Once Japanese people make a rule, they stubbornly keep the rule without thinking why the rule needs in the situation.

The more standardization society becomes, the more effective individual tasks become. However, on the other hand, this mood forms Japanese society that doesn’t allow any exceptions.

Not just focusing on believing that keeping a rule directly connects to protecting public benefit, but considering why this rule exists and what kind of benefit is actually generated by this rule, is more important in the sense that you clarify the nature of things.

Japanese people are blindly caught in such a trap that rules are to exist only to keep to protect the common benefit.

“I keep this rule because rules are what everyone needs to keep.” “I can’t change it because it is a rule”. More or less, I think rules make things carry on effectively by playing a role in a grease lube.

Not knowing even the significance of the existence of the rules changes people into a robot that can’t deal with things flexible.

Being a stickler for the rule makes society more and more cramped.

I am sometimes caught in this trap and get angry against people who ignore rules unintentionally without thinking what the rule exactly exist for.

Keeping rules is said to be Japanese people’s virtue. I have no objection against this. However, Japanese people need to realize that being a stickler for the rule may lose humane flexibility that blocks people’s real intention from supporting someone who is really in trouble.

Extremely speaking, an inflexible sticker for the rule will abandon anyone who asks for help mercilessly for the reason of the rule.

Japanese people who never change viewpoint of rules to public a rubbish bin

For example, Japanese thoughts that people believe keeping rules is justice blindly without thinking other missing public benefit factors that there are some people who suffer the inconvenience, reflect significantly on the problem of installing no rubbish bin in downtown and even sightseeing spot, where a lot of people gather.

Taking the garbage back home is a behavior with consideration for the people in the community not to cause trouble. On the other hand, the solution with rubbish bin installation around the town is thought to end up causing trouble to them. Japanese people have no consideration for those who want to throw garbage away regardless of whether they are Japanese or foreigners unexceptionally without discussing the constructive solution of how to remove garbage in the form of making win-win situation mutually from the viewpoint of convenience.

When talking about this story, Japanese stubborn rule sticklers always bring up the issue of “ownership” about whatever people buy on their way. In short, what they want to say is like the product’s ownership transfers from the shop to a buyer at the time of purchase and all the responsibilities for treating the products including disposing of the waste is generated to a buyer.

Therefore, the only way to dispose of waste of the product without causing trouble to anyone is taking it back home. This is how people take responsibility for rubbish. Even if there is a rubbish bin in the area, leaving your rubbish into a bin will increase the burden of people who clean it up later. These are what they think of.

Japanese people don’t turn their attention to other solutions reasonably

There are still many Japanese people who believe the threat of terrorism with a rubbish bin. In 1995, there was a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. This is the worst terrorism ever in Japan. Sarin used in a subway was said to be hidden inside a rubbish bin around the station.

After this incident, the government started to remove every single rubbish bin around the major cities. Even now, a municipality removes the rubbish bin in excuse of terrorism.

Japanese people tend to support extreme logic that the threat of terrorism with a bin can be removed if removing all the public bins around cities in Japan and the government put more effort to brainwash people into taking the garbage back home as a social manner that everyone needs to keep and established a very strong rule by taking advantage of the power of people’s peer pressure, which is strong enough to make people keep the rule as if it were legal ordinance without letting anyone say willy-nilly.

In contrast, England has a way more reasonable solution for terrorism with a bin. The UK government didn’t support such extreme logic. Instead of securing convenience of the public waste collection system, as usual, it changed from a bin to a plastic bag to be able to see through inside.

In the first place, Japan is a homogeneous country in contrast to the UK that accepts a lot of immigrants from outside. Although the external threat of terrorism in Japan is much less than that of multi-racial countries which is involved with really complicated foreign affairs with middle east Asian countries, how come Japan needs to take more extreme measure than that those countries do.

I wonder why no one has no objection and just follows what the government does.

Japanese people are really bad at thinking things from the viewpoint of productivity

In Australia, rubbish bins are placed at equal intervals on the street especially in a CBD area. Australian people have a really high awareness of city beautification. When I lived in Australia, I could throw wastes away timely whenever I wanted. But, I didn’t have many chances to keep grabbing the garbage in my hands when walking on the street because there were not so many convenience stores I could drop by easily.

In contrast, in Japan, there were about 60,000 convenience stores all over Japan. Probably, Japan is the country having the largest number of convenience stores in the world. For all that, Japan has the reality that the number of public bins on the street in Japan is way less than that in Australia that has overwhelmingly less number of convenience stores than that in Japan.

In spite of trying to promote consumption and enhance the convenience of buying whenever people want by increasing the number of convenience stores, the government and the managing companies don’t pay serious attention to by-products produced after customers buy.

Japanese people trust people’s conscience and never estimate unexpected things

Last October, Halloween costume event was held in Shibuya, so many people dressed up in disguise gathered downtown and a tremendous amount of garbages were left around downtown.

After the event, volunteers gathered in Shibuya to pick up garbages on the street. Regarding this, a Japanese guy twittered at the heart of the matter like “although we could foresee people mess around Shibuya in advance for this costume event as it happened last year, why no garbage bins were installed in this costume event?”

Actually, this twitter comment was flaming and so many criticisms attacked this comment one after another. “It is our common sense that everyone needs to take the garbage back home unexceptionally”, “the reason that a city gets dirty is that there are a lot of selfish people who don’t take garbage home”. This kind of comments was posted.

It seems that Japanese people prefer to an ideal which is the way they would like it to be rather than recognizing reality and suggesting a practical solution. Even though Japanese people faced terrible messed up conditions around Shibuya, they still expected people’s conscience and ideals that they should have kept a rule that every single person needs to take garbage home. And, they threw resentment against those who unexpectedly broke the rule by littering to a person who has an opinion that may possibly reserve the theory of the rules that Japanese people have as common sense.

At least, the majority of Japanese people are not willing to accept the relativity between littering and the number of bins. They don’t really accept the suggestion of increasing bins to reduce littering and persisted that people need to take garbage home with causing trouble to anyone else.

Conclusion

Japanese people are always caught in conception that the majority of people think as justice. Everyone’s consensus expels individual ideas. They don’t have any viewpoint of how productively and effectively to handle the problem. They just look at is what other people think of when doing something. Making rules is a typical example. You should know that Japanese people are really emotional and are apt to be influenced by someone else’s opinon more than you expected.

It is a really hard time for me to suggest a reasonable solution in Japanese society.

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