7 ms·

Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities

143 points by tchalla 2mo ago

sys32768 2mo ago
#4 "Maintain Manners" is hardly simple.
- bryanlarsen 2mo ago
  simple and easy aren't synonyms. It's a simple rule, but very difficult to implement.
  - wat10000 2mo ago
    It's brief but it's not simple. "Manners" is an extremely complicated concept.
    - thereisnospork 2mo ago
      What qualifies as good manners varies from situation to situation, but the concept of acting with good manners is hardly complicated (conform to the expected behavior of the situation). Enforcment is a matter of encoding the rules and then applying a carrot and/or stick -- same as any other rule.
      - wat10000 2mo ago
        "Conform to the expected behavior of the situation" is incredibly complicated. What is the situation? How do you determine what the expected behavior is? What exactly does conforming consist of? It takes humans years to learn how to do this. Entire books are written on the subject. A major medical disorder affecting millions of people includes a persistent difficulty doing this specific thing. Even normal people have to put serious effort into this if they visit a place where societal norms are different from what they're used to. If it's not complicated, then I'm sure you can write down the rules for some specific situation real quick. Go ahead....
        thereisnospork 2mo ago
        "Stand to the right on an escalator" "Put trash in a trashcan and not on the ground" That wasn't complicated. And took 30seconds. Are there a lot of rules? Of course. Is knowing them all in advance possible? Of course not. Don't confuse that with 'complicated'. Fine people who litter. Have an ai voice chide people who stand on the wrong side of an escalator. Both simple.
        wat10000 2mo ago
        Do I really have to stand to the right on an escalator? I think the nearest one is a mile away, that seems really inconvenient and unnecessary, and it's going to be hard to get my work done. I'm surprised to find this sentiment on a site filled with computer programmers. The most important and difficult lesson of computer programming is that simple-sounding rules have a lot of details that we take for granted.
        zapzupnz 2mo ago
        > I think the nearest one is a mile away, that seems really inconvenient and unnecessary I think this way of thinking, being obtuse on purpose to try to win an internet argument (without a prize, no less), is the more unnecessary thing. What point does that argumentation try to prove other than that a hypothetical version of you, as opposed to most humans who live in large cities, are an inflexible idiot? Most people are not 100% unaware of the context in which they are engaging. We know to apply escalator rules when we're at an escalator. We know to put things in bins when we have things to put in bins. What we don't know, we can learn through observation, reading the atmosphere, and making at least a minimal effort not to showboat our individualism and, apparently, any obtuse refusal to engage with our context. (By the way, I don't actually think you are an inflexible idiot.)
        wat10000 2mo ago
        That's my point. It's a lot more complicated than "stand to the right on an escalator." You have to learn through observation, read the atmosphere, and engage with context. There are some less obtuse issues with your universal pronouncement. There are escalators where it's too narrow to pass. There's no need nor expectation to stand to one side on these. The same goes for escalators that are so long that nobody's walking up them to accelerate their progress, or when nobody is around, or when it's so crowded nobody's able to pass anyway. And, at least in the places I'm familiar with, it doesn't apply in places where people aren't going to be in a big hurry. Stand right, pass left applies to subway stations but not malls. Maybe this all seems obvious. Well, go to a tourist-heavy place with escalators and observe how much of this is learned behavior that takes repeated long-term exposure to understand. Manners are really complicated. The escalator thing is a relatively simple example compared to something like, say, paying for a meal in a restaurant with a group, and it's already pretty deep when you dig into it.
- EbNar 2mo ago
  In some places it is something sadly absent or overlooked...
  - mc32 2mo ago
    And with countries with lots of newcomers it can take decades (well, generations) to take on the host countries manners rather than sticking to home country manners that may not mesh with host country’s manners/customs.
- bpodgursky 2mo ago
  It's simple if your city is full of Japanese people.
- cm11 2mo ago
  I don’t know. I, the individual, can maintain a lot of manners fairly simply if I really wanted to.
  - its_ethan 2mo ago
    I think they are saying that it's difficult to "maintain manners" for hundreds of thousands to millions of diverse "I, the individual" 's. It's great that you don't struggle with that yourself, but your manners can be made entirely irrelevant by 1 person in a public place who has anti-social behaviors (doesn't share the same set of "required" values for that society).
    - cm11 2mo ago
      You're right, it can be read as it being difficult for society to maintain manners. I agree and I should have been clearer. But I also think you may be misunderstanding what I said to fit it into your own model. There is a difference between manners and what results from them. You can maintain (what you believe to be) good manners without it improving society to your liking. This is "irrelevant" in the sense of not changing things, but it is not irrelevant to maintaining your manners. Conforming to the bad manners is the more likely culprit to the bad outcomes anyway. Caving on manners to avoid the "struggle", or rather, caving on manners because one benefits from doing so is just a reflection of how much one values the values. This is simply saying that more often than not we can maintain them, it just might not be worth it to us.
  - WarmWash 2mo ago
    The actual question is if you could move to another country with a very different system of "manners" (read: culture) and throw out your learned behavior and adopt theirs. My experience living in an incredibly multi-cultural immigrant dense area, is overwhelmingly "No". People like their "home" cultures (generally they believe its the best), and they tend to carry some degree of resentment for their new society for not recognizing that. It creates endless friction at the edges (whereas core values tend to be pretty similar globally). Japan doesn't really deal with this at all, and what immigrant ingress they have is usually fueled by people trying to live a Japanese like life.
- PaulRobinson 2mo ago
  It needs critical mass, but then it cascades. If you read through the description, what they talk about is that the culture is built around the idea of the individual being part of something bigger, and that consideration and respect for that something bigger (other people), is core to your own identity. That's not hard for a lot of cultures, but it's almost impossible for most cultures in the Western hemisphere, and to change it would require a cultural reset that would run against the grain of many things that make those cultures what they are. If it were possible though - and there are times when certain subcultures had standards of etiquette different to those widely accepted today in the West - it wouldn't need 100% of people to "sign up", just enough to make it ostracising to not conform. And then the outliers would conform. We do this already: it's OK (albeit illegal), to cycle through a red light where I live, because lots of people do it, but if you were to try and get served ahead of your turn in a pub, you might get into an argument, because nobody does that without expecting a problem.
  - busterarm 2mo ago
    The cracks are already there though in Japan where this is starting to fall apart and has fueled a substantial rise in anti-immigration sentiment there. Particularly at specific groups that are not assimilating (but affecting basically every immigrant). I feel like half your post is dancing around not saying this.
    - PaulRobinson 2mo ago
      I'm not saying this, because I'm not aware of this. I have a friend who is enjoying living in Osaka, but I wouldn't feel qualified to talk about Japanese sentiment towards him or any other group of non-natives. I'm saying that culture spreads through fear of being ostracized and the cost of not conforming to that culture. This is true in any country. It seems Japan has a "broader" and "firmer" culture that is rooted in respect to others, but it would take some serious effort for a similar culture to take hold in Europe or the US, I think. A sense of "non conformity" leading to issues is not unique to Japan though, in Europe it is described as a problem with "multiculturalism". The British (of which I am one), have spent thousands of years stealing the best bits of immigrant culture but seem to have forgotten that (or have been unable to absorb, for whatever reason), for the last ~60 years. That's leading to a rise in far-right sentiment and a growing desire for mono-culturalism. I can see evidence of that in Germany, France and other European nations. I could easily imagine it appearing more in Japan.
- everdrive 2mo ago
  It's been done before, and continues to be done in some places. It requires high group trust, and a strong group identity.
- billfor 2mo ago
  That's the key one -- it should be first and maybe the only one on the list. Japan is mono-culture and high-trust. They are all on the same page. You can't replicate that in western cities any more, such as the US or Europe. In some ways it's at odds with the idea of globalization and multiculturalism.
riskd 2mo ago
[flagged]
gilthelander 2mo ago
[flagged]
- jerlam 2mo ago
  Probably because you need separation from the culture to fully evaluate and appreciate it. If they interviewed someone from Japan, that person would probably complain about how un-livable Japan has become. Like the subway trains are always full and they have to wait five minutes for the next one.
  - zapzupnz 2mo ago
    Meanwhile, five minutes for the next one is luxury in my neck of the woods where you're more likely to wait 30 minutes to find out the next one is cancelled.
f13f1f1f1 2mo ago
Rule 1: be filled with Japanese people Cities and any polity or group of people cannot be created by some abstract rules or enforced. You need it to be composed of individuals who are disposed to act harmoniously with each other and have a culture (which is basically a bunch of jigging to aid harmonious interactions, you cannot create top down the manners you don't want people to violate). Everyone acting in their own self-interest ends up creating a harmonious organization because all of their self-interest corresponds such that their self interest is reflected in the good of the whole. Just as a feedback system, if there is something wrong in a city or organization if the person who encounters it sees it as contrary to their own self interest and is capable of dealing with it themselves they will. If this internal principle does not exist you rely on top down surveillance and enforcement which is basically delusional if it works will only be through violent enforcement against the people. Again in terms of a feedback system, if the polity is constructed out of a bunch of individuals who have a self-interest that corresponds with the good of the whole, there is no need to propagate that information to some manager. The persons directly involved with it are capable of dealing with it mindful of it's impact on the good of the whole because it's good for them. If you do not have that you would need a system of management, evaluation, and enforcement which basically demands the disruption in question is something easy to communicate and form policies around. Anything that cannot be just cannot be dealt with and the system falls under it's own weight. That's why technocracy is a delusion that is always doomed to fail, if the individual units in a system are unable to deal with aberrations on their own it requires the whole mass of bureaucracy to evaluate, construct policies, enforce etc. That is only capable of handling anything which is understandable to that kind of system, which is a small fraction of actual disruptions. I appreciate the efforts of people trying to emulate the positives of Japanese cities mimicking the externals of it and enforcing it on other people is the opposite of any actual organic system and itself prohibits the more dynamic system that is required for an actually stable polity. If someone sees a wallet on the street they have to see it as their own self-interest not to steal it. If people do not see themselves as having a shared self-interest with those around them there is no enforcement or rules or policies that can make that polity stable or harmonious.
- croes 2mo ago
  Maybe people just want to prevent getting arrested for a crime. Seems like the hardly arrest the innocent, even if they didn’t do it https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/04/inquiry-needed-japans-flawed-criminal-justice-system https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/04/inquiry-needed-japans-fl...
stringsandchars 2mo ago
> It's a concept that's difficult to replicate elsewhere, but Lydon compares it to what made old Main Street America so special. Designing at a people-first scale pays off. "The smell of fried croquettes drifting onto the streets, small shops run by the building owners, easy public transit access, a feeling of safety and community for all ages… it's hard to overstate how well this all works." Honestly, even though I love the idea of Japan and the idealized vision of Japan that's often presented in the media, I can't help thinking that a lot of this stuff can be found much closer to home in Europe. The BBC didn't need to go all the way to Tokyo - they could find this in pretty much any Spanish city.
- packetlost 2mo ago
  That kind of thing is extremely rare in the US sadly.
  - solarmist 2mo ago
    Nowadays. The last 50 years haven't been kind to people in the US.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      I'd feel more sorry if they hadn't voted for it every two years for the last 50.
  - qurren 2mo ago
    And outside of a handful of New England towns, wherever that kind of city planning exists in the US, those parts of town are inhabited by half-dead zombies on meth whispering threats at you as you walk by. Not a pleasant experience. That's why sane people in the US usually move to suburbia as soon as they can afford a car.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      That's probably because the US said that meth addicts aren't allowed to exist indoors. So instead they exist outdoors. Who would've expected that?
timr 2mo ago
I had to laugh when they put a quote from a wheelchair user at the top of the article. Japan is many good things, but friendly to wheelchair users is not one of them. As western tourists always seem to find out when they land with their gigantic suitcases, many Tokyo train stations require stairs to enter or exit.
- mikhael 2mo ago
  on tokyo train and subway stations specifically: maybe in the past they weren't accessible, but at least since the olympics, they've become so. i believe they're closing in on 100% now.
  - timr 2mo ago
    Not even close. They're better than they used to be, and the major stations that tourists go to are mostly kinda-sorta OK, but the median station has 1 elevator if you're lucky, and probably around the same number of accessible entrances. ...and we haven't even discussed the fact that riding the train with a wheelchair typically involves reservation of a staff member on each end of the journey, to help you get on and off.
    - mikhael 2mo ago
      i'd be interested learning how you've come up with that - it's disinformation. i'm speaking from extensive, direct experience.
      - timr 2mo ago
        > I'd be interested learning how you've come up with that - it's disinformation. i'm speaking from extensive, direct experience. I live here and have eyes. But tell me more about "disinformation." Tokyo metro's standard for accessibility is to have one route that is accessible from street level to the platform. That's fine, but it's a far cry from every entrance being accessible, or even just ensuring that you don't require staff support to make it through that route. Consider Takadanobaba [1] -- a major transit point that I know well. Yes, it's technically "one route", but just taking into account subway station exits (and not Seibu or JR line transfers, which are harder), it qualifies only because it has a single elevator that goes to ground. Literally every other exit is inaccessible. [1] https://www.tokyometro.jp/lang_en/station/takadanobaba/index.html https://www.tokyometro.jp/lang_en/station/takadanobaba/index...
MyHonestOpinon 2mo ago
Looked at the report. They only show the top 10 and bottom 10 cities. Which has very limited use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index#2026 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index#2026
hypertexthero 2mo ago
See also Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
shevy-java 2mo ago
> "Japan is built to work for everyone," says Josh Grisdale Well - the article does not talk about the more recent hostility to gaijin in Japan. Example (article) from a year ago: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/09/21/japan-faces-a-rising-wave-of-xenophobia_6745598_4.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/09/21/j... You can find similar articles by other media outlets. Japan has changed - and is changing. I've also noticed this on youtube, e. g. Paolo from Tokyo suddenly praising new restrictive laws. That was a strong indicator that Japan really fundamentally changed here. An old chinese stratagem is to hide the dagger behind the smile: https://www.echineselearning.com/blog/chinese-slang-hide-a-dagger-in-a-smile https://www.echineselearning.com/blog/chinese-slang-hide-a-d... I am not in any way applying that this applies to all japanese as such, of course; but I am more referring here to a trend where things are changing to the worse. Also, cost of living is high and there is an overcrowding problem in many of the cities. Even then I think the only city that would interest me is Tokio.
- MiroslavPokorny 2mo ago
  I feel sorry for nearly every one Paolo visits.... Its like those people have no life, it seems to be a self imposed volunteer prison. Work, sleep, work, repeat until you die.
- Scrip 2mo ago
  [flagged]
hagbard_c 2mo ago
The BBC forgot - or, as is more likely, refused to mention - rule #0: ensure a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour.
- netsharc 2mo ago
  When I read comments like yours, I always read "homogeneous" as "ethnically pure", and judge the comment writer accordingly. No debating about the stringent rules, which I'ver read comes from the Samurai times, but I think your projecting your idea of "racism works!"...
  - hagbard_c 2mo ago
    > When I read comments like yours, I always read "homogeneous" as "ethnically pure", and judge the comment writer accordingly. followed by: > but I think your projecting your idea of "racism works!"... You're judging what you want to see which says a lot about you and nothing about the comment. Let me spell it out for you so that you may not make this mistake next time: Culture [1]: the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time Ethnicity [2]: a large group of people with a shared culture, language, history, set of traditions, etc., or the fact of belonging to one of these groups Neither the word culture (which I used) nor ethnicity (which you used) are related to race or racism (which you used as well). As you see, your claims of racism are in the eyes of the beholder, i.e. yours. Drop it already, stop thinking in terms of race and racism. Do better as 'progressives' like to say, or educate yourself or whatever terms you prefer to use. Accept that not everyone thinks like you, in terms of race. Accept that most people use words like culture in their original meaning as stated above. Accept, in other words, that most people are not as race-fixated as you seem to be judging by your comment. [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/culture https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/culture [2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ethnicity https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ethnicit...
    - netsharc 2mo ago
      Fine, I'll consider anyone who uses "homogenous" a bigot from now on. Is that linguistically acceptable for you? Freaking bigots, arguing about words rather than their bigotry...
akudha 2mo ago
I wonder how much of these architecture, building etc decisions are because of higher percentage of aging population. In the west, we see more anti-homeless designs (spikes, removing benches in train stations etc) which is sad
hagbard_c 2mo ago
Earlier on I posted the following comment which for some inexplicable reason got flagged: The BBC forgot - or, as is more likely, refused to mention - rule #0: ensure a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour. To the person or persons who flagged this comment, please explain. What is it that got you to flag this comment? If there is one thing Japan is known for it is for having a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour. Is the truth so hard to accept that it needs flagging? Those Japanese cities without Japanese culture would look totally different and in some ways not nearly as 'liveable', in other ways probably more interesting. If you don't agree with a comment there is the reply link to let us know. This is a discussion site after all. If you just don't like a comment without being able to put into words why just give it some more thought, the words may come.
- Scrip 2mo ago
  [flagged]
- tupaarnaq 2mo ago
  Probably the snide reference to what the BBC "refused to mention" rule #0. Afghanistan has an even lower immigrant population than Japan, and rather stringent rules around public behavior, and few would call Kabul liveable. In terms of immigrant population, Japan sits around #155 of the ~230 countries in the world. You take a gander at the 75-80 countries [1] with less immigrants percentage wise than Japan (for a combined total by the way of 2 thirds of the world's population), map it against your own "livability" or "social trust" metrics and then see if your rule #0 (that the BBC apparently studiously avoids mentioning) still holds much water. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_immigrant_and_emigrant_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_im...
rayiner 2mo ago
Japanese cities are livable in large part because Japanese people are socialized against behaviors that are not conducive to living in close quarters with other people. If you ask them they’ll tell you that.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
zkmon 2mo ago
> get to work without a car, do your shopping on foot Some cities in Europe have town-centers in every neighborhood within walkable distance. This is extremely valuable for a livable city. Getting to work without car requires good public transport. Again, some European cities very good at this.
MiroslavPokorny 2mo ago
I have watched a few videos on YT of people riding or walking around Tokyo and other cities. I think its a good example of what life there is really like in terms of seeing the environment, cleanliness, beauty, nature, buildings and more. The only people in the background that I could see were people, young and old, travelling to and from school, offices, workplaces and so on. The video was long and if i were to travel one day to Tokyo i would definitely follow the same route. Fresh air, nature, backstreets, all sorts of engineering and views. How is it possible that a city of 35M in the heart of Tokyo, he barely passed a few bicycles and people outdoors enjoying life during a trip that went all over the place for hours ? Is that living ?
- sieabahlpark 2mo ago
  [dead]
num42 2mo ago
> 4. Maintain manners in shared spaces Before reading the article, I guessed that it would ultimately be about human cooperation. Most discussions about human activities seem to come back to how people work together and respect shared spaces. I also think this idea extends to environmental problems. In the end, they still boil down to human cooperation. If we want to solve environmental problems, we first have to solve problems of human cooperation. Simply put, to reduce conflict between humans and nature, we must first reduce conflict among humans.
- MiroslavPokorny 2mo ago
  What do you call the many employees who dont go home at 5 but stay because the culture requires them to wait for the more seniors to leave first ? Is that respect ?
  - mc3301 2mo ago
    I call it, "people who don't know better continuing to talk about this out-dated concept." Yes, it still exists. It is also slowly going away, just like mandatory drinking parties.
richardatlarge 2mo ago
Quaint article you won't see in a few years, when everything with be about weather and climate. Nothing else will matter. Welcome to the apocalypse
pezezin 2mo ago
I have been living in the inaka for 8 years now and I always laugh at this kind of articles. They only focus on the core areas of Tokyo, Osaka, and a few big others cities, and forget to mention that outside of those areas the whole country is just endless urban sprawl of the ugliest, soulless cities you can imagine.
- ryan_lane 2mo ago
  This article is specifically about its most livable cities. Why would you expect them to discuss the cities people don't want to live in? Every country has plenty of these. The point is to show the things that make a place livable, not to show all the ways a place isn't.
  - pezezin 2mo ago
    Because these articles always talk about the good parts and never mention the bad parts which make up the vast majority of the country.
    - JCharante 2mo ago
      I wouldn't say it's the vast majority if Tokyo/Chiba/Saitama/Yokohama holds like a third of the population. Add in those other cities you mentioned and the majority of the population lives in cities.
      - pezezin 2mo ago
        Of course in any developed country the majority of the population lives in cities. What I mean is that Japanese cities, outside of a few core areas, are really ugly and depressing.
        ryan_lane 2mo ago
        [dead]
  - 2mo ago
burnerzzzzz 2mo ago
this sets the bar very low. why would bbc not just go one of Europes many bicycle friendly cities?
adamgoodapp 2mo ago
There are too many people that don't need taking elevators at busy stations. The amount of times I had to cary a pram up the stairs because waiting was too long.
languagelearner 2mo ago
You can get this in Morocco yet there's never any articles about that ... it's almost like they're leaving out a major reason why they like Japan and it's not that the cities are walkable.
jankcorn 2mo ago
Many comments point to "monoculture", but I think that a more useful lens to look at this is "the importance of maintaining society vs the importance of individual rights". In Japan, if you maintain society, my experience is that everyone is welcome (in my experience). It seems like many times "society vs individual" discussion comes down to a cartoon like straw man discussion, but, living in Japan a long time, the difference in balance point feels quite tangible every day. I won't claim that this is a good tradeoff for everybody, but each society has quite serious benefits as (at times grating) restrictions. It can be quite difficult to do something too outside the norm in Tokyo, but I am always surprised by the kindness, thoughtfulness and humane-ness I have been shown over the years. In places like San Francisco, a wild variation of individual expression is encouraged, but it sometimes interactions with other people can feel quite jarring and little recognition for simple, calm coexisting humanity. It really comes down to personal preferences.
thelastgallon 2mo ago
Japan is a homogeneous country, their solutions are for all Japanese. US's #1 priority is to separate out the undesirables from living next to you. This was accomplished by zoning (big lots, min construction size, HOAs, laws), suburbs, must have car, etc -- all of which are only accessible to the super rich.

143 points by tchalla 2mo ago

sys32768 2mo ago

#4 "Maintain Manners" is hardly simple.

bryanlarsen 2mo ago
simple and easy aren't synonyms. It's a simple rule, but very difficult to implement.
- wat10000 2mo ago
  It's brief but it's not simple. "Manners" is an extremely complicated concept.
  - thereisnospork 2mo ago
    What qualifies as good manners varies from situation to situation, but the concept of acting with good manners is hardly complicated (conform to the expected behavior of the situation). Enforcment is a matter of encoding the rules and then applying a carrot and/or stick -- same as any other rule.
    - wat10000 2mo ago
      "Conform to the expected behavior of the situation" is incredibly complicated. What is the situation? How do you determine what the expected behavior is? What exactly does conforming consist of? It takes humans years to learn how to do this. Entire books are written on the subject. A major medical disorder affecting millions of people includes a persistent difficulty doing this specific thing. Even normal people have to put serious effort into this if they visit a place where societal norms are different from what they're used to. If it's not complicated, then I'm sure you can write down the rules for some specific situation real quick. Go ahead....
      - thereisnospork 2mo ago
        "Stand to the right on an escalator" "Put trash in a trashcan and not on the ground" That wasn't complicated. And took 30seconds. Are there a lot of rules? Of course. Is knowing them all in advance possible? Of course not. Don't confuse that with 'complicated'. Fine people who litter. Have an ai voice chide people who stand on the wrong side of an escalator. Both simple.
        wat10000 2mo ago
        Do I really have to stand to the right on an escalator? I think the nearest one is a mile away, that seems really inconvenient and unnecessary, and it's going to be hard to get my work done. I'm surprised to find this sentiment on a site filled with computer programmers. The most important and difficult lesson of computer programming is that simple-sounding rules have a lot of details that we take for granted.
        zapzupnz 2mo ago
        > I think the nearest one is a mile away, that seems really inconvenient and unnecessary I think this way of thinking, being obtuse on purpose to try to win an internet argument (without a prize, no less), is the more unnecessary thing. What point does that argumentation try to prove other than that a hypothetical version of you, as opposed to most humans who live in large cities, are an inflexible idiot? Most people are not 100% unaware of the context in which they are engaging. We know to apply escalator rules when we're at an escalator. We know to put things in bins when we have things to put in bins. What we don't know, we can learn through observation, reading the atmosphere, and making at least a minimal effort not to showboat our individualism and, apparently, any obtuse refusal to engage with our context. (By the way, I don't actually think you are an inflexible idiot.)
        wat10000 2mo ago
        That's my point. It's a lot more complicated than "stand to the right on an escalator." You have to learn through observation, read the atmosphere, and engage with context. There are some less obtuse issues with your universal pronouncement. There are escalators where it's too narrow to pass. There's no need nor expectation to stand to one side on these. The same goes for escalators that are so long that nobody's walking up them to accelerate their progress, or when nobody is around, or when it's so crowded nobody's able to pass anyway. And, at least in the places I'm familiar with, it doesn't apply in places where people aren't going to be in a big hurry. Stand right, pass left applies to subway stations but not malls. Maybe this all seems obvious. Well, go to a tourist-heavy place with escalators and observe how much of this is learned behavior that takes repeated long-term exposure to understand. Manners are really complicated. The escalator thing is a relatively simple example compared to something like, say, paying for a meal in a restaurant with a group, and it's already pretty deep when you dig into it.
EbNar 2mo ago
In some places it is something sadly absent or overlooked...
- mc32 2mo ago
  And with countries with lots of newcomers it can take decades (well, generations) to take on the host countries manners rather than sticking to home country manners that may not mesh with host country’s manners/customs.
bpodgursky 2mo ago
It's simple if your city is full of Japanese people.
cm11 2mo ago
I don’t know. I, the individual, can maintain a lot of manners fairly simply if I really wanted to.
- its_ethan 2mo ago
  I think they are saying that it's difficult to "maintain manners" for hundreds of thousands to millions of diverse "I, the individual" 's. It's great that you don't struggle with that yourself, but your manners can be made entirely irrelevant by 1 person in a public place who has anti-social behaviors (doesn't share the same set of "required" values for that society).
  - cm11 2mo ago
    You're right, it can be read as it being difficult for society to maintain manners. I agree and I should have been clearer. But I also think you may be misunderstanding what I said to fit it into your own model. There is a difference between manners and what results from them. You can maintain (what you believe to be) good manners without it improving society to your liking. This is "irrelevant" in the sense of not changing things, but it is not irrelevant to maintaining your manners. Conforming to the bad manners is the more likely culprit to the bad outcomes anyway. Caving on manners to avoid the "struggle", or rather, caving on manners because one benefits from doing so is just a reflection of how much one values the values. This is simply saying that more often than not we can maintain them, it just might not be worth it to us.
- WarmWash 2mo ago
  The actual question is if you could move to another country with a very different system of "manners" (read: culture) and throw out your learned behavior and adopt theirs. My experience living in an incredibly multi-cultural immigrant dense area, is overwhelmingly "No". People like their "home" cultures (generally they believe its the best), and they tend to carry some degree of resentment for their new society for not recognizing that. It creates endless friction at the edges (whereas core values tend to be pretty similar globally). Japan doesn't really deal with this at all, and what immigrant ingress they have is usually fueled by people trying to live a Japanese like life.
PaulRobinson 2mo ago
It needs critical mass, but then it cascades. If you read through the description, what they talk about is that the culture is built around the idea of the individual being part of something bigger, and that consideration and respect for that something bigger (other people), is core to your own identity. That's not hard for a lot of cultures, but it's almost impossible for most cultures in the Western hemisphere, and to change it would require a cultural reset that would run against the grain of many things that make those cultures what they are. If it were possible though - and there are times when certain subcultures had standards of etiquette different to those widely accepted today in the West - it wouldn't need 100% of people to "sign up", just enough to make it ostracising to not conform. And then the outliers would conform. We do this already: it's OK (albeit illegal), to cycle through a red light where I live, because lots of people do it, but if you were to try and get served ahead of your turn in a pub, you might get into an argument, because nobody does that without expecting a problem.
- busterarm 2mo ago
  The cracks are already there though in Japan where this is starting to fall apart and has fueled a substantial rise in anti-immigration sentiment there. Particularly at specific groups that are not assimilating (but affecting basically every immigrant). I feel like half your post is dancing around not saying this.
  - PaulRobinson 2mo ago
    I'm not saying this, because I'm not aware of this. I have a friend who is enjoying living in Osaka, but I wouldn't feel qualified to talk about Japanese sentiment towards him or any other group of non-natives. I'm saying that culture spreads through fear of being ostracized and the cost of not conforming to that culture. This is true in any country. It seems Japan has a "broader" and "firmer" culture that is rooted in respect to others, but it would take some serious effort for a similar culture to take hold in Europe or the US, I think. A sense of "non conformity" leading to issues is not unique to Japan though, in Europe it is described as a problem with "multiculturalism". The British (of which I am one), have spent thousands of years stealing the best bits of immigrant culture but seem to have forgotten that (or have been unable to absorb, for whatever reason), for the last ~60 years. That's leading to a rise in far-right sentiment and a growing desire for mono-culturalism. I can see evidence of that in Germany, France and other European nations. I could easily imagine it appearing more in Japan.
everdrive 2mo ago
It's been done before, and continues to be done in some places. It requires high group trust, and a strong group identity.
billfor 2mo ago
That's the key one -- it should be first and maybe the only one on the list. Japan is mono-culture and high-trust. They are all on the same page. You can't replicate that in western cities any more, such as the US or Europe. In some ways it's at odds with the idea of globalization and multiculturalism.

riskd 2mo ago

[flagged]

gilthelander 2mo ago

[flagged]

jerlam 2mo ago
Probably because you need separation from the culture to fully evaluate and appreciate it. If they interviewed someone from Japan, that person would probably complain about how un-livable Japan has become. Like the subway trains are always full and they have to wait five minutes for the next one.
- zapzupnz 2mo ago
  Meanwhile, five minutes for the next one is luxury in my neck of the woods where you're more likely to wait 30 minutes to find out the next one is cancelled.

f13f1f1f1 2mo ago

Rule 1: be filled with Japanese people Cities and any polity or group of people cannot be created by some abstract rules or enforced. You need it to be composed of individuals who are disposed to act harmoniously with each other and have a culture (which is basically a bunch of jigging to aid harmonious interactions, you cannot create top down the manners you don't want people to violate). Everyone acting in their own self-interest ends up creating a harmonious organization because all of their self-interest corresponds such that their self interest is reflected in the good of the whole. Just as a feedback system, if there is something wrong in a city or organization if the person who encounters it sees it as contrary to their own self interest and is capable of dealing with it themselves they will. If this internal principle does not exist you rely on top down surveillance and enforcement which is basically delusional if it works will only be through violent enforcement against the people. Again in terms of a feedback system, if the polity is constructed out of a bunch of individuals who have a self-interest that corresponds with the good of the whole, there is no need to propagate that information to some manager. The persons directly involved with it are capable of dealing with it mindful of it's impact on the good of the whole because it's good for them. If you do not have that you would need a system of management, evaluation, and enforcement which basically demands the disruption in question is something easy to communicate and form policies around. Anything that cannot be just cannot be dealt with and the system falls under it's own weight. That's why technocracy is a delusion that is always doomed to fail, if the individual units in a system are unable to deal with aberrations on their own it requires the whole mass of bureaucracy to evaluate, construct policies, enforce etc. That is only capable of handling anything which is understandable to that kind of system, which is a small fraction of actual disruptions. I appreciate the efforts of people trying to emulate the positives of Japanese cities mimicking the externals of it and enforcing it on other people is the opposite of any actual organic system and itself prohibits the more dynamic system that is required for an actually stable polity. If someone sees a wallet on the street they have to see it as their own self-interest not to steal it. If people do not see themselves as having a shared self-interest with those around them there is no enforcement or rules or policies that can make that polity stable or harmonious.

croes 2mo ago
Maybe people just want to prevent getting arrested for a crime. Seems like the hardly arrest the innocent, even if they didn’t do it https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/04/inquiry-needed-japans-flawed-criminal-justice-system https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/04/inquiry-needed-japans-fl...

stringsandchars 2mo ago

> It's a concept that's difficult to replicate elsewhere, but Lydon compares it to what made old Main Street America so special. Designing at a people-first scale pays off. "The smell of fried croquettes drifting onto the streets, small shops run by the building owners, easy public transit access, a feeling of safety and community for all ages… it's hard to overstate how well this all works." Honestly, even though I love the idea of Japan and the idealized vision of Japan that's often presented in the media, I can't help thinking that a lot of this stuff can be found much closer to home in Europe. The BBC didn't need to go all the way to Tokyo - they could find this in pretty much any Spanish city.

packetlost 2mo ago
That kind of thing is extremely rare in the US sadly.
- solarmist 2mo ago
  Nowadays. The last 50 years haven't been kind to people in the US.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    I'd feel more sorry if they hadn't voted for it every two years for the last 50.
- qurren 2mo ago
  And outside of a handful of New England towns, wherever that kind of city planning exists in the US, those parts of town are inhabited by half-dead zombies on meth whispering threats at you as you walk by. Not a pleasant experience. That's why sane people in the US usually move to suburbia as soon as they can afford a car.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    That's probably because the US said that meth addicts aren't allowed to exist indoors. So instead they exist outdoors. Who would've expected that?

timr 2mo ago

I had to laugh when they put a quote from a wheelchair user at the top of the article. Japan is many good things, but friendly to wheelchair users is not one of them. As western tourists always seem to find out when they land with their gigantic suitcases, many Tokyo train stations require stairs to enter or exit.

mikhael 2mo ago
on tokyo train and subway stations specifically: maybe in the past they weren't accessible, but at least since the olympics, they've become so. i believe they're closing in on 100% now.
- timr 2mo ago
  Not even close. They're better than they used to be, and the major stations that tourists go to are mostly kinda-sorta OK, but the median station has 1 elevator if you're lucky, and probably around the same number of accessible entrances. ...and we haven't even discussed the fact that riding the train with a wheelchair typically involves reservation of a staff member on each end of the journey, to help you get on and off.
  - mikhael 2mo ago
    i'd be interested learning how you've come up with that - it's disinformation. i'm speaking from extensive, direct experience.
    - timr 2mo ago
      > I'd be interested learning how you've come up with that - it's disinformation. i'm speaking from extensive, direct experience. I live here and have eyes. But tell me more about "disinformation." Tokyo metro's standard for accessibility is to have one route that is accessible from street level to the platform. That's fine, but it's a far cry from every entrance being accessible, or even just ensuring that you don't require staff support to make it through that route. Consider Takadanobaba [1] -- a major transit point that I know well. Yes, it's technically "one route", but just taking into account subway station exits (and not Seibu or JR line transfers, which are harder), it qualifies only because it has a single elevator that goes to ground. Literally every other exit is inaccessible. [1] https://www.tokyometro.jp/lang_en/station/takadanobaba/index.html https://www.tokyometro.jp/lang_en/station/takadanobaba/index...

MyHonestOpinon 2mo ago

Looked at the report. They only show the top 10 and bottom 10 cities. Which has very limited use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index#2026 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index#2026

hypertexthero 2mo ago

See also Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

shevy-java 2mo ago

> "Japan is built to work for everyone," says Josh Grisdale Well - the article does not talk about the more recent hostility to gaijin in Japan. Example (article) from a year ago: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/09/21/japan-faces-a-rising-wave-of-xenophobia_6745598_4.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/09/21/j... You can find similar articles by other media outlets. Japan has changed - and is changing. I've also noticed this on youtube, e. g. Paolo from Tokyo suddenly praising new restrictive laws. That was a strong indicator that Japan really fundamentally changed here. An old chinese stratagem is to hide the dagger behind the smile: https://www.echineselearning.com/blog/chinese-slang-hide-a-dagger-in-a-smile https://www.echineselearning.com/blog/chinese-slang-hide-a-d... I am not in any way applying that this applies to all japanese as such, of course; but I am more referring here to a trend where things are changing to the worse. Also, cost of living is high and there is an overcrowding problem in many of the cities. Even then I think the only city that would interest me is Tokio.

MiroslavPokorny 2mo ago
I feel sorry for nearly every one Paolo visits.... Its like those people have no life, it seems to be a self imposed volunteer prison. Work, sleep, work, repeat until you die.
Scrip 2mo ago
[flagged]

hagbard_c 2mo ago

The BBC forgot - or, as is more likely, refused to mention - rule #0: ensure a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour.

netsharc 2mo ago
When I read comments like yours, I always read "homogeneous" as "ethnically pure", and judge the comment writer accordingly. No debating about the stringent rules, which I'ver read comes from the Samurai times, but I think your projecting your idea of "racism works!"...
- hagbard_c 2mo ago
  > When I read comments like yours, I always read "homogeneous" as "ethnically pure", and judge the comment writer accordingly. followed by: > but I think your projecting your idea of "racism works!"... You're judging what you want to see which says a lot about you and nothing about the comment. Let me spell it out for you so that you may not make this mistake next time: Culture [1]: the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time Ethnicity [2]: a large group of people with a shared culture, language, history, set of traditions, etc., or the fact of belonging to one of these groups Neither the word culture (which I used) nor ethnicity (which you used) are related to race or racism (which you used as well). As you see, your claims of racism are in the eyes of the beholder, i.e. yours. Drop it already, stop thinking in terms of race and racism. Do better as 'progressives' like to say, or educate yourself or whatever terms you prefer to use. Accept that not everyone thinks like you, in terms of race. Accept that most people use words like culture in their original meaning as stated above. Accept, in other words, that most people are not as race-fixated as you seem to be judging by your comment. [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/culture https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/culture [2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ethnicity https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ethnicit...
  - netsharc 2mo ago
    Fine, I'll consider anyone who uses "homogenous" a bigot from now on. Is that linguistically acceptable for you? Freaking bigots, arguing about words rather than their bigotry...

akudha 2mo ago

I wonder how much of these architecture, building etc decisions are because of higher percentage of aging population. In the west, we see more anti-homeless designs (spikes, removing benches in train stations etc) which is sad

hagbard_c 2mo ago

Earlier on I posted the following comment which for some inexplicable reason got flagged: The BBC forgot - or, as is more likely, refused to mention - rule #0: ensure a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour. To the person or persons who flagged this comment, please explain. What is it that got you to flag this comment? If there is one thing Japan is known for it is for having a homogeneous culture with rather stringent rules around public behaviour. Is the truth so hard to accept that it needs flagging? Those Japanese cities without Japanese culture would look totally different and in some ways not nearly as 'liveable', in other ways probably more interesting. If you don't agree with a comment there is the reply link to let us know. This is a discussion site after all. If you just don't like a comment without being able to put into words why just give it some more thought, the words may come.

Scrip 2mo ago
[flagged]
tupaarnaq 2mo ago
Probably the snide reference to what the BBC "refused to mention" rule #0. Afghanistan has an even lower immigrant population than Japan, and rather stringent rules around public behavior, and few would call Kabul liveable. In terms of immigrant population, Japan sits around #155 of the ~230 countries in the world. You take a gander at the 75-80 countries [1] with less immigrants percentage wise than Japan (for a combined total by the way of 2 thirds of the world's population), map it against your own "livability" or "social trust" metrics and then see if your rule #0 (that the BBC apparently studiously avoids mentioning) still holds much water. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_immigrant_and_emigrant_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_im...

rayiner 2mo ago

Japanese cities are livable in large part because Japanese people are socialized against behaviors that are not conducive to living in close quarters with other people. If you ask them they’ll tell you that.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

zkmon 2mo ago

> get to work without a car, do your shopping on foot Some cities in Europe have town-centers in every neighborhood within walkable distance. This is extremely valuable for a livable city. Getting to work without car requires good public transport. Again, some European cities very good at this.

MiroslavPokorny 2mo ago

I have watched a few videos on YT of people riding or walking around Tokyo and other cities. I think its a good example of what life there is really like in terms of seeing the environment, cleanliness, beauty, nature, buildings and more. The only people in the background that I could see were people, young and old, travelling to and from school, offices, workplaces and so on. The video was long and if i were to travel one day to Tokyo i would definitely follow the same route. Fresh air, nature, backstreets, all sorts of engineering and views. How is it possible that a city of 35M in the heart of Tokyo, he barely passed a few bicycles and people outdoors enjoying life during a trip that went all over the place for hours ? Is that living ?

sieabahlpark 2mo ago
[dead]

num42 2mo ago

> 4. Maintain manners in shared spaces Before reading the article, I guessed that it would ultimately be about human cooperation. Most discussions about human activities seem to come back to how people work together and respect shared spaces. I also think this idea extends to environmental problems. In the end, they still boil down to human cooperation. If we want to solve environmental problems, we first have to solve problems of human cooperation. Simply put, to reduce conflict between humans and nature, we must first reduce conflict among humans.

MiroslavPokorny 2mo ago
What do you call the many employees who dont go home at 5 but stay because the culture requires them to wait for the more seniors to leave first ? Is that respect ?
- mc3301 2mo ago
  I call it, "people who don't know better continuing to talk about this out-dated concept." Yes, it still exists. It is also slowly going away, just like mandatory drinking parties.

richardatlarge 2mo ago

Quaint article you won't see in a few years, when everything with be about weather and climate. Nothing else will matter. Welcome to the apocalypse

pezezin 2mo ago

I have been living in the inaka for 8 years now and I always laugh at this kind of articles. They only focus on the core areas of Tokyo, Osaka, and a few big others cities, and forget to mention that outside of those areas the whole country is just endless urban sprawl of the ugliest, soulless cities you can imagine.

ryan_lane 2mo ago
This article is specifically about its most livable cities. Why would you expect them to discuss the cities people don't want to live in? Every country has plenty of these. The point is to show the things that make a place livable, not to show all the ways a place isn't.
- pezezin 2mo ago
  Because these articles always talk about the good parts and never mention the bad parts which make up the vast majority of the country.
  - JCharante 2mo ago
    I wouldn't say it's the vast majority if Tokyo/Chiba/Saitama/Yokohama holds like a third of the population. Add in those other cities you mentioned and the majority of the population lives in cities.
    - pezezin 2mo ago
      Of course in any developed country the majority of the population lives in cities. What I mean is that Japanese cities, outside of a few core areas, are really ugly and depressing.
      - ryan_lane 2mo ago
        [dead]
- 2mo ago

burnerzzzzz 2mo ago

this sets the bar very low. why would bbc not just go one of Europes many bicycle friendly cities?

adamgoodapp 2mo ago

There are too many people that don't need taking elevators at busy stations. The amount of times I had to cary a pram up the stairs because waiting was too long.

languagelearner 2mo ago

You can get this in Morocco yet there's never any articles about that ... it's almost like they're leaving out a major reason why they like Japan and it's not that the cities are walkable.

jankcorn 2mo ago

Many comments point to "monoculture", but I think that a more useful lens to look at this is "the importance of maintaining society vs the importance of individual rights". In Japan, if you maintain society, my experience is that everyone is welcome (in my experience). It seems like many times "society vs individual" discussion comes down to a cartoon like straw man discussion, but, living in Japan a long time, the difference in balance point feels quite tangible every day. I won't claim that this is a good tradeoff for everybody, but each society has quite serious benefits as (at times grating) restrictions. It can be quite difficult to do something too outside the norm in Tokyo, but I am always surprised by the kindness, thoughtfulness and humane-ness I have been shown over the years. In places like San Francisco, a wild variation of individual expression is encouraged, but it sometimes interactions with other people can feel quite jarring and little recognition for simple, calm coexisting humanity. It really comes down to personal preferences.

thelastgallon 2mo ago

Japan is a homogeneous country, their solutions are for all Japanese. US's #1 priority is to separate out the undesirables from living next to you. This was accomplished by zoning (big lots, min construction size, HOAs, laws), suburbs, must have car, etc -- all of which are only accessible to the super rich.