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This is a really interesting tangent to go off on. I wonder if the reason for this is that Japan and Korea never really had a frontier the way the US did. I thi

This is a really interesting tangent to go off on. I wonder if the reason for this is that Japan and Korea never really had a frontier the way the US did. I think the idea of a wide open wilderness, yours if you can tame it, contributes to a desire and expectation of a giant living space, all to yourself. I don't know about Korea, but in Japan, most of society grew up around castle towns, and with the exception of post-war suburban development, those towns are still the same towns they have today, so population is distributed roughly the same way as in medieval times.

charwalker 6y ago
Consider that in the US you could immigrate west and the government would give you land if you set up a homestead, at least in the mid 1800's. There's also a literature reference to I think Little House on the Prairie where the father sees another family coming into the valley and decides they need to pack up and leave. There is a long history of US travel out west to get land and space regardless, or maybe because, of how far away from others you can get.