I'd like to shed some light on this(and other Japanese tendencies) from a different perspective. Human societies can be seen as humonculus to the humans that m

I'd like to shed some light on this(and other Japanese tendencies) from a different perspective. Human societies can be seen as humonculus to the humans that make them up in many ways. One such way is that societies tend to reflect the broad strokes of Freudian tendencies that the citizens tend towards. The culture reflects the society. Not hard to understand. In the case of Japan, it is clear after consideration that the society is incredibly super-ego driven. (That correlates to "Parent" driven for you Transactional Analysis folks). So how that translates to the society is that parental, guiding, cohesive, social, aesthetic, moral rules are favored over Id or Egotistical rules. In contrast, The United States is a primarily ego-tistical country(Adult-dominant, in Transactional Analysis terms). That's just as fine as a Superego-leaning society, but it is DIFFERENT. An ego-tistical society will focus on the power of the individual, and will honor rationality and purpose foremost. Group cohesion and like-mindedness will fall to the wayside unless picked up by the superego driven parts of the culture. A problem arises when any one of the three parts (id, ego, superego) of a culture become too imbalanced in a specific direction. In this case, the parental superego is overriding the will of the individual. The society is asking too hard what they "SHOULD" be like rather than "WHY" they should be like it. "Should" is the heuristic function for superego decisions. "Why" for ego decisions. * Notice that when a child starts figuring out that they're an individual with choice they start asking "why?" quite often. Sometimes ad nauseum. Why why why why why. The egotistical little buggers. Uncle Sam would be proud. But that's not a problem for Japan. They have the problem of the child that learned just because they can do something, doesn't mean they should. It's a valuable lesson clearly, but not if you forget why you're doing all of this in the first place. We create society to empower the individual, and we create the individual to empower society. Lean too hard in either direction and the cycle breaks down, eventually disempowering both the individual and society. I'm not claiming that either the USA or Japan are leaning "too hard" in either direction, but they are leaning. Lots of apparent insanity has been cropping up in Japanese news lately. The freudian psychoanalyst might try to deduce the imbalanced parts of the patient's psyche that have given rise to such "insanities". *If you're interested in finding an adjective for a primarily id-driven society like Brazil, you may consider how you would "LIKE" to be.