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New York Times

10 Japanese Innovations That Shape Our Daily Lives

Asian Pop 'J-pop' is an umbrella term encompassing a range of subgenres blending elements of Western and traditional Japanese music across various decades, but often it refers to the catchy, upbeat music that emerged in Japan in the late 1980s. This music soon made its way to other countries, including Korea, where it proved sonically influential and provided a model for the idol system, which relies on professionally trained groups of all-around entertainers. So while it's K-pop that has more fully broken through on a global scale, J-pop helped pave the way. The country that changed modern culture and design, from A to Z Emojis Reflective of a national interest in both electronics and kawaii, or cuteness, some of the first emojis were the work of the designer Shigetaka Kurita and were released on Japanese cellphones and pagers in 1999. Kurita's set of 176 pixelated icons was acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2016, by which point the software standards nonprofit known as the Unicode Consortium had agreed to make emojis recognizable across operating systems and Apple had added a keyboard for them to its mobile devices. Today, billions of emojis are sent daily around the world. Instant Noodles Momofuku Ando, the founder of Nissin Foods, invented instant noodles — which are flash fried and then dried — in his backyard shed in Ikeda in 1958. (He used a watering can to sprinkle them with chicken soup.) Starting in 1970, when Nissin began operating in California, they became a satisfying, inexpensive staple in the United States and beyond. Nissin maintains plants in countries ranging from Vietnam to Mexico to Hungary, with flavors varying slightly according to local tastes, and now has many competitors. Hence one of Ando's catchphrases: 'Mankind is noodlekind.' Karaoke The first karaoke-style machine, the coin-operated Sparko Box, debuted in Japan in 1967; by the mid-80s, karaoke venues were ubiquitous there and were beginning to change nightlife abroad too. The erstwhile Los Angeles establishment Dimples, which opened in 1982 — with a single stage, as opposed to the private singing rooms that were standard in much of Asia — is thought to have been the first of thousands of American karaoke bars. Canada, Finland and Britain were also enthusiastic adopters. Evidently, Japan's salarymen weren't the only ones willing to set self-consciousness aside for the brief chance to feel like a star. Explore More Read the editor's letter here. Take a closer look at the covers. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.