[rayiner]

> Japan is, of course, just a place. The people there are ordinary humans. Fetishizing a particular culture is both cringeworthy and genuinely harmful. Their country and society have plenty of problems, just like any other. There is nothing magical about Japan or any other place.

Japan, by your own description, isn’t just a place. It’s the place of a people who share a long and deep culture. If you substituted New Yorkers for Japanese in Tokyo, it wouldn’t be like Tokyo for very long! (Feeling like a “clumsy, nasty barbarian” is certainly an apropos description of how I feel returning to New York after visiting Tokyo.)

Most Japanese wouldn’t describe Japan as “just a place.” A Japanese acquaintance of mine (a law professor) and I were once discussing the issue of government corruption in Asia. My acquaintance dug into some 400 years of Japanese history to explain why it had less problems with corruption than China, next door.

Of course it’s not “magical”—just as there is nothing magical about Apple under Steve Jobs. But it is an achievement—the achievement of a group of people who share a particular culture. When my dad was born in 1951, Japan had a GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power) similar to Bangladesh’s today. Within a generation they had become a first world country. You shouldn’t fetishize their culture, but it’s okay to marvel at their achievement!

[JohnBooty]

Very well-said.

I certainly do not mean that Japan is "just a place" in the sense that the nasty, slightly unkempt area behind my garage is "just a place." Japan is the sum of thousands of years of culture and achievement. I truly marvel at many things about Japan.

I did my best (in my admittedly hurried and casual post) to be clear that fetishization is what was to be avoided, and not appreciation.

Often, particularly in the 90s/2000s, one would see Japan fetishized as some sort of magical place of technical advancements, weirdo tentacle porn, cute and submissive women, etc. That sucked for a number of reasons too obvious to type out. That's the sort of thing of which I'm dismissive, not the sort of informed and genuine appreciation you expressed.

[unmole]

> My acquaintance dug into some 400 years of Japanese history to explain why it had less problems with corruption than China, next door.

Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong are closer to China in terms of both geography and culture without having problems with corruption. It's almost as if 400 years of history has very little to do with it.

[rayiner]

Hong Kong was long a British colony. Taiwan and Singapore are tiny island nations, with founding generations small enough to retool the culture and institutions. The founder of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, was deliberate about reshaping the country’s culture because he was adamant that “culture is destiny.” https://paulbacon.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/zakaria_lee.pd...

[unmole]

And Japan is an American protectorate whose constitution was written by foreigners. So, what?

[rayiner]

So was Afghanistan. But a short duration of military dominance and writing words in paper can’t change the culture of the people. Colonization, as with Hong Kong, or a generation of top-down rule over a small population, as with Taiwan and Singapore, can. Again, read Yew. He was deliberate and methodical about all this, and has written and spoken widely about what he did to transform Singapore.

[forgingahead]

Great comments, though one small nitpick: For Chinese names, the surname goes first, so for "Lee Kuan Yew", his last name is "Lee", not "Yew". He's often abbreviated as "LKY" for locals though.

Interestingly, LKY was known as "Harry Lee" until he became active in politics, upon which he went by "Lee Kuan Yew" to apparently help endear himself to the local Chinese population. He took Mandarin lessons well into his old age as it wasn't the language he spoke at home. I think most of his counterparts overseas knew him as "Harry" (Thatcher, Kissinger, etc) and even his wife called him "Harry" per biographical accounts.

Lee was undoubtedly a product of the British system - an English-educated ethnically Chinese man, straddling both sides in order to navigate those early years.

[rayiner]

Thank you.

[swsieber]

I dunno. That suggests that it's not culture and it's not geography... So what's left? Genetics and history? I'd pick history, the accumulation of aggregate choices.

[tptacek]

I don't understand the premise, where Japan is supposedly uniquely high-integrity. It ranks around the United States in metrics of corruption, sometimes higher and sometimes lower over the last 20 years, and historically was significantly worse than it is now. It's about as corrupt as any of the many countries on this planet that have the rule of law.

[unmole]

> I'd pick history, the accumulation of aggregate choices.

So, Japan doesn't have corruption because it hasn't had corruption for 400 years?

[moogleii]

> My acquaintance dug into some 400 years of Japanese history to explain why it had less problems with corruption than China, next door.

That's a bit suspect considering a lot of pre-WW2 Japanese governments were based off Chinese models (not to mention, as another commenter mentioned, there are other examples of Asian governments with low corruption, maybe even less than Japan's). In China's case, if we're going back hundreds of years, I suspect the explanation is a bit more complex, you know, having to deal with all that sheer area in the age of horses, no natural sea barrier against foreigners, not to mention a population size that easily dwarfed Japan's (and most countries in the world).