Well, the Japanese are a famously conformist people, and masking has been common there for quite some time.
Regarding the V, I was under the impression that the Japanese government wasn't making it mandatory. Is that mistaken? The Japanese are generally extremely conservative when it comes to medical treatments.
Well, the Japanese are a famously conformist people, and masking has been common there for quite some time.
Regarding the V, I was under the impression that the Japanese government wasn't making it mandatory. Is that mistaken? The Japanese are generally extremely conservative when it comes to medical treatments.
No, but yes. You are correct in that there are no governmental mandates. The Government here has said that while they would like to impose mandates, they lack the legal authority to do so. So, they make “recommendations” only. However, as the intent is clear, the recommendations are basically mandates. Employers impose them. Schools impose them. Businesses impose them upon their employees and occasionally their customers.
My wife has not been into her office since early February 2020 except for 3 times. Each time was to get her company provided vaccine. It is 3 minutes until midnight here and she is still working, the barrier between work time and family time long since erased.
One of my employers, a vocational school for medical technicians, demanded that I wear a mask for online classes I taught online. I didn’t. Not a fun time. We have had many camp site reservations cancelled due to covid panic. Everything has been cancelled for the past two years. We are starting on the third year of cancellations as this Spring’s festivals were also cancelled. While some things have opened back up, preregistering is required to prevent over crowding, masks as required and in some cases three faccine shots or 3 days of negative testing. I am supposed to be taking my temperature at least daily and recording it in case one of my employers asks for it. If they do, I’ll tell them to go fauci themselves. It is a dystopian hell here.
That's completely insane but nothing you've said there really surprises me at all.
To get back to the original issue - what's the online speech situation? If I know my Japs social pressure is enough to keep them in line, no explicit state or corporate censorship required. They also tend to look to the West for cues on a lot of things; the censorship over here likely has knock on effects over there. Thoughts?
Social pressure, as you seem to know, is the most powerful of all for Japanese. They will knowingly follow the crowd to their own death before they would even consider facing the idea of being a social outcast. And yes, they is a lot of straight up parroting of what the West says and does. At first, Japan seemed to not do this with Coivd. Then pressure was brought to bare and they implemented their own brand of lockdowns, which I call “lockdown Lite (TM)”.
Online speech. This I can not speak to with much knowledge. Twitter is big in the US but “LINE” is, if not the biggest, one of the biggest. While there has long been discussion on social media’s role in things here, it does not seem to be anywhere near what Twitter is in the US. I shared the restrictions one of my, now former, Med.schools placed upon its employees and students. I am supposed to keep conversation at the dinner table in my own home with my family to a minimum, maintain social distancing and am specifically prohibited from “snuggling”. The fear everyone has is being put out on the nightly news, news papers, incessant public announcements, in schools, from our employers and social groups. Not much any social media could add, really.
I know from personal experience, that any attempt to tell my employers of my qualification in respirator use is shouted over with, ‘It’s the RULE’, it’s the RULE’. As I feared at the beginning, once an action is adopted, it will continue regardless what is later learned of its effectiveness. Constant hand sanitizing, spraying and wiping surfaces before and after use continues to this day despite it being known for, what, 18 months now?, that it is not spread from surfaces.
Ah yeah, that brings me back. One of my greatest frustrations with the Japanese is their general inability to take initiative independent of group norms. If the norms make sense, it's a huge strength for them; when they don't it's a crippling weakness.
Still, one of the weird things about consensus society, particularly in a place like Japan where so much of the collective conversation takes place at a subtextual level that is completely opaque to outsiders, is that when a new consensus is reached things can transform more or less immediately and with no apparent warning.
Same seems to hold true today too. A but in the past, but supports what you said is cigarette usage. I use to use a station in Tokyo that sits on top of a river bank. Despite being open on the sides with breezes following the river, you could not see people from waist up from across the rive, the cigarette smoke was so thick. Then over night, all the smoke was gone. Japanese society decide that smoking in stations was no longer acceptable and with the snap of the fingers, it ended.
The only reason that the Jap govt did not impose "mandates" was because they knew the Japs will comply with their "recommendations". Why use force and anger some people when recommendations do the same job?
The same in other countries which did not have mandates: because people complied massively.
This is so true. Unfortunately, it is either misunderstood or ignored and reported in such a way as to give the impression that society in Japan, and presumably others, is carrying on as if nothing happened. That is certainly not the case.
Thank you for sharing that. It gives us more of an idea about the reality of it. God knows, the "pictures" we're getting are so distorted and smudged that there are only vague ideas we can go by in assessing what's what.
A few years at sea help out a lot. As does an appreciation of Japanese incense. If I can’t change the landscape I see, I can at least change the scentscape. But the biggest motivating factor is, what choice do I have?
Well, the Japanese are a famously conformist people, and masking has been common there for quite some time.
Regarding the V, I was under the impression that the Japanese government wasn't making it mandatory. Is that mistaken? The Japanese are generally extremely conservative when it comes to medical treatments.
No, but yes. You are correct in that there are no governmental mandates. The Government here has said that while they would like to impose mandates, they lack the legal authority to do so. So, they make “recommendations” only. However, as the intent is clear, the recommendations are basically mandates. Employers impose them. Schools impose them. Businesses impose them upon their employees and occasionally their customers.
My wife has not been into her office since early February 2020 except for 3 times. Each time was to get her company provided vaccine. It is 3 minutes until midnight here and she is still working, the barrier between work time and family time long since erased.
One of my employers, a vocational school for medical technicians, demanded that I wear a mask for online classes I taught online. I didn’t. Not a fun time. We have had many camp site reservations cancelled due to covid panic. Everything has been cancelled for the past two years. We are starting on the third year of cancellations as this Spring’s festivals were also cancelled. While some things have opened back up, preregistering is required to prevent over crowding, masks as required and in some cases three faccine shots or 3 days of negative testing. I am supposed to be taking my temperature at least daily and recording it in case one of my employers asks for it. If they do, I’ll tell them to go fauci themselves. It is a dystopian hell here.
That's completely insane but nothing you've said there really surprises me at all.
To get back to the original issue - what's the online speech situation? If I know my Japs social pressure is enough to keep them in line, no explicit state or corporate censorship required. They also tend to look to the West for cues on a lot of things; the censorship over here likely has knock on effects over there. Thoughts?
Social pressure, as you seem to know, is the most powerful of all for Japanese. They will knowingly follow the crowd to their own death before they would even consider facing the idea of being a social outcast. And yes, they is a lot of straight up parroting of what the West says and does. At first, Japan seemed to not do this with Coivd. Then pressure was brought to bare and they implemented their own brand of lockdowns, which I call “lockdown Lite (TM)”.
Online speech. This I can not speak to with much knowledge. Twitter is big in the US but “LINE” is, if not the biggest, one of the biggest. While there has long been discussion on social media’s role in things here, it does not seem to be anywhere near what Twitter is in the US. I shared the restrictions one of my, now former, Med.schools placed upon its employees and students. I am supposed to keep conversation at the dinner table in my own home with my family to a minimum, maintain social distancing and am specifically prohibited from “snuggling”. The fear everyone has is being put out on the nightly news, news papers, incessant public announcements, in schools, from our employers and social groups. Not much any social media could add, really.
I know from personal experience, that any attempt to tell my employers of my qualification in respirator use is shouted over with, ‘It’s the RULE’, it’s the RULE’. As I feared at the beginning, once an action is adopted, it will continue regardless what is later learned of its effectiveness. Constant hand sanitizing, spraying and wiping surfaces before and after use continues to this day despite it being known for, what, 18 months now?, that it is not spread from surfaces.
Ah yeah, that brings me back. One of my greatest frustrations with the Japanese is their general inability to take initiative independent of group norms. If the norms make sense, it's a huge strength for them; when they don't it's a crippling weakness.
Still, one of the weird things about consensus society, particularly in a place like Japan where so much of the collective conversation takes place at a subtextual level that is completely opaque to outsiders, is that when a new consensus is reached things can transform more or less immediately and with no apparent warning.
Same seems to hold true today too. A but in the past, but supports what you said is cigarette usage. I use to use a station in Tokyo that sits on top of a river bank. Despite being open on the sides with breezes following the river, you could not see people from waist up from across the rive, the cigarette smoke was so thick. Then over night, all the smoke was gone. Japanese society decide that smoking in stations was no longer acceptable and with the snap of the fingers, it ended.
Thank you both, have learnt a lot.
The only reason that the Jap govt did not impose "mandates" was because they knew the Japs will comply with their "recommendations". Why use force and anger some people when recommendations do the same job?
The same in other countries which did not have mandates: because people complied massively.
Why did you not give me credit for "faccine"?!
This is so true. Unfortunately, it is either misunderstood or ignored and reported in such a way as to give the impression that society in Japan, and presumably others, is carrying on as if nothing happened. That is certainly not the case.
Thank you for sharing that. It gives us more of an idea about the reality of it. God knows, the "pictures" we're getting are so distorted and smudged that there are only vague ideas we can go by in assessing what's what.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Just worse and worse. I'm sad. I don't know how you do it.
A few years at sea help out a lot. As does an appreciation of Japanese incense. If I can’t change the landscape I see, I can at least change the scentscape. But the biggest motivating factor is, what choice do I have?