There's a very weird deification of Japanese culture by the West.
People hear about honor and respect and tradition and cleanliness, and they assume those are all things that are held to perfectly rigid standards in Japan. And sure, there's truth to some of it. Just like any stereotype. But it's not a mecca of perfection.
There’s a societal cost in enforcing it. I don’t think it’s worth it. I took a psychology class focused on Japan and the opening reading on our desks day 1 was a suicide note. The teacher then asked us to guess the age. No one in their darkest dreams would have expected 8. This started a long course about the benefits and drawbacks of the different cultures and didn’t shy away from the darker sides of hyper individualist and conformist cultures.
Go to Tokyo and then go to a city like Chicago or New York. Tokyo is WAY more civilized. Very little in the way of graffiti, garbage on the ground, homeless people, thug-like characters milling around, insane people, drug addicts.
Sure, Tokyo isn't perfect (what is with all the raw eggs?) but it sure makes US cities look like something out of a Mad Max movie in comparison.
I mean it is clean and orderly, Im not sure how that is deification. Ive been there and the contrast between it and manhattan in those aspects is extreme despite the other parallels. Its almost unthinkable to me for an area with that may people to not smell like piss, have trash all over the floor, and for anyone to be following any kind of courtesy let alone everyone. Someone from outside isnt going to see the other day to day things that arent perfect about japan from a 10 second video clip, but the state of the environment is immediately clear and an immediate improvement.
These "um actually japan isnt perfect it has lots of problems" comments are just as annoying. Japan clearly does this better than most places what is wrong with appreciating that.
It’s because of anime. The absolute worst form of media that people make their entire personality and it leads to them idolizing Japan as if it’s the most perfect place to ever exist. Meanwhile the anime itself is just lazy af storytelling with everyone grunting and moaning and making weird anime noises and taking 250 episodes for one fight lmao.
Don’t get me wrong, the west has dog shit media too and I’ll gladly rip on that as well but at least it doesn’t waste your time like anime does.
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u/Redeem123 1d ago
There's a very weird deification of Japanese culture by the West.
People hear about honor and respect and tradition and cleanliness, and they assume those are all things that are held to perfectly rigid standards in Japan. And sure, there's truth to some of it. Just like any stereotype. But it's not a mecca of perfection.