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> Democracy isn't in their DNA, it was imposed. this is an aside but the 1889 constitution had democractic components. Turns out a military coup stops democrat

by rtpg 2y ago

> Democracy isn't in their DNA, it was imposed. this is an aside but the 1889 constitution had democractic components. Turns out a military coup stops democratic progress for a while. Japanese popular participation in politics has a lot of dimensions to it, including popular uprisings and authoritarian pushback by the government (including post-1945) I've also lived in Japan for a while, and I've always found any sort of argument around the different nature of Japan based in "people be different" to be unsatisfying. Usually you can dig just a bit more and find very straightforward material explanations for people's behavior. Or even at worst the same kind of behavior you see everywhere, just shifted around in intensity a little. Maybe this is too nihilistic but sometimes there are less magical explanations (like not caring about interest rates being downstream of them being near 0 percent)

bamboozled 2y ago
I don't really understand this statement ,can you clarify? I've also lived in Japan for a while, and I've always found any sort of argument around the different nature of Japan based in "people be different" to be unsatisfying.
- foldr 2y ago
  I would say that your analysis seems to be based on tropes about Japanese people that are familiar to me as someone who has never visited Japan. I can't speak to the accuracy of your analysis, but for this reason it is not very satisfying. You don't get the kind of "aha!" moment that you might expect to get from an analysis based on a deep familiarity with Japanese culture, history and politics.
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    I'd say this level of push back is fairly common. People don't want to believe society here actually works differently. But there is a strong culture in Japan which I don't think you can just experience by being on holidays. Some of the stories I tell people are hard to believe. I'll give you a simple real world example. The other day I left my wallet in a bag on a towel rack at the gym, my wallet was visible. I was mid workout and I didn't want to go back to get it. Honestly, knowing Japan well enough, I just left it there , and sure enough, when I got back, it was still there, not a single dime taken. Thieves exist here, but they're the exception, not the rule. I would never do this in any other country. Tell me that's familiar to anyone living in the US.
    - foldr 2y ago
      I mean it's familiar in the sense that it conforms to well-known cultural tropes about Japan. I'm not saying that all of these tropes are necessarily inaccurate, only that they're so well known that an analysis based solely on them feels a bit slapdash (even if it might still be correct). Japan is widely known as being a society with low crime, high trust, etc. etc. This isn't something only known by people who've lived in Japan for extended periods. So no, I'm not at all surprised by your story about the wallet, and I don't think most people would be. (To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened in the US either – it's not like everyone in the US is a criminal and all unattended wallets reliably get stolen.)
      - bamboozled 2y ago
        These aren't "tropes" they are real aspects of the culture. These cultural features do have an effect on how democracy works in Japan and how the government perceives and responds to the public reaction to certain events, especially in regards to the economy. I have not heard a single, not a single person say the administrators of the country are doing a bad job which is why we're in this mess, no, they just seem to talk like there is some external, mysterious force causing these issues. Now maybe people are thinking differently, but when it comes to the democratic process, the public discourse is important and it's lacking. I have personally only heard one, I repeat one person criticize a politician in my entire time being here, can you believe that? He was a politician himself :) The only other time I remember there being some suspicion about politics was after Abe's assassination, there was some conspiracies going around about how Korea is running the government because of his affiliations with a Korean cult. Even then, everything I heard was radically civil. If this stock market and currency collapse was in the USA, you could imagine the discourse around it right? I'm sorry but there is a real stark difference between cultures and the effect it has on the democratic process and therefore the urgency in which a government would react to negative public opinion. In this case, In Japan the government is almost always siding with big business, because why not? What will happen? The LDP will be removed? The government in Japan is practically authoritarian at this point, they have no opposition, they're not going to adapt very quickly for the sake of worrying about the polls. Also worth reading about is Japan's "online defamation laws" which are also pretty dystopian in my opinion.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

by rtpg 2y ago

bamboozled 2y ago

I don't really understand this statement ,can you clarify? I've also lived in Japan for a while, and I've always found any sort of argument around the different nature of Japan based in "people be different" to be unsatisfying.

foldr 2y ago
I would say that your analysis seems to be based on tropes about Japanese people that are familiar to me as someone who has never visited Japan. I can't speak to the accuracy of your analysis, but for this reason it is not very satisfying. You don't get the kind of "aha!" moment that you might expect to get from an analysis based on a deep familiarity with Japanese culture, history and politics.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  I'd say this level of push back is fairly common. People don't want to believe society here actually works differently. But there is a strong culture in Japan which I don't think you can just experience by being on holidays. Some of the stories I tell people are hard to believe. I'll give you a simple real world example. The other day I left my wallet in a bag on a towel rack at the gym, my wallet was visible. I was mid workout and I didn't want to go back to get it. Honestly, knowing Japan well enough, I just left it there , and sure enough, when I got back, it was still there, not a single dime taken. Thieves exist here, but they're the exception, not the rule. I would never do this in any other country. Tell me that's familiar to anyone living in the US.
  - foldr 2y ago
    I mean it's familiar in the sense that it conforms to well-known cultural tropes about Japan. I'm not saying that all of these tropes are necessarily inaccurate, only that they're so well known that an analysis based solely on them feels a bit slapdash (even if it might still be correct). Japan is widely known as being a society with low crime, high trust, etc. etc. This isn't something only known by people who've lived in Japan for extended periods. So no, I'm not at all surprised by your story about the wallet, and I don't think most people would be. (To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened in the US either – it's not like everyone in the US is a criminal and all unattended wallets reliably get stolen.)
    - bamboozled 2y ago
      These aren't "tropes" they are real aspects of the culture. These cultural features do have an effect on how democracy works in Japan and how the government perceives and responds to the public reaction to certain events, especially in regards to the economy. I have not heard a single, not a single person say the administrators of the country are doing a bad job which is why we're in this mess, no, they just seem to talk like there is some external, mysterious force causing these issues. Now maybe people are thinking differently, but when it comes to the democratic process, the public discourse is important and it's lacking. I have personally only heard one, I repeat one person criticize a politician in my entire time being here, can you believe that? He was a politician himself :) The only other time I remember there being some suspicion about politics was after Abe's assassination, there was some conspiracies going around about how Korea is running the government because of his affiliations with a Korean cult. Even then, everything I heard was radically civil. If this stock market and currency collapse was in the USA, you could imagine the discourse around it right? I'm sorry but there is a real stark difference between cultures and the effect it has on the democratic process and therefore the urgency in which a government would react to negative public opinion. In this case, In Japan the government is almost always siding with big business, because why not? What will happen? The LDP will be removed? The government in Japan is practically authoritarian at this point, they have no opposition, they're not going to adapt very quickly for the sake of worrying about the polls. Also worth reading about is Japan's "online defamation laws" which are also pretty dystopian in my opinion.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]