In the case of mobile phones, if they were in fact experiments they must have considered every experiment a failure, as virtually none of what you saw in the Japanese domestic market informed the design of overseas products. Yet they continued with the same basic design principles year after year. Look some of them up if you like, and you will see what I mean.
They don't see themselves missing out on any opportunity, because they are already certain that their domestic market is fundamentally quite different than every other market in the world, and must be treated as such. This is something fully within the sphere of consensus for them. They aren't behaving like rational actors, but rather like normal humans whose cultural attitudes prevent them from even examining many of their beliefs. Bring it up and you will likely be treated to an expert display of confabulation and rationalization. You can do this with any people on Earth depending on the topic, but the Japanese happened to have picked an unfortunate one.
This is why people think Japanese are xenophobic. They're not, not really. Not any more than most other cultures. But they do tend to think they are very different from everyone else in the world, for better and for worse. This essay is itself a good example, being more nihonjinron navel-gazing.
They don't see themselves missing out on any opportunity, because they are already certain that their domestic market is fundamentally quite different than every other market in the world, and must be treated as such. This is something fully within the sphere of consensus for them. They aren't behaving like rational actors, but rather like normal humans whose cultural attitudes prevent them from even examining many of their beliefs. Bring it up and you will likely be treated to an expert display of confabulation and rationalization. You can do this with any people on Earth depending on the topic, but the Japanese happened to have picked an unfortunate one.
This is why people think Japanese are xenophobic. They're not, not really. Not any more than most other cultures. But they do tend to think they are very different from everyone else in the world, for better and for worse. This essay is itself a good example, being more nihonjinron navel-gazing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonjinron