In the US you can commit white collar crimes and still have people invest and give you the benefit of the doubt. There's no sense of shame rather glee and glorification, the i-get-money-fuck-you attitude.
In Japan, people will commit suicide for way less or even perceived wrong because there is a great deal of shame imposed on the individual for fucking up. Tough to innovate when failure is so taboo, people are willing to remove themselves from earth.
Japan has some unique advantage for go to market self driving cars. Japanese highway system is MUCH MUCH simpler to deal with then US one. If Toyota or Nissan or whoever can come up with a system that can drive you from Tokyo IC to wherever on Honshu following highways(mostly 2 lane, clearly marked, meticulously maintained..) this is going to be a huge deal. And few of them do have the whole thing mapped out.. we do know that.
Is Waymo might win.. RIM also seemed unassailable as was Nokia.
Japan also has a developed highway rest areas, you will often see people sleep in the car there, often whole families in vans that been outfitted for it. There is washroom, restaurants, sometimes shower and even hot spring, they are also clean, might have local produce being sold, alcohol etc
Here is a priceless use case for a salaryman from Tokyo. Get off work, get drunk with coworkers, get in the car with family at 10pm on friday. Car delivers you to the closest michi-no-eki to a ski resort and parks itself. Wake up at 6-7am, get to the resort by opening lift, grab breakfast at conbini drive to resort. There are lots fo places less then an hour off highway. Being able to sleep and being driven on highway would be incredible.
Company that delivers that feature in the family van will destroy competition until they can duplicate it.
best of all, no fast n furious wanna be-actually Japan has a thriving car culture and the police never seems to be able to catch those guys.
I suppose I should clarify since I was downvoted, Forbes wrote a story "what Ubers crash tells us about Japan's silent strategy for driverless cars"
"it illustrates a very important distinction between how U.S. and Japanese companies are approaching the research and deployment of autonomous vehicles.
Japanese firms have maintained a much lower profile in autonomous vehicles than their American counterparts, and many outside the industry assume this lack of publicity is a sign of lagging technology. Speaking with several industry leaders, however, makes it clear that this is not the case.
"While American firms have been grabbing the headlines, Japanese firms have been making steady progress behind the scenes. The fact that they have been less anxious to promote that progress outside of Japan is more a reflection of go-to-market strategy than the state of the underlying technology.""