[Avicebron]

I'm not an expert on Japan by any stretch, but I do know that there was a severe economic collapse ~1990 (called the lost generation I believe), this changed a previously very strong economic/social contract where people were essentially guaranteed well paying jobs given a relatively low barrier of entry (in exchange they were obviously expected to work very hard), however this led to a removal of that system and many people from that generation have had to struggle to find meaningly work outside of low paying temp work (maybe like a gig economy deal), this led a lot to feel they had been abandoned by their government/corporate entities even though they had done all the things they were "supposed to do" to get into that system.

[ricardobayes]

In a way, I lived through a similar thing in a post-soviet country. Pre-1990 it was illegal, to be unemployed. But on the other hand people got a guaranteed job if they wanted to work. Sure it was in most cases a meaningless job, but a job nevertheless.

Somehow that part of the world seems to have avoided this phenomenon. Maybe because it was a big political/external change (the collapse of the soviet union), so people found it easier to cope with it.