We are becoming the Japan of the 21st century

Let’s start with the facts:

1. Europe ages faster than any other developed regionespecially in the south. middle age is over 44 years oldand going up.
2. The big technology companies that define our era are American or Chinese, with permission for South Korean or Taiwanese exceptions.
3. Our industrial glories (Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson, Alcatel…) are today B2B suppliers or corporate zombies, invisible to the consumers who once loved them.
4. We host two of the most important technology events in the world (MWC and IFA) but we are spectators of a spectacle that others dominate.
5. And in the meantime, we regulate: GDPR, AI ActDMA, DSA. We legislate about innovations we don’t lead and impose rules on games we don’t play.

There is an uncomfortable but quite precise parallel: post-bubble Japan.

In the 1980s, Japan seemed destined to dominate the 21st century. Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Nintendo… Japan defined some of the technologies that dominated the world at the end of the 20th century:

• The game boy and the desktop Nintendo.
• The walkman and the discman.
• The Trinitron teles.
• The VHS that won the format war.
• The Canons and Nikons that captured our memories.
• The iconic Casio watches.
• The Toyotas and Hondas that redefined the word “reliability.”

Even the word kaizen (continuous improvement) became a mantra for companies around the world. Japan, in addition to manufacturing great products, exported methodologieswork philosophies and visions of the technological future.

Then came the bust, the stagnation, the deflation. And the worst: institutional nostalgia. Japan did not collapse, but began to stop creating the future. And it became a museum of how things were done, of when we were relevant.

Europe is taking that same path, but faster.

What is worrying is not so much the absence of large European technology companies with honorable exceptions, is the response to that absence: instead of creating conditions for them to emerge, we focus on aggressively regulating those that exist.. We act as if power resides in controlling other people’s platforms, not in building our own. It’s the mentality of someone who no longer plays: if I can’t win, at least I set the rules. But setting rules without the ability to enforce them is simply irrelevance disguised as principles.

Japan took solace in its culture, its refined aesthetics, its exceptionalism. In Europe we console ourselves with our “values”. Data protection, sustainability, digital rights. Everything correct, everything noble. But insufficient. Because in the meantime, the technological architecture of the 21st century—the one that defines what is possible to do, think, create—is being built in California and Shenzhen. We set limits on systems that others design.

The underlying problem is that Europe has internalized a narrative of managed decline. We no longer aspire to lead, but to “preserve our model.” Translation: manage decay with dignity. It took decades for Japan to accept its new role. Europe seems to have accepted it on the fast track.

In Xataka | I increasingly like technology that doesn’t want anything from me: the one that has a purpose and leaves you alone

Featured image | Tianshu Liu, Il Vagabiondo