General Japanese Culture Thread

@Xopher 001: Because that is Japanese corporate culture, and has been for several decades. Deference and obedience are drilled into people in all walks of life, and any real change has to be top down-there is no real equivalent to US worker unions or the like.

edited 26th Feb '17 2:52:34 PM by ViperMagnum357

Man, I'm surprised emigration rates from Japan are so low. You have a youth population that's highly educated (so legal migration is relatively doable) and dealing with a stagnant economy and some of the worst labour practices in the developed world.

Is emigration just discouraged, or is there another reason why the rate is generally pretty low?

Its pretty discouraged yes, I will never fit in again if I head back.... that's a pretty powerful deterrent. :/

Any ideas why more people don't try and get out of there?

The fact that you will never fit in again, the fact that most young people are idealists who think things can change, and that's just disregarding the significant amount of them that think the current system is just fine.

Yeah brainwashing is a powerful tool.

Especially when backed up by a pretty great (if flawed) standard of living. Man, if Japan's social services do degrade significantly under demographic pressure, their migration situation might start looking more like South East Asia or parts of Europe. Only with an far lower birthrate...

edited 26th Feb '17 3:52:17 PM by Rationalinsanity

Uhhhhhh.

No, our birthrate is actually HIGHER then Europes, the problem comes from the lack of immigration which they have to make up for it.

Japan

Germany

Korea

Spain

Italy

edited 26th Feb '17 4:00:58 PM by Imca

By parts of Europe I was talking about regions like the Baltics, where people are leaving in droves and the birth rate is just above Japan's.

Should have been more specific there, my bad.

edited 26th Feb '17 4:00:18 PM by Rationalinsanity

Kay, sorry about that then, I am just kinda getting a bit annoyed with the missinformation that gets spread about the birthrate situation. >.<

I've heard that one of the main reasons that Japan has both few immigrants and emigrants is because there are next to no Japanese people outside Japan, and next to no non-Japanese people in Japan. People tend to want to live in communities they're comfortable with — picking up and starting over in an entirely different culture is hard. This is why immigrants of a particular culture tend to cluster together (ie, why "Chinatown" is a thing). Without that expat community, it's really hard for Japanese people to move overseas in large numbers... and, of course, without people moving overseas in large numbers, there's no way to form those communities. It's a chicken-egg thing.

There's a lot of Japanese people in Brazil.

And in Manhattan.

Japanese people don't actually consider the expat communities in Brazil and such to be as purely "Japanese" though.

As a southern Californian, I can personally testify that there really is a lack of concentrated Japanese communities here when compared to the abundance of growing Chinese and Korean one's. My guess is that the World War II mass internment basically destroyed any chance of Japanese-Americans forming the number of organized communities as they did before the war.

Hawaii has a big Japanese community, though, despite being the place where Pearl Harbor happened.

edited 26th Feb '17 6:30:16 PM by Bat178

Yeah, turns out you can't intern almost 40% of your population.

Parts of Montgomery County in Maryland - particularly Rockville - have a significant Asian community, but I couldn't tell you how many of them are Japanese.

A friend of mine hooked up with a fellow college classmate, who is Japanese, through classes and going to the same internship. My friend is black, so it was a mixed couple situation, and he made frequent trips to her homeland to see her family. Eventually, they broke up and she wound up with a man of her own nationality. I hear she wouldn't even talk to my friend anymore. Sometimes you can't get acclimated to a new culture.

edited 27th Feb '17 7:31:44 AM by kyun

The work hours has more to do with showing your devotion to the company than any quality of work. Most of the work gets done in the regular eight hours, but you're expected to stay for longer. Or your work is stretched to accomodate the whole day.

This is changing very slowly. Biggest irony is that the working mentality is hammered at a very early age, so even when the company asks people to leave after a regular eight hour day, there's considerable resistance.

@Rational Insanity:

In the case of the LDP ultra right-wing (and parts of Nippon Kaigi), they want to return to the Meiji constitution with the Emperor as the actual ruler of Japan, although with a powerful Diet. Abe himself has run largely on abolishing Article 9 and making Japan a Constitutional Monarchy (Emperor as Head of State).

This is an interesting case as besides the revised interpretation of the article, no moves have been made to amend the constitution despite the LDP being perfectly capable of doing so. Personally, it looks to me he's doing a dangerous balancing act, between the insane ultras (some of them outright tennoists) and the moderates. Along with another act between internal and foreign policy. So far, he has been astonishingly successful at this, and even weathered numerous scandals among his Cabinet and appointees. PM's have sunk for way less.

... Would someone be kind enough to clarify what "tennoism" means here? I think I can guess what it roughly means ("open worship of the Tennou [Emperor of Japan] as a living god"), but I would like confirmation from someone more well-informed about the topic, because the term is completely new to me.

More or less. According to Tennoism, the Emperor's line has a divine mandate due to being the direct descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu. Yes, that is the same Amaterasu that is the protagonist of Ōkami (with creative liberties taken of course).

It'd be like a Christian theocratic state where the rulers claim a mandate based on being the descendants of Jesus Christ the Son of God.

This. Should be noted that it only really reached a large-scale influence after the Meiji Restoration and State Shinto (Tennoism is often used to refer to this type only).

The only time the Emperor truly ruled his domain, was during the Asuka period (538-710 CE) and from the Nara period (710-794 CE) onwards it was downhill as powerful clans superceded his authority and competed for the throne. After the Genpei War (1180-1185), the supremacy of the military class was pretty much guaranteed with the first Shogunate under the Minamoto (with the Emperor briefly having power during the Kemmu Restoration from 1333-1336). And so it goes.

edited 27th Feb '17 6:04:55 AM by TerminusEst

Unrelated to the current discussion but if anyone else here is into Lolita Fashion and doesn't have Angelic Pretty's Holy Lantern yet AP is doing another MTO of the original colours. Only catch is it's Tokyo-only so you'll need a shopping service. The reservation period is up until the 5th of March.

They're also MTOing Carnival, a dress that usually goes for 700+ on the secondhand market, so this will probably be the best time ever to get it if you want it.

edited 27th Feb '17 9:10:35 AM by PhiSat

Hi,

Some people in the kingdom hearts thread were curious to know what the opinion is on Lilo And Stitch,apparently Lilo is hated,could anyone explain why?

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2017-02-28/man-sentenced-to-14-years-for-stabbing-singer/.112799

A bit too lenient for the convicted, in my opinion. He ruined the life of a woman even by not killing her. But then the damage was done.