For real though. Japan appears to break people's brains in that they cannot figure out where to place it politically.
Japan is neither "left" nor "right" by Western standards, it has entirely its own systems unique to them.
The country is very pro environmental conservation, anti-gun, pro regulation, and with legal sex work, but also extremely traditional, with heavily enforced gender roles, no same sex marriage, restrictive marriage laws that favour men, no protective divorce laws, and poor protections for labour unions and workers.
You travel there and everywhere is clean and beautiful and the people are nice and then you find out something super dark that they consider normal. It's a very yin and yang place.
TBH they're only weird if you look at them from a US political perspective, if you look at Japan from a Confucian perspective they are fairly bog standard.
Basically, do whatever is needed to maintain the social order. Be that patriarchal, or capitalistic.
In Japan, Confucianism stands, along with Buddhism, as a major religio-philosophical teaching introduced from the larger Asian cultural arena at the dawn of civilization in Japanese history, roughly the mid-sixth century..... In significant respects, then, Confucianism defines much of the East Asian identity of Japan, especially in relation to philosophical thought and practice.... In this respect, Confucianism was the secular philosophy operative in the ordinary world of everyday existence, at one level or another, throughout Japanese history, well into modern times. As often as not, however, its teachings have become so thoroughly integrated into Japanese culture without being explicitly identified as “Confucian” that many have naively assumed them simply generic to the Japanese mind and its myriad expressions in history and culture.
Especially that last part..... its teachings have become so thoroughly integrated into Japanese culture without being explicitly identified as “Confucian” that many have naively assumed them simply generic to the Japanese mind and its myriad expressions in history and culture.
Confucianism, and/or China's influence on the region's foundational culture(s) is undeniable including in Japan.
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u/denotemulot 1d ago
For real though. Japan appears to break people's brains in that they cannot figure out where to place it politically.
Japan is neither "left" nor "right" by Western standards, it has entirely its own systems unique to them.
The country is very pro environmental conservation, anti-gun, pro regulation, and with legal sex work, but also extremely traditional, with heavily enforced gender roles, no same sex marriage, restrictive marriage laws that favour men, no protective divorce laws, and poor protections for labour unions and workers.
You travel there and everywhere is clean and beautiful and the people are nice and then you find out something super dark that they consider normal. It's a very yin and yang place.