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by Grue3 2397 days ago
And Tokyo happens to be quite democratic and non-authoritarian. So an argument that people necessarily need Big Brother to behave falls flat on its face.
2 comments

>democratic and non-authoritarian

japan also has something like a 99 percent conviction rate, not sure how that aligns with being anti authoritarian.

It means that they don't prosecute people unless they have a perfect open-and-shut case.

21 days to be arraigned is nothing to be proud of, however.

> So an argument that people necessarily need Big Brother to behave falls flat on its face.

Japanese culture is very different from pretty much any other culture. They respect each other and their country and environment. (except whales) They are raised from a young age to look after each other and respect each other. Something the rest of the world could learn from.

Japanese culture did not spring up out of the innate goodness of ancient Japanese. Culture is nurtured.
Japanese culture is largely a product of developing on an island archipelago where there's not much livable space (much of the land is mountains) and there's almost no natural resources. Add to that the various contacts with Western culture they had, and you get what they have now. The bit about respecting the environment (which isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than many other countries) is an example of this: when you don't have much space, you have to work harder at keeping your environment good because you don't have the option of just moving west when it gets too crowded, like they did in the US. Of course, they tried emulating the Europeans and doing the colonization thing a while back, and that didn't work out too well.

Culture is a product of your environment.