Curated playlist
Japanese inventions
- PlayStation (console)The PlayStation exists because Nintendo dumped Sony on stage. Sony then decided to build its own console.
- USBIn 1995, seven computer companies teamed up to kill the tangle of PC ports. The result was USB.
- Blu-rayBlu-ray discs look just like DVDs but hold about five times the data per layer.
- DVDFive computer companies threatened in 1995 to boycott both rival DVD formats. The threat forced the two camps to merge.
- PROCYONA 70-kilogram probe named PROCYON took the first complete image of Earth's outermost atmosphere layer.
- VHSTwo JVC engineers kept building VHS in secret after the company shelved it. They had a working prototype by 1973.
- DVD-VideoDVD-Video's copy protection was cracked by a tool called DeCSS, which led to arrests in some countries.
- High-definition videoToshiba ended the HD DVD format war on the 19th of February 2008, giving up on the disc entirely.
- RamenRamen, the Japanese noodle soup, is sold in more than 24,000 shops across Japan. Around 5,000 of them are in Tokyo alone. In December 2015, a shop called Tsuta, in Tokyo's Sugamo district, earned a Michelin star. Yet for a long time the…
- BunrakuThree puppeteers in black robes move one Bunraku puppet in silence. One chanter speaks every character's voice.
- AnimeOsamu Tezuka's money-saving shortcuts became anime's defining look. He adapted Disney techniques.
- KaraokeTwo men, one Japanese and one Filipino, both claim to have invented karaoke. Only Roberto del Rosario has a patent.
- Video CDVideo CD barely registered in America but swept away VHS across most of Asia. Most Chinese homes had no VCR to replace.
- ButsudanIn many rural Japanese villages, more than 90 percent of homes keep a butsudan. A home altar for Buddha and ancestors.