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 J…
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.
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.