at abstract data processing,” says Taro Araki of Roland Future Design Lab, an R&D department at Roland that explores new ideas and technologies for music creation.

Japanese-style DTM, or desktop music production, originally focused on physical sound modules, such as Roland’s SoundCanvas series, rather than software like all-in-one DAWs. It worked for the domestic market but missed the boat internationally, which had moved rapidly towards in-the-box production in the 2000s. Roland has since entered the world of software with its Roland Cloud series of instruments and effects as well as ZEN-Core, a hybrid hardware/software synthesis platform.

Roland Cloud

When asked why there are still not many Japanese music production software companies, Franck Shigetora of plugin developer DOTEC responds, “To put it simply, the main reason is that many companies were late to the game when it came to the current (DAW) platforms, and as a result, it is no longer a profitable business for them.” While there were many software companies creating music software applications in Japan before the standardization of computers into Macs and PCs in the 1990s, DAWs like Logic Pro and Ableton Live have now become the worldwide standard. “It is difficult for a new business to enter such a market,” he adds. 

In addition, established DAWs already meet domestic demand in Japan. “Once Windows and Mac became popular, there was already a wealth of highly-refined music software from overseas manufacturers for those platforms, and it was clear that unless you were a musical instrument manufacturer, there would be few business opportunities if you entered the market midway,” he says.

Japan also has a different mindset when it comes to making products than other countries. “Japanese software development has a culture that emphasises quality and stability,” explains Dr Yu Endo, CEO and founder of Sonicware, one of the few recent Japanese synthesizer companies to make waves abroad that isn’t Roland, Korg or Yamaha. “I used to do research in such fields, and I felt that the culture of solid and precise design concepts and careful documentation had a uniquely Japanese quality.”

Compare this to the Western idea of move fast and break things, a practice very much at odds with the Japanese way of doing things.

[quote align=right text=”Bucking the trend, AlphaTheta, unlike Sony, saw the writing on the wall and was able to adapt”]

Lack Of Support For Entrepreneurs

Japan has one of the lowest rates of entrepreneurship compared to other industrialized nations. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports consistently rank Japan low in entrepreneurial activity. But when asked if young people in Japan lack an entrepreneurial spirit, most everyone interviewed answers in the negative.

Sonicware’s latest release, Liven Evoke.

“It is difficult for a small group of people to develop, sell and support a product when they do not have the resources and financial strength of a large corporation,” stresses Dr Endo. The lack of available venture capital in Japan plays a big part in preventing any kind of start-up culture from developing. “The ecosystem and funding options that support hardware startups are limited compared to Europe and the US,” he adds.

It’s also not a matter of a lack of ideas from the young. “In fact, many new business ideas are still being generated by young Japanese people [at AlphaTheta],” stresses Suzuki. 

The paucity of startups may also come from elements within the Japanese culture itself. “I think the reason for this lies in Japan’s social infrastructure and culture,” Suzuki explains. “There are few incentives to encourage entrepreneurship, and there is a marked tendency to be excessively risk-averse.” It’s much easier—and safer—to join an established company rather than take a risk and try to launch your own.

[quote align=right text=”There are few incentives to encourage entrepreneurship, and there is a marked tendency to be excessively risk-averse”]

Local Not Global

Another factor in Japan’s retreat from the global spotlight is its tendency to look inwards rather than outwards, focusing on domestic rather than international growth. “You cannot survive without a global orientation,” comments Tadashi Yanai, the chairperson and president of Fast Retailing Co., the company behind the clothing brand Uniqlo, in the same article in The Mainichi. 

This ‘Japan-only mindset,’ as he called it, may be rooted in sakoku, the idea of the closed country. Japan was shut off from the outside world for more than 250 years during its feudal samurai days, and in some ways it remains apart from the rest of the world even now. “The problem is that Japan has been isolated culturally for a very long time,” says Taro Araki of Roland. “It has this very distinctive culture, namely in communication, which is highly embedded in cultural context, and has peculiar protocols depending on your position in the social hierarchy. Japanese language is also significantly different from any other in the world.” 

All of this has contributed to Japan being a unique country with distinct strengths – but one not necessarily equipped to navigate an increasingly global world. Says Araki: “Although Japan today may seem somewhat buried in the diffuse, diverse contemporary global market, one significant point about ‘Made in Japan’ is its stability, reliability and perhaps hospitality, which is not something that can be achieved easily and quickly.” 

AlphaTheta, for one, has embraced the need for a globalized outlook. The company may be headquartered in Japan, with product planning and design done in-country, but its manufacturing is done in Malaysia and China. “In addition, most of our markets are in the U.S. and Europe, and we are considered a very global company,” says Suzuki.

To succeed in a worldwide market, Dr Endo stresses that Japanese synthesizer companies need to think beyond their borders. “The market size in Japan is not very large, and product development, marketing and customer support must be based on the assumption of overseas expansion. There are many things that need to be done, such as producing manuals and videos in English, developing sales channels, and participating in overseas events.”

The Future Of Japan

This may all be changing, however. As those who entered the workforce just as the economic bubble burst age towards retirement, a less conservative new generation is emerging. 

“I personally see a bipolar trend in terms of the economy and young people,” says Araki. “One is very domestic-oriented, while the other is very outgoing. For instance, [the] younger generations are very open and friendly to their overseas [neighbours].” This is reflected not only in their embracing of emerging global platforms like social media but also in a renewed entrepreneurial spirit. “On the whole, previously, the Japanese were known to be shy,” he says. “But I see a new trend of young generations breaking this culture.”

Dr Endo of Sonicware also sees things evolving with the younger generations. “In the past few years, the culture of startups and individual development has been expanding, and I think it has improved considerably. Personally, I feel that ‘freedom’ and ‘thinking from a personal point of view’ are very important in creating creative instruments such as synthesizers. In this sense, I hope that a culture that values individual creativity will take root in Japanese software development.”

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Written by The DJ Sessions