Theories of Japanese Society From Theodorian Eyes

There are two examples from my life in Japan that I wish to draw from. One is that even when making a left turn at traffic lights (the equivalent of a right turn in America since here people drive on the left) one must wait for the green light or it's illegal. The second is that I've noticed at work, and in general, that when someone has a problem with something here they never confront the person with it. Almost 100% of the time they will either be passive or act passive aggressively (like standing around awkwardly, waiting for the party to notice something is not right). Instead it is expected that individuals will figure things out for themselves. If there is something they are not doing right, or well enough, then they should be lead into the right direction by a sense of dedication to society/guilt. Very rarely will people ever confront people here. Confrontation is prevented by at least two layers of bureaucracy.

Here I think it is safe to say that individual subversiveness is extinguished well before it has a chance to breath. People adhere to rules here because that is one of the central pillars of being a human in this society. It is a law to not turn on a red light because social solidarity is valued over individual assertiveness. It's how to eat, how to work, how to write, how to communicate, how to generally function. Even at the kindergarten kids are trained to do things the "right" way in things like complicated performances, art projects like origami, and even eating. With eating every dish is carefully served, then everyone says their prayer, then they may begin (even with the one year-olds).

The places I have lived before--Hawaii, Oregon, and England, just to name a few--have never been like it is here. Also, they have never been such ubiquitous cultures. But neither have the societies in which I've lived before been through such cultural isolation like Japan has and still is (to a much lesser degree).

Japan continues to be a certain way because people reinforce various portions of culture through things like education and policy. It is certainly a changing culture and people like me contribute to that change. Just yesterday night Kumamoto City was crawling with American military men and women (mostly men). It made the whole city feel different. Even though they are only here temporarily I have a feeling that more and more foreigners will come here as jobs in parts of the English-speaking world become harder and harder to find (South Africa is a good example of this where the unemployment rate is extremely high) and because of Japan's population trouble the country will soon need more foreigners to maintain the workforce (unless people are replaced with robots--Honda has a pretty good new one that can run and communicate pretty well). Just recently it was announced that 1 out of every 20 marriages in Japan is between a foreigner and a Japanese person.

While I have much affection for Japanese culture I do not necessarily think that change is a bad thing. People will have to keep up their most cherished values as well as they can. The threat of loss is an unusally strong psychological motivator. When things are too placid and normalized may be when things tend to disintegrate. As it always must, time will test and inevitably change the culture and the people.