[mikekchar]

Japan is culturally very different. Every Japanese person is taught at school how to act in society. Cultural values are instilled there. In the west we believe that parents should have the last say on how to bring up children. In Japan, teachers have the last say. Teachers go to students' homes to make sure it is an acceptable environment for the student. If it is not, parents are required to take classes on how to be better parents. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen teachers calling in parents and yelling at them for hours until the parents, sobbing, promise to improve. One of my students was caught smoking and since the father was a smoker he was called into school. The vice principal blamed the father for the student's behaviour and insisted that the father never again smoke at home. The father agreed (and you know the home room teacher is going to go over to the house to make sure the agreement is kept).

That's why people don't litter here. For a test, I once left my change in the drink machine by the school -- a drink machine used by all the students. The change was still there 2 weeks later! I think the only reason it eventually was removed was because the company that restocked the machines took it. Probably only because they realised that it was an inconvenience for everyone having to sort out their correct change.

You just can't tell a city of millions of people to act like that ;-). It's a completely different culture and a completely different set of values.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

If the cliché is to be believed, there are some downsides to this level of obedience, such as stifling people in their most creative years, or really any opposite of one would expect a meritocracy to achieve. Some would probably consider your description of parent-teacher relations to be borderline dystopian.

I really wonder if those societal traits are necessarily linked, i. e. by being opposite ends of a spectrum of selfishness. It would seem entirely practical not to litter and also not expect people to mindlessly follow orders (in life and at work) based on the completely arbitrary hierarchy of age (/ gender).

[mikekchar]

Truly hard to say. I can say that I like the way things work in Japan. Even though I have no kids, people often ask me if I would put them in Japanese schools. I'd practically insist on it. However, I know several expats who hate these things.

One of the things I've come to realise is that one person's dystopia is another's utopia. I've often felt that living in Japan is a bit like living in a real life "Leave it to Beaver" or "Andy Griffith's show" (especially out in the countryside where I live). I see Japan slowly getting more and more Westernised and it fills me with dread. I lived for nearly 40 years in a society that I really disliked and when I moved to Japan, to my surprise, it was like coming home to a home I had never known. It's 12 years later and I am just getting more and more Japanese.

Japanese people, in general, also like Japanese culture. If you ask a Japanese person why they don't litter, I will lay pretty good odds that the answer will be, "Because I am Japanese". That's really the only answer. You're very unlikely to get an in depth answer about it being good for the environment, or a socially responsible thing to do. People really enjoy this identity. It's one of the reasons that there are relatively few Japanese people who live for long periods abroad.

I guess the thing is that most people are happy in Japan, in the same way that most people are happy in other first world countries. Some people are very unhappy, of course, but I can't really point to a country where that isn't the case. Some things are screwed up, but most things work very well -- just like any other first world country. I should point out that I've lived in Canada, the US and the UK for long periods of time as well, so I've got a pretty good basis for comparison.

Could there be a middle ground between how Japan works and how countries like Canada and the US work? Maybe, but I think you would have a lot of struggles to find the balance to make it work. You would also almost certainly lose very, very good things on both sides and I'm not sure that you would find very, very good things to replace them with.