[slurry]

How do we know that having undue respect for hierarchy is objectively a bad thing?

I'd say China in the late Qing Dynasty would be a good data point for it being a bad thing. Or a compare-and-contrast of Spain and the Netherlands in the early modern period.

With respect to Japan, yeah, we think of it as super-hierarchical. Then again, Japan had two major hierarchy-toppling social revolutions pretty recently. First the military-imperial apparatus toppled the feudal nobility during the Meiji Restoration. Then General McArthur toppled the military-imperial apparatus during the American occupation. So, perhaps the slope of the long term trend line is as important as the current value?