• Name of Japan's next Imperial era to be announced April 1, Abe confirms
    35 replies, posted
i don't really want to continue this argument because it's taking over the thread and getting incredibly off-topic, but i think japan suffers from the same problem that hurts pretty much every nation in that its government is run by complete asshats and that it has a very vocal subset that cling to those 'conservative nativist patriarchal' tendencies. saying that japan has 'strict adherence to backwards traditions' also strikes me as xenophobic because most of those 'backwards traditions' are just culture. is it also 'strict adherence to backwards tradition' that the US observes independence day? or the day of the dead in mexico? or any other area's specific traditions? as for the 'collectivist' part, that's also simply culture. sure to us in the west a collectivist style of thinking seems oppressive and dystopian because our cultures value individualism above almost all else, but there is nothing inherently negative about collectivism from a neutral viewpoint. i'm not an expert on japan's cultural or societal situation by any means, i'm not @daigennki , i don't live there. i'm just interested in japan. i've been there twice and i had nothing but good experiences and thought it was a wonderful country. i simply think that it gets an unfair verdict from a lot of people exactly for the reason you described, japan does put on a beautiful and perfect facade that breaks down quickly when you get into some of their issues, but i don't think calling it a quote-unquote 'shithole' or 'nightmare state' is exactly accurate. as i said before, i definitely agree that there are a lot of problems, but i don't think they're necessarily as great as people make out and i also don't think they're necessarily of greater magnitude than any other comparable nation (US/UK/EU states/SK, etc). i also think that those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and our country is in a pretty fucked up state at the moment so
Yeah no, I don't rant anything to do with that pit of stupid, but I also don't want to boil down Japan's issues as being the same as everywhere else. It does a disservice to thes issues of those nations. Japan's issues are not similar to France's which are in no way similar to the United States.
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