One of the
interesting enigmas of Japanese society is that it is kind to an outlier. You
may be surprised. You have heard that it is a homogeneous society. You may have
been informed that that peer pressure is high in Japan. These observations are
certainly true. At the same time, the Japanese society is kind to outliers, aka
strange people. As long as they are entertaining, that is.
You may say
something really unusual. You may advocate a very unique system of education. You
may testify how corrupt the Japanese society is. As long as you provide some
entertainment values (the way you say it might be rather cute, or the fact that
you believe you can stand up to the status quo might be rather amusing), people
don’t really care. They rather welcome you. They put you on tv variety shows.
You can give interviews in large circulation magazines.
So as long as you
provide some entertainment, giving a safe glimpse into a rather outlandish
universe of human nature, people of Japan would welcome you. Actually that is
precisely the status that some expatriates living in Japan have come to enjoy,
whether they are comfortable with that situation or not.
The problem with
this is that you are not really supposed to touch the core of society. It is OK
if you say some unusual things about how children should be educated. However,
you are not supposed to change Japanese education in any substantial manner. That
would be quite another story. There, Japan is surprisingly resistant
There is a popular
culture of consuming strangers. This tendency would be certainly true in many
cultures on the globe. In Japan it has been made into an industry. It is a
mechanism in which the nation is able to maintain the status quo while enjoying
occasional distractions away from the norm. People can get bored even in a homogeneous
society, you know.
