Japanese people have no mercy to towards weak people

Japan is one of the most advanced countries. (but the Japanese economy lost its momentum sharply and has been gradually left behind other advanced countries’ economy). We have good safety, beautiful oriental traditional culture and unique subcultures such as anime and TV game, which is popular world-widely.

By some viewpoints, Japan is as blessed in various aspects as we can say Japan is the most blessed country in the world without exaggeration. On the other hand, weak people come under tremendous pressure from Japanese society.

Handicapped person, mentally challenged person, unemployed person, a person who relies on public assistance are looked as just social burden that produces nothing to Japanese society.

Part-time workers, who can’t get a position of full-time are despised by people who think such a person, working as manual labor, haven’t made serious effort to change life so far.

It seems like only a person in a black suit, looked just like a noble, is only given a privilege to work in a good office and have productive work to do for Japanese society.

If you peep into a Japanese anonymous bulletin board, you can find so many discriminatory descriptions against people suffering from poverty.

People who want to just boast their social positions blame someone receiving low income for simply slacking effort to have a good job by looking down on those people’s weak position.

You can also find such comments on Youtube as well, especially against the video which deals with a theme about people stuck in a spiral of poverty or people who don’t work.

Only 15 percent of people have mercy to help pauper financially

According to the pew research center that provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the world, only 15 percent of people who answer yes to the question “Do you extend a helping hand to the people suffering from extreme poverty that cannot be helped by themselves?” In Japan

Even the united states that are tough on the weak has 70 percent of people who said yes to the question.

Seeing other countries of G7, Spain has 96 percent, Germany has 92 percent, England has 91 percent, Italy has percent, France has 83 percent, Canada has 81 percent of people who have mercy to the weak.

Why are Japanese people cold to the weak?

Self-annihilation sprit

Self-annihilation for the sake of the company is long-established custom in Japan. Japanese people tend to dedicate their lives to supporting a certain authority as a servant as if they were a servant of a kingdom. They pledge allegiance to the company they work for and they assume that having the intention to achieve self-realization through working is taboo before serving the company.

For Japanese, working is not doing something fun but enduring hardship to overcome. Showing a great effort to struggle up to the next stage of a challenge to a boss is the way how people are evaluated.

In the meantime, people ask other people for own hardship and bitterness on working like “everyone is struggling to do the task. You need to put more effort into”

To make matter worse, a Japanese worker develops a feeling of jealousy to such a person who experiences less hardship than him/her and starts boasting how difficult it was to have suffered anguish so far.

There is nothing different between the boast of bitterness and the boast of slavery chain.

There are not a few people who are proud of own hardworking style which is totally away from the working standard regulated by the Labor Standards Act.

Sometimes, a Japanese worker with a servile spirit takes the mount triumphantly to people who make complaints about company’s working system that force people to do overtime without salary in order to bask in a sense of superiority like “I work much longer than you. You don’t spoil yourself. If I were you, that’s not how I feel depressed.”

Some Japanese people don’t have a constructive idea to change their thoughts to be able to work more positively and enjoyable.

Japan is a narrow country, where is densely populated

The level ground where people can live is only 30 percent of the whole land. About 100 million people are crowded into this small area in Japan.

Land narrowness has various disadvantages. Entire agricultural land in Japan is too narrow to raise up food self-sufficiency rate as reducing costs. A floor space of every single shop and store is narrow. Even narrow apartment costs you too expensive to rent.

Japanese people are not in the right frame of mind to handle things except for own business in this oppressive mind.

Strong peer pressure

People are exposed to the environment with quite a strong peer pressure from children to adult.

Everyone of a nation is required to be normal without having individuality and are forced to do the same thing other people do.

Such a person can’t get used to group harmony and leave out of the group can be isolated from society.

In Japan, a person who starts working after completing necessary education is called “shakai-jin(社会人)” = “social person”. “social person ” is a person who participates in economic activity to support Japanese economy in a broad sense.

In Japan, people draw a line between the young generation who receive education and people who join in economic activity through working by using a word of “social person” from the viewpoint of whether or not, they can take responsibility for what they’ve done to the society. This is a very unique conception existing only in Japan.

I really feel how they can manage to survive gloomy society as enduring hardship from peer pressure and silent pressure to work for a long hour is a part of the tasks for a social person.

It seems that social person indicates a person in a suit, who goes to an office by a crowded train with a tired face and work unwillingly until midnight.

Japanese parents try to educate children that ” if growing up and starting working, you end up following the fate of incessant working routine without doing anything you want to do until you are as old as retiring from a company.”

Children are educated that enduring hardship is quite common for any adults to experience. Forcing parent’s values on children in accordance with social peer pressure and things that they assume are common sense applicable to all society.

In peer pressure society, “social person” is a gold word to produce the same personality without having individuality.

Too blessed society

Japan is a very blessed country. If you lose your wallet on your way, your lost wallet with money inside is sent back to your place later. There may be no country, where a stranger kindly sends your wallet back to you without stalling anything in this whole wide world.

Your safety is assured wherever you go means the social security system in Japan works properly and perfectly. However, people in Japan think it natural benefit to enjoy.

It is darkest under the lamp post. People in favorable circumstance don’t realize how favorable they are.

For example, a person gave a birth to wealthy family and goes to a prep school to prepare for admission of private elementary school, private junior high school, and private high school as a matter of course, goes to these schools, enters university whose fee exceeds average annual household income, and finally goes to a big company that prepares a good salary, assumes that “I am an ordinary person, winning my present position with the full effort I have ever made for a long time.”

However, such a person forget there has been a lot of support from parents and schools in the process of reaching the present position and assume that people giving birth to this world can stand on the same start line with the same condition.

I know some people who have no bones about despising needy people who somehow manage to make a living by selling collecting cans from place to place. They insist that people falling down to poverty just receive divine justice about what they have never made an effort in their lives.

Japanese people basically take their stance that there is no one to overcome own misfortune by making a hard effort to get out of the situation. The gap between external humility and internal confidence may create no mercy thought

And the thought also creates ego that “I cannot be needy”. Although whoever have the possibility to sink down and down to the bottom by the trigger of something bad to happen, some Japanese people take the mount to weak people from the safety zone.

Show real intention by anonimity

Japanese people are gentle and kind externally but execrable emotion swells inside their minds from jealousy and resentment. Exclusive and anonymous environment makes Japanese people represent the true nature of evil.

Some of you who are familiar with Japanese subculture may realize that Japanese game development companies never release comment to released videos on YouTube for Japanese users.

In contrast, English version videos created by the Japanese game development companies release a comment on Youtube.

Japanese users face off in a war of words with real intention, not shown in public. These user’s remark caused a stir online and so many quarrels can be seen between a comment and its reply from place to place.

Where oppressed emotion relieves is always anonymous bulletin board or comment section of video sharing sites. There is a big contradiction between external impression and internal emotion in the Japanese mind.

Conclusion

The same sense of value under strong peer pressure in a homogeneous country is imprinted in Japanese people’s mind. A person in terrible circumstance is simply thought to be in the middle of paying the heavy price of life that he/she has never made an effort to change so far.

The start line of people’s lives is different individually. Some Japanese people who assert self-responsibility theory with no mercy need understanding to people in a different circumstance.

3 Comments

  1. Matteo

    Hello Yu,

    This is an interesting website to learn more about Japan from an unbiased pont of view.

    Why is there such cruelty towards weak people? Has the Buddhist influence of over a thousand years perished? is there such strong military influence imposed?

    Thank you,

    Matteo

  2. Midori

    Your writing is very accurate and wonderful.
    I’m Japanese in a circle that talks about politics with foreigners, and I’m thinking about how to explain to them the coldness of the Japanese to the weak.
    I once explained to foreigners who consider Japan to be groupist, “they are authoritarian, not groupist.” I explained your written “annihilation spirit” with the words “滅私奉公”. She said she made sense to her experience in Japan.
    Since it is difficult to see from the world due to the language barrier, in order to correct the self-righteous and distorted spirit of Japan, I think it is necessary to appeal to the world with words that reach foreigners and to have dialogues with them.
    Your text was very helpful, thank you.

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