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The Western media loves to nitpick on Japan because it puts us to shame on almost every front. The country is clean, safe, efficient beyond anything the average

The Western media loves to nitpick on Japan because it puts us to shame on almost every front. The country is clean, safe, efficient beyond anything the average Joe can imagine. Let me spell it out for you: Western countries are kind of a shithole compared to Japan. The issues the author wrote down pale in comparison to what we're dealing with. I just can't take this kind of criticism seriously with the sheer amount of filth, crime and misery that's part of any major Western city. I had the privilege to live in Japan for one year, the real culture shock was coming back home to what we call normal.

pjmlp 4y ago
I doubt it puts us to shame on how failure is dealt with within Japanese culture. Or how kids from gaijins keep being one for their whole life, even if born and raised in Japan. Or work to death culture.
- Melting_Harps 4y ago
  > Or work to death culture. Which leads to the freeta era post bubble economy for so any who didn't want the fate of a salaryman, and the subsequent population collapse and herbivore men. Not exactly what I'd all a stellar record, when the ethnicity itself is at risk of phasing itself out due to the 'great society they've created. Im bi fan of Japanese culture, but tier society is nearly dystopic because of the social pressures, forced suppression, and ambivalence (if not outright xenophobia) towards anything they see as a threat to the established order of things: be it work related or otherwise. Still, it's quite a rich culture with lots of to offer to the modern World, but I fear South Korea has surpassed them in everything they resoundingly dominated in the 90s.
- eska 4y ago
  You write this while in most Western countries.. ..many people who fail (lose a job, divorce, illness, accident) become drug addicted, homeless, mentally ill and are left to their own devices. ..people are still referred to as “Black Americans” and “Asian Americans” instead of just “Americans” (similar in other countries) although they have lived there for generations, while there simply aren’t many non-Asian looking foreigners living in Japan for a long time. ..a barrage of articles on this site reports tens of thousands of workers being laid off, who worked hard and still got no job security. I give Japan its fair share of criticism, but your take is easily dismissed as naive.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Mixing US culture with Western.
    - eska 4y ago
      Nope, I explicitly qualified my statements. I’m sorry you expected a full list. For another example, if you want to see drug addicted or mentally ill but untended to people then visit the train station of any major city in Germany.
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        I fail to see how listing every single negative issue from every Western country, while ignoring the negatives of Japanese society, and worshipping their positives, puts us to shame.
  - Jcowell 4y ago
    > ..people are still referred to as “Black Americans” and “Asian Americans” instead of just “Americans” (similar in other countries) although they have lived there for generations, while there simply aren’t many non-Asian looking foreigners living in Japan for a long time. Why is this listed as a fault (or even listed under “most Western countries”)? This is proud component of American culture. You’re more often to find people embrace this than see it is a con.
SoylentOrange 4y ago
I also spent some time in Japan. I want to push back on this: - my wife found her job opportunities and career growth severely limited by the heavily patriarchal culture, beyond anything I have ever seen in the West - there is vast discrimination against foreigners in housing and many other aspects, more so than in most Western countries - like the author mentioned, students in Japan (I taught at a university) were less worldly and less knowledgeable about things going on outside Japan, extending into even their direct professional activities - there is an abnormal amount of nepotism. It is incredibly difficult to start your own business without connections (there is basically no startup economy) and it is equally hard to advance in a large company without being related to someone important
- bathtub365 4y ago
  What are you pushing back on exactly? These problems are extremely minor compared to the rate of crime and poverty in American cities.
  - closewith 4y ago
    That just shows what's important to you. Which is not necessarily what's important to others.
  - lozenge 4y ago
    Treating half the population as undeserving of a career is "extremely minor"?
    - mcculley 4y ago
      I am not convinced that finding "job opportunities and career growth severely limited by the heavily patriarchal culture" is the same as "treating half the population as undeserving of a career".
      - Retric 4y ago
        In what way are they different? It seems like a different description of the same thing.
Laaas 4y ago
You'll find that people in the West have an unfounded arrogance about the QoL in Western countries (by which I mean primarily the Anglo-Saxon world along with some "white" European countries). Many countries have better QoL than the West, because it turns out crime and filth don't have to be normal nor accepted. Specifically in the case of Japan, you'll also find that people are much better behaved in general.
- inciampati 4y ago
  Do you mean northern European? Germanic? Scandinavian? What on earth does white mean here?
- pb7 4y ago
  So well behaved that trains have women-only cars because of how prevalent sexual assault is.
  - ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    And creep shots are so prevalent cameras have legally mandated shutter sounds.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      > legally mandated It’s not. A discussion of the details: https://review.lineageos.org/c/LineageOS/android_frameworks_base/+/305659 https://review.lineageos.org/c/LineageOS/android_frameworks_...
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    I commuted for a few years in Paris, and have seen a few dozens fist fights between passengers, sometimes at rush hour. And people get their purse mugged in the car behind, homeless shitting in the back of the car, super high guy with completely empty eyes playing with a knife while sitting next to the door. It was a fucking circus. Having a “women only” car at rush hour to deescalate tensions is such a minor peeve in comparison.
sph 4y ago
> I had the privilege to live in Japan for one year The people that are gushing the most about Japan, ready to defend its honour on every corner of the Internet, are those that don't have much experience living there. Says it all, really. It's such a common phenomenon these people even have a slightly derogatory nickname. Also: > Western countries are kind of a shithole compared to Japan I'd really like to know how many Western countries have you lived in for at least a year.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lhorie 4y ago
  I've lived in three and find it amusing how there's two camps arguing with a straight face as if they could generalize anecdotes/conclusions about large amorphous entities. Both Norway and Venezuela are western countries. Tokyo is very different from rural Hokkaido. San Francisco is very different from New Orleans.
keiferski 4y ago
The West doesn’t really understand Japan - and never has, going back to the Meiji era - because the Japanese managed to “modernize” without entirely “Westernizing.” To our Enlightenment-derived idea of Progress, these are not two separate things, so we become very confused when a place is futuristic technologically but “behind” culturally, in terms of our own Western cultural history.
- ericmay 4y ago
  What do you mean by "Westernize" in this context? Are you sure that Japan hasn't westernized (assuming no goalpost moving) perhaps just expressed differently?
  - keiferski 4y ago
    Well I said “Westernized entirely,” implying that there is some level of Westernization. I am using this to mean an adoption of Western social and political values: universalist democracy, secularism, individualism, the unimportance of public space being sacred or imposing restrictions upon behavior, “the workplace is more important than the home,” and a million other things. Japan has some degree of these things, but there is a pretty huge difference between the average Japanese city and the average Western one.
    - ericmay 4y ago
      I think a lot of those differences and distinctions are less pronounced once you get outside of the Anglosphere but still "western" - a lot of them just have to do with bad urban planning and architecture. The continent probably sits in the middle there w.r.t public spaces. But based off of what you said, and I of course have never lived in Japan, is there really much difference in practical, day-to-day activities in terms of being westernized? For example, you mentioned "the workplace is more important than the home" and I genuinely wasn't sure if you were talking about America or Japan. Of course there are differences in government, but are the differences more pronounced with England's style of government versus Switzerland, or are there more differences between France and Japan? Nevermind the Big Tent approach of the American 2-party state. Genuinely curious to hear your thoughts. I know what you're getting at, I guess I wonder if it's a meaningful distinction w.r.t at what point does one country become roughly westernized? Is Brasil westernized? Mexico?
JCharante 4y ago
Safe for men. They need to improve safety for women.
dilap 4y ago
And yet it has a much higher suicide rate. What gives?
- api 4y ago
  And a way lower birth rate. It’s like it’s paradise but lots of people don’t want to live in it or bring new life into it. This reminds me of the equally paradoxical longing some have for disasters. You can see this in disaster movies which succeed by playing on this paradoxical longing for “something to happen.” I also think this is a driver behind nihilistic fascist politics. It’s sort of like “Let’s create hell on Earth so we can finally be men!” I think we are wired for a much more hostile environment and our brains don’t know what to do with peaceful abundance. We get bored and either depressed or “otaku.”
  - chrischen 4y ago
    Generally poorer and less developed countries have much higher birth rates, so I'm not sure the "bringing life into paradise" reason is why people have kids.
    - api 4y ago
      That’s kind of related to what I’m getting at. Maybe there is a right amount of adversity. Too much adversity leaves people broken and traumatized and with learned helplessness. Too little leads to the kind of malaise you see in the most developed nations. But it has to be real adversity, not fake or cooked up by warmongers and fascist loons. This is one reason I am such a supporter of things like space exploration. We need stuff to do that is both hard and real.
  - webnrrd2k 4y ago
    Your comment, from the paradoxical longing part on, has a strong vibe of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning [1]. I think that you might like it. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us_Meaning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us...
- 4y ago
micromacrofoot 4y ago
being a small ethnically homogeneous island nation protected by other militaries tends to help a lot despite this it has many problems with working people to death (the neet counter culture as a response), an aging population, and misogyny
- unmole 4y ago
  > small LOL. Japan id the 11th most populous country in the world. In terms of area, it's larger than the UK.
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    If less than 2% of the global population isn’t small then what is?
nemo44x 4y ago
Try Singapore - what I would consider the model country. It’s what happens when a country decides that filthy cities with piss and feces everywhere, drugs openly being used in public homeless tent cities, and casual shoplifting not only tolerated but actually celebrated by some is not a measure of progress or w/e the hoards think it is.
- delecti 4y ago
  Singapore sounds ruthlessly authoritarian. Mandatory death sentence for drugs is barbaric. I would legitimately rather live in a city like you describe (and probably do by your standards, Seattle) than that.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    You’re confusing that with competent leadership. And that’s normal as we haven’t had that here in many decades. Our happiness has been in decline for over 70 years now and is accelerating. Citizens of Singapore have some of the highest happiness scores in the world. It’s arrogance that will bury us. Rights without the necessary hardship that responsibility brings is just not possible.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      Sure, but what do you envisioning this "competent leadership" doing to solve the drug problem, while not resorting to authoritarianism like just killing those who possess drugs? I agree "competent leadership" is direly needed. But all too often "competent leadership" is used as a euphemism for an autocrat who just opts for simple/expedient freedom-destroying measures. The only constructive (ie liberty-preserving) answer I can see is to make the bottom of society much less unattractive, reducing both the interest in drugs and also the ill social effects of drugs. But attempts to do that are generally criticized for not being authoritarian enough, or for costing too much. (FWIW I do agree that all too often, attempts to make the bottom of society less harsh result in lazy inaction rather than more intelligent action, which gets back to the original lack of competent leadership).
throwaway894345 4y ago
The more I think about national comparisons the more it seems that homogeneous, conformist societies are the winners. The Scandanavian countries provide further examples. America seemed to do a lot better under the primacy of American Nationalism, which was sort of conformist (“no matter where we come from, we are all one people with common values”) but we’ve deprecated that in favor of race/gender/etc identity squabbling. Ultimately, it seems way easier to make policies that protect everyone when we think they will benefit “us” rather than “them”, and the policies work better when they can make certain cultural assumptions (when the expectation is that people conform to society rather than society conforming to every individual) rather than striving to cover every single variation of human. This isn’t to say conformity is better, only that it has certain advantages that people massively attribute to the policies it begets (the idea that America could be the harmonious utopia we imagine Scandanavian countries to be if only we imported their policies).
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > ...we’ve deprecated that in favor of race/gender/etc identity squabbling. Was this before or after the introduction of race-based chattel slavery?
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    In the unlikely event that this isn’t a trolling comment, my “American Nationalism” above refers to the post-Civil-Rights-era idea that we should prioritize our American identity over our racial or ethnic identities (ergo I’m talking about the last decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century). By claiming that such an ideology existed or that it had some benefits, I’m not implying that it was ubiquitous, uniformly distributed, or otherwise perfect.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      My point was "identity squabbling" predates any universal American national identity, so it wouldn't be a deprecation of the said American nationalism, but a reversion to the pre-independence/antebellum/civil-war/reconstruction/pre-civil-rights-movement race- and gender-identity norm.
epolanski 4y ago
> Let me spell it out for you: Western countries are kind of a shithole compared to Japan Definitely depends on where you live. I have spent most of my life between Italy, Poland and Switzerland, all of those countries offer pros and cons and any of them has plenty of places to live that are absolutely no shit hole.
victor106 4y ago
safe? Japans former PM was gunned down in public.
- affgrff2 4y ago
  Not really a point. I guess because security demand is generally low, it was easy for the assassin. But compare the number of 'everyday crime' like theft, murders and gunfights to the US and I guess you easily come to the conclusion that Japan is safe.
- somethingreen 4y ago
  It could be that a dedicated lunatic was able to get a top level politician with a DIY 17th century grade musket exactly because anticipation of such an event at politician public appearance in Japan is lower than on a regular day in US elementary school.
jiscariot 4y ago
The other thing the Western media bemoans and digs on is Japan's birth rate. That they have aging populations, yet haven't taken drastic immigration measures we saw in 2015 in Germany under Merkle, or Sweden. Measures that have created massive cultural clashes, general chaos and the resurgence of far-right parties, all under the loose guise of funding pensions and other embedded growth obligations.
nilsleep 4y ago
"Western countries are kind of a shithole compared to Japan." What about all of their societal problems? - Extreme loneliness and isolation. Hikikokormi cases are on the rise. - Lack of sex to the point to be considered a sexless society with one of the highest virginity rate and oldest age for loosing virginity. - Extremely old population with an inverted social pyramid making it a huge burden to the young population and a huge problem for the country overall. - High depression and suicide rates. - Lack of affection between the parents and their kids, the father is never around because he is always working and kids are basically raised by their mother. - Overworked workforce with low yield and productivity. I don't know where you live but here in Munich we don't have a lot of "filth", crime or misery.
- noobermin 4y ago
  People need to stop using things the read in things like anime or 4chan as if it's the case. For example, japan literally has one of the higher birth rates in east asia[0], above china and taiwan, but no one talks about the "sexless chinese society" because the media narrative for decades has been that china is overpopulated. Just a note, Japan's birth rate is 1.34, while Germany's is...1.53. A whopping 0.2 humans more. In fact, it was in line with Japan's until 2010 (and the influx of migrants I assume), and no one is talking about the sexless German society, because people are slow to let go of stereotypes and tropes they have about nations, many of them completely separate from data. [0] https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1615241561159380995 https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1615241561159380995
  - nilsleep 4y ago
    There are plenty and I mean plenty of sources that refer to Japan as a sexless nation: https://minajp.com/sexless-japan-703 https://minajp.com/sexless-japan-703 https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/56360 https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/56360 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/09/16/national/social-issues/sexless-japan-almost-half-young-men-women-virgins-survey/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/09/16/national/social... https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/sexless-in-japan https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/sexless-i... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-relationships/article/3112258/no-sex-no-marriage-why-japan-has-so-many-sex-free https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-relationships/article/... https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/there-any-truth-portrait-sexless-japan-1582495 https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/there-any-truth-portrait-sexless-j... https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/10/01/national/media-national/theres-nothing-weird-sexless-japan/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/10/01/national/media-... https://www.japanpowered.com/japan-culture/japan-the-sexless-society https://www.japanpowered.com/japan-culture/japan-the-sexless... And the list goes on and on. Also there is an important difference between being sexless and having low birth rate. It might not be obvious to you but one can have sex without having children. It seems to me that it’s you the one that sources their information from anime and/or 4chan.
BoorishBears 4y ago
I find that only a very specific demographic writes comments like this about Japan From my point of view Japan is a bit like Alabama with a coat of cyberpunk drawn over, but that also has to do with how I'd be treated there. I guess I'm glad it's a place that works for some people, but it shouldn't take much imagination to see how it's not the utopia you're describing unless you fit in a very specific bucket of being: that's what their society is essentially built on.
smcl 4y ago
I think you've taken it a bit personally, because firing back with "sheer amount of filth, crime and misery that's part of any major Western city" is a cartoonish exaggeration, portraying London or Edinburgh as if they're hellish, fallen nightmare realms like Yharnam[0]. I would say that the article is a bit simplistic and doesn't include any very clear or helpful comparison to the UK. I think it would be interesting to list out some of the various problems affecting the UK, and to compare how Japan attempts to solve these problems and explore whether there are any consequences to these solutions, or whether they're applicable in the UK. [0] - https://bloodborne.fandom.com/wiki/Yharnam?file=Bloodborne-screen-03-ps4-us-10jun14.jpg https://bloodborne.fandom.com/wiki/Yharnam?file=Bloodborne-s...
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  That’s just a straw man. Yes, major Western cities aren’t like Yharnam. They are still full of misery, filth and crime though.
  - smcl 4y ago
    I disagree that it's a straw man - "full of misery, filth and crime" is just a flat out lie and more accurately describes a fictional city in a fallen world. There are problems and there is a conversation to be had about them, an interesting one too! But it's not possible to have that conversation if you want to knee-jerk react to a not-great article about Japan with ridiculous exaggerations that paint "Western cities" (maybe would be helpful if we used examples, like I did) as if they're something they're not. The article talked about real, concrete problems in Japan. We could level the playing field by talking about the real, concrete problems facing UK cities, explore whether Japan has these problems, how they may have solved them and whether that's possible in the UK. That would be much more productive than than talking as if there are open sewers flowing through the streets of Manchester and armed gangs at every turn. Because that's just gonna end up in a "X country is better than Y" argument and that's tedious
    - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
      [dead]
innocentoldguy 4y ago
Agreed!!! I just got back from yet another extended stay in Japan. Every time I go, the culture shock is coming back to America and lamenting how far behind we are.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

pjmlp 4y ago

I doubt it puts us to shame on how failure is dealt with within Japanese culture. Or how kids from gaijins keep being one for their whole life, even if born and raised in Japan. Or work to death culture.

Melting_Harps 4y ago
> Or work to death culture. Which leads to the freeta era post bubble economy for so any who didn't want the fate of a salaryman, and the subsequent population collapse and herbivore men. Not exactly what I'd all a stellar record, when the ethnicity itself is at risk of phasing itself out due to the 'great society they've created. Im bi fan of Japanese culture, but tier society is nearly dystopic because of the social pressures, forced suppression, and ambivalence (if not outright xenophobia) towards anything they see as a threat to the established order of things: be it work related or otherwise. Still, it's quite a rich culture with lots of to offer to the modern World, but I fear South Korea has surpassed them in everything they resoundingly dominated in the 90s.
eska 4y ago
You write this while in most Western countries.. ..many people who fail (lose a job, divorce, illness, accident) become drug addicted, homeless, mentally ill and are left to their own devices. ..people are still referred to as “Black Americans” and “Asian Americans” instead of just “Americans” (similar in other countries) although they have lived there for generations, while there simply aren’t many non-Asian looking foreigners living in Japan for a long time. ..a barrage of articles on this site reports tens of thousands of workers being laid off, who worked hard and still got no job security. I give Japan its fair share of criticism, but your take is easily dismissed as naive.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Mixing US culture with Western.
  - eska 4y ago
    Nope, I explicitly qualified my statements. I’m sorry you expected a full list. For another example, if you want to see drug addicted or mentally ill but untended to people then visit the train station of any major city in Germany.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      I fail to see how listing every single negative issue from every Western country, while ignoring the negatives of Japanese society, and worshipping their positives, puts us to shame.
- Jcowell 4y ago
  > ..people are still referred to as “Black Americans” and “Asian Americans” instead of just “Americans” (similar in other countries) although they have lived there for generations, while there simply aren’t many non-Asian looking foreigners living in Japan for a long time. Why is this listed as a fault (or even listed under “most Western countries”)? This is proud component of American culture. You’re more often to find people embrace this than see it is a con.

SoylentOrange 4y ago

I also spent some time in Japan. I want to push back on this: - my wife found her job opportunities and career growth severely limited by the heavily patriarchal culture, beyond anything I have ever seen in the West - there is vast discrimination against foreigners in housing and many other aspects, more so than in most Western countries - like the author mentioned, students in Japan (I taught at a university) were less worldly and less knowledgeable about things going on outside Japan, extending into even their direct professional activities - there is an abnormal amount of nepotism. It is incredibly difficult to start your own business without connections (there is basically no startup economy) and it is equally hard to advance in a large company without being related to someone important

bathtub365 4y ago
What are you pushing back on exactly? These problems are extremely minor compared to the rate of crime and poverty in American cities.
- closewith 4y ago
  That just shows what's important to you. Which is not necessarily what's important to others.
- lozenge 4y ago
  Treating half the population as undeserving of a career is "extremely minor"?
  - mcculley 4y ago
    I am not convinced that finding "job opportunities and career growth severely limited by the heavily patriarchal culture" is the same as "treating half the population as undeserving of a career".
    - Retric 4y ago
      In what way are they different? It seems like a different description of the same thing.

Laaas 4y ago

You'll find that people in the West have an unfounded arrogance about the QoL in Western countries (by which I mean primarily the Anglo-Saxon world along with some "white" European countries). Many countries have better QoL than the West, because it turns out crime and filth don't have to be normal nor accepted. Specifically in the case of Japan, you'll also find that people are much better behaved in general.

inciampati 4y ago
Do you mean northern European? Germanic? Scandinavian? What on earth does white mean here?
pb7 4y ago
So well behaved that trains have women-only cars because of how prevalent sexual assault is.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  And creep shots are so prevalent cameras have legally mandated shutter sounds.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    > legally mandated It’s not. A discussion of the details: https://review.lineageos.org/c/LineageOS/android_frameworks_base/+/305659 https://review.lineageos.org/c/LineageOS/android_frameworks_...
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  I commuted for a few years in Paris, and have seen a few dozens fist fights between passengers, sometimes at rush hour. And people get their purse mugged in the car behind, homeless shitting in the back of the car, super high guy with completely empty eyes playing with a knife while sitting next to the door. It was a fucking circus. Having a “women only” car at rush hour to deescalate tensions is such a minor peeve in comparison.

sph 4y ago

> I had the privilege to live in Japan for one year The people that are gushing the most about Japan, ready to defend its honour on every corner of the Internet, are those that don't have much experience living there. Says it all, really. It's such a common phenomenon these people even have a slightly derogatory nickname. Also: > Western countries are kind of a shithole compared to Japan I'd really like to know how many Western countries have you lived in for at least a year.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lhorie 4y ago
I've lived in three and find it amusing how there's two camps arguing with a straight face as if they could generalize anecdotes/conclusions about large amorphous entities. Both Norway and Venezuela are western countries. Tokyo is very different from rural Hokkaido. San Francisco is very different from New Orleans.

keiferski 4y ago

The West doesn’t really understand Japan - and never has, going back to the Meiji era - because the Japanese managed to “modernize” without entirely “Westernizing.” To our Enlightenment-derived idea of Progress, these are not two separate things, so we become very confused when a place is futuristic technologically but “behind” culturally, in terms of our own Western cultural history.

ericmay 4y ago
What do you mean by "Westernize" in this context? Are you sure that Japan hasn't westernized (assuming no goalpost moving) perhaps just expressed differently?
- keiferski 4y ago
  Well I said “Westernized entirely,” implying that there is some level of Westernization. I am using this to mean an adoption of Western social and political values: universalist democracy, secularism, individualism, the unimportance of public space being sacred or imposing restrictions upon behavior, “the workplace is more important than the home,” and a million other things. Japan has some degree of these things, but there is a pretty huge difference between the average Japanese city and the average Western one.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    I think a lot of those differences and distinctions are less pronounced once you get outside of the Anglosphere but still "western" - a lot of them just have to do with bad urban planning and architecture. The continent probably sits in the middle there w.r.t public spaces. But based off of what you said, and I of course have never lived in Japan, is there really much difference in practical, day-to-day activities in terms of being westernized? For example, you mentioned "the workplace is more important than the home" and I genuinely wasn't sure if you were talking about America or Japan. Of course there are differences in government, but are the differences more pronounced with England's style of government versus Switzerland, or are there more differences between France and Japan? Nevermind the Big Tent approach of the American 2-party state. Genuinely curious to hear your thoughts. I know what you're getting at, I guess I wonder if it's a meaningful distinction w.r.t at what point does one country become roughly westernized? Is Brasil westernized? Mexico?

JCharante 4y ago

Safe for men. They need to improve safety for women.

dilap 4y ago

And yet it has a much higher suicide rate. What gives?

api 4y ago
And a way lower birth rate. It’s like it’s paradise but lots of people don’t want to live in it or bring new life into it. This reminds me of the equally paradoxical longing some have for disasters. You can see this in disaster movies which succeed by playing on this paradoxical longing for “something to happen.” I also think this is a driver behind nihilistic fascist politics. It’s sort of like “Let’s create hell on Earth so we can finally be men!” I think we are wired for a much more hostile environment and our brains don’t know what to do with peaceful abundance. We get bored and either depressed or “otaku.”
- chrischen 4y ago
  Generally poorer and less developed countries have much higher birth rates, so I'm not sure the "bringing life into paradise" reason is why people have kids.
  - api 4y ago
    That’s kind of related to what I’m getting at. Maybe there is a right amount of adversity. Too much adversity leaves people broken and traumatized and with learned helplessness. Too little leads to the kind of malaise you see in the most developed nations. But it has to be real adversity, not fake or cooked up by warmongers and fascist loons. This is one reason I am such a supporter of things like space exploration. We need stuff to do that is both hard and real.
- webnrrd2k 4y ago
  Your comment, from the paradoxical longing part on, has a strong vibe of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning [1]. I think that you might like it. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us_Meaning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us...
4y ago

micromacrofoot 4y ago

being a small ethnically homogeneous island nation protected by other militaries tends to help a lot despite this it has many problems with working people to death (the neet counter culture as a response), an aging population, and misogyny

unmole 4y ago
> small LOL. Japan id the 11th most populous country in the world. In terms of area, it's larger than the UK.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  If less than 2% of the global population isn’t small then what is?

nemo44x 4y ago

Try Singapore - what I would consider the model country. It’s what happens when a country decides that filthy cities with piss and feces everywhere, drugs openly being used in public homeless tent cities, and casual shoplifting not only tolerated but actually celebrated by some is not a measure of progress or w/e the hoards think it is.

delecti 4y ago
Singapore sounds ruthlessly authoritarian. Mandatory death sentence for drugs is barbaric. I would legitimately rather live in a city like you describe (and probably do by your standards, Seattle) than that.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  You’re confusing that with competent leadership. And that’s normal as we haven’t had that here in many decades. Our happiness has been in decline for over 70 years now and is accelerating. Citizens of Singapore have some of the highest happiness scores in the world. It’s arrogance that will bury us. Rights without the necessary hardship that responsibility brings is just not possible.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    Sure, but what do you envisioning this "competent leadership" doing to solve the drug problem, while not resorting to authoritarianism like just killing those who possess drugs? I agree "competent leadership" is direly needed. But all too often "competent leadership" is used as a euphemism for an autocrat who just opts for simple/expedient freedom-destroying measures. The only constructive (ie liberty-preserving) answer I can see is to make the bottom of society much less unattractive, reducing both the interest in drugs and also the ill social effects of drugs. But attempts to do that are generally criticized for not being authoritarian enough, or for costing too much. (FWIW I do agree that all too often, attempts to make the bottom of society less harsh result in lazy inaction rather than more intelligent action, which gets back to the original lack of competent leadership).

throwaway894345 4y ago

The more I think about national comparisons the more it seems that homogeneous, conformist societies are the winners. The Scandanavian countries provide further examples. America seemed to do a lot better under the primacy of American Nationalism, which was sort of conformist (“no matter where we come from, we are all one people with common values”) but we’ve deprecated that in favor of race/gender/etc identity squabbling. Ultimately, it seems way easier to make policies that protect everyone when we think they will benefit “us” rather than “them”, and the policies work better when they can make certain cultural assumptions (when the expectation is that people conform to society rather than society conforming to every individual) rather than striving to cover every single variation of human. This isn’t to say conformity is better, only that it has certain advantages that people massively attribute to the policies it begets (the idea that America could be the harmonious utopia we imagine Scandanavian countries to be if only we imported their policies).

sangnoir 4y ago
> ...we’ve deprecated that in favor of race/gender/etc identity squabbling. Was this before or after the introduction of race-based chattel slavery?
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  In the unlikely event that this isn’t a trolling comment, my “American Nationalism” above refers to the post-Civil-Rights-era idea that we should prioritize our American identity over our racial or ethnic identities (ergo I’m talking about the last decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century). By claiming that such an ideology existed or that it had some benefits, I’m not implying that it was ubiquitous, uniformly distributed, or otherwise perfect.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    My point was "identity squabbling" predates any universal American national identity, so it wouldn't be a deprecation of the said American nationalism, but a reversion to the pre-independence/antebellum/civil-war/reconstruction/pre-civil-rights-movement race- and gender-identity norm.

epolanski 4y ago

> Let me spell it out for you: Western countries are kind of a shithole compared to Japan Definitely depends on where you live. I have spent most of my life between Italy, Poland and Switzerland, all of those countries offer pros and cons and any of them has plenty of places to live that are absolutely no shit hole.

victor106 4y ago

safe? Japans former PM was gunned down in public.

affgrff2 4y ago
Not really a point. I guess because security demand is generally low, it was easy for the assassin. But compare the number of 'everyday crime' like theft, murders and gunfights to the US and I guess you easily come to the conclusion that Japan is safe.
somethingreen 4y ago
It could be that a dedicated lunatic was able to get a top level politician with a DIY 17th century grade musket exactly because anticipation of such an event at politician public appearance in Japan is lower than on a regular day in US elementary school.

jiscariot 4y ago

The other thing the Western media bemoans and digs on is Japan's birth rate. That they have aging populations, yet haven't taken drastic immigration measures we saw in 2015 in Germany under Merkle, or Sweden. Measures that have created massive cultural clashes, general chaos and the resurgence of far-right parties, all under the loose guise of funding pensions and other embedded growth obligations.

nilsleep 4y ago

"Western countries are kind of a shithole compared to Japan." What about all of their societal problems? - Extreme loneliness and isolation. Hikikokormi cases are on the rise. - Lack of sex to the point to be considered a sexless society with one of the highest virginity rate and oldest age for loosing virginity. - Extremely old population with an inverted social pyramid making it a huge burden to the young population and a huge problem for the country overall. - High depression and suicide rates. - Lack of affection between the parents and their kids, the father is never around because he is always working and kids are basically raised by their mother. - Overworked workforce with low yield and productivity. I don't know where you live but here in Munich we don't have a lot of "filth", crime or misery.

noobermin 4y ago
People need to stop using things the read in things like anime or 4chan as if it's the case. For example, japan literally has one of the higher birth rates in east asia[0], above china and taiwan, but no one talks about the "sexless chinese society" because the media narrative for decades has been that china is overpopulated. Just a note, Japan's birth rate is 1.34, while Germany's is...1.53. A whopping 0.2 humans more. In fact, it was in line with Japan's until 2010 (and the influx of migrants I assume), and no one is talking about the sexless German society, because people are slow to let go of stereotypes and tropes they have about nations, many of them completely separate from data. [0] https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1615241561159380995 https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1615241561159380995
- nilsleep 4y ago
  There are plenty and I mean plenty of sources that refer to Japan as a sexless nation: https://minajp.com/sexless-japan-703 https://minajp.com/sexless-japan-703 https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/56360 https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/56360 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/09/16/national/social-issues/sexless-japan-almost-half-young-men-women-virgins-survey/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/09/16/national/social... https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/sexless-in-japan https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/sexless-i... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-relationships/article/3112258/no-sex-no-marriage-why-japan-has-so-many-sex-free https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-relationships/article/... https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/there-any-truth-portrait-sexless-japan-1582495 https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/there-any-truth-portrait-sexless-j... https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/10/01/national/media-national/theres-nothing-weird-sexless-japan/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/10/01/national/media-... https://www.japanpowered.com/japan-culture/japan-the-sexless-society https://www.japanpowered.com/japan-culture/japan-the-sexless... And the list goes on and on. Also there is an important difference between being sexless and having low birth rate. It might not be obvious to you but one can have sex without having children. It seems to me that it’s you the one that sources their information from anime and/or 4chan.

BoorishBears 4y ago

I find that only a very specific demographic writes comments like this about Japan From my point of view Japan is a bit like Alabama with a coat of cyberpunk drawn over, but that also has to do with how I'd be treated there. I guess I'm glad it's a place that works for some people, but it shouldn't take much imagination to see how it's not the utopia you're describing unless you fit in a very specific bucket of being: that's what their society is essentially built on.

smcl 4y ago

I think you've taken it a bit personally, because firing back with "sheer amount of filth, crime and misery that's part of any major Western city" is a cartoonish exaggeration, portraying London or Edinburgh as if they're hellish, fallen nightmare realms like Yharnam[0]. I would say that the article is a bit simplistic and doesn't include any very clear or helpful comparison to the UK. I think it would be interesting to list out some of the various problems affecting the UK, and to compare how Japan attempts to solve these problems and explore whether there are any consequences to these solutions, or whether they're applicable in the UK. [0] - https://bloodborne.fandom.com/wiki/Yharnam?file=Bloodborne-screen-03-ps4-us-10jun14.jpg https://bloodborne.fandom.com/wiki/Yharnam?file=Bloodborne-s...

LudwigNagasena 4y ago
That’s just a straw man. Yes, major Western cities aren’t like Yharnam. They are still full of misery, filth and crime though.
- smcl 4y ago
  I disagree that it's a straw man - "full of misery, filth and crime" is just a flat out lie and more accurately describes a fictional city in a fallen world. There are problems and there is a conversation to be had about them, an interesting one too! But it's not possible to have that conversation if you want to knee-jerk react to a not-great article about Japan with ridiculous exaggerations that paint "Western cities" (maybe would be helpful if we used examples, like I did) as if they're something they're not. The article talked about real, concrete problems in Japan. We could level the playing field by talking about the real, concrete problems facing UK cities, explore whether Japan has these problems, how they may have solved them and whether that's possible in the UK. That would be much more productive than than talking as if there are open sewers flowing through the streets of Manchester and armed gangs at every turn. Because that's just gonna end up in a "X country is better than Y" argument and that's tedious
  - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
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innocentoldguy 4y ago

Agreed!!! I just got back from yet another extended stay in Japan. Every time I go, the culture shock is coming back to America and lamenting how far behind we are.

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