Clearly, it's a lasting side effect of the Meiji Restoration, because it's one of the few things I remember about Japanese history. While that was a joke, that

Clearly, it's a lasting side effect of the Meiji Restoration, because it's one of the few things I remember about Japanese history. While that was a joke, that does seem to be how people pick these explanations. Everything about Japan seems to be explainable by social homogeneity, WW2, or philosophy/religion, which is just the set of facts foreigners tend to know about Japan. I can't explain my own culture, and I've actually studied its history. I'm not even confident I can identify the differences it has with other cultures. We're often more similar than we think.