Japan: the price of politeness
The foundations of a nation remain the ability to create wealth and citizens, and Japan can’t offer Britain any solutions on either
Everyone seems to be going to Japan right now. According to the Japanese Government, a record 36.8 million people visited in 2024, and the continued weakness of the yen (for the British, currently 198 to the pound, up from a recent low of 120 in 2011) is attracting tourists from across the world. Japan is no longer a particularly expensive place for most Westerners to visit — plane fares excepted. For Europeans, it’s also the hardest it has been to get there in decades: a Russian airspace ban has pushed the length of direct flights from London to a blood-clotting fourteen hours. The culture, history, landscapes, and food have nevertheless made it a very popular destination even for casual travellers.
As you would expect, accompanying all this travel has been an explosion of commentary — sometimes sophisticated, usually much less so — on Japan through the foreigner’s eye, and what it can and cannot teach us in the West. There is without doubt a lot to love. In particular, I’ve seen many posts on the conservative corner of X waxing lyrical about holidaying in Japan, with its cleanliness and social order. Given that our own country is sliding towards crime and mediocrity, in certain respects the contrast is indeed stark. It’s true that as a Londoner, it can feel like Tokyo is everything London isn’t.
I visited Japan for the first time in 2019. Like a lot of first-timers, I found my visit a profound experience. It’s highly cliché, but the sense of order, safety, and harmony really are unbelievable. A close friend with whom I was staying has lived in the country for a decade and as a result I had an idea of what to expect. Regardless, I spent most of my first visit in amazement. I wafted across the country on punctual, spotless trains, stopping off to enjoy beautifully preserved architecture, history, and nature. The miserable experience of British public transport — tinny second-hand TikToks, rubbish, dirt, dust, graffiti, and inexplicably delayed or cancelled trains — were a world away. In Japan, littering exists mainly as a concept: you only really see it on the ubiquitous (and tellingly English-language) signage instructing one not to do so. The food was cheap, excellent, and served with a bow. The idea that you might have to ask a fellow passenger to use headphones is unthinkable. It is fantastic.
But despite all this, it’s no panacea. This becomes more clear the closer you look.
Over five years has passed since that trip and, as I write, I’ve just returned from another extended visit. I’ve been lucky enough to spend four weeks there. This included staying with the same friend in Tokyo, visiting Okinawa, and travelling by rail through Kyushu and Honshu, spending time mainly in major cities. As a non-Japanese speaker on a brief visit, there’s a limit to what I can take in. Nonetheless, with this caveat in mind, I’m now left with a more complex view of Japanese culture; an appreciation for the human cost paid to keep the peace, and for what’s missing.
Two ways in which it manifests clearly are through the stories of the Japanese economy and of collapsing Japanese fertility rates.
The past few years for me have been a journey through the world of startups and the people that run them (including founding one of my own). Through this, I’ve developed an interest in technological and creative innovation — the people that manifest it, the culture and conditions that can cause it, and the painful stasis of nations that go without it. I’ve realised that innovation is important, difficult, and ultimately driven by the personal sacrifice of a tiny set of obsessive and talented people. Unless Britain rediscovers how to do it we’re in for a long, slow decline. Japan faces a similar crisis, and if anything I get the sense that Japanese culture is going to require an even bigger transformation if they’re to solve their own innovation problem. Far from showing us the way, Japan in this respect is highly dysfunctional.
Somewhat separately, I’ve also come to view starting a family as the duty of those who can. I’m in my early thirties and there are suddenly a lot of babies around (and, fingers crossed, one of my own soon). As I’m seeing, the trials of parenthood are no joke. But ultimately, what’s the point of the efforts of humanity if there’s going to be no one around to enjoy their fruits? A vibrant culture is built on the energy and creativity of the young. Like Britain, Japan faces a fecundity crisis, but at a more advanced stage. Birthrates have cratered for decades and even a brief visit to Japan will be enough to give you a sense of why. Life is mostly bland, quiet, and cramped. Japan feels even further than Britain from building a society that people actually want to live in, let alone participate in adding more people to. You can see why the Japanese are so reluctant to procreate, and again, there’s little that Britain can learn from Japan if we’re looking for solutions to our own fertility issues.
From the end of the American occupation of Japan in 1952 to the spectacular bursting of the economic bubble in the late ’80s, the story of the Japanese economy was that of an unprecedented economic miracle. Rising from the literal ashes of the wartime firebombing was an industrialised economy that would eventually become a world leader in consumer electronics, automotive, and semiconductor manufacturing. It overtook all of Europe to become the world’s second-biggest economy. It briefly looked like it could even dethrone the United States. Japanese motorcycles, once written off as ersatz Western models, gained reputations as being the finest in the world. Japanese cars set new standards for both reliability and affordability. Japanese consumer electronics are now present in almost every household on the planet.
Despite the huge fallout from the ’90s crash, Japan is still a rich country. It lies fourth in Asia — far behind the entrepôt state of Singapore (a massive $92,932) and barely below the level of high-tech manufacturing Taiwan ($34,426) and South Korea ($35,642), both former Japanese colonies — with a GDP per capita of $33,956. With around 130 million people, this makes it the fourth-biggest national economy in the world. But in per capita terms, this is not only far below the United States, but also below many European countries: not just the particularly wealthy ones, like Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark, but also more ordinary ones, like Germany, France and the United Kingdom, and even those that are considered relatively poor, like Italy and Spain. Nor does this picture change when adjusting for purchasing power; in fact, Japan falls from 34th place (nominal) to 38th place (PPP) in these terms, now also below ex-Communist countries like Poland and Lithuania. None of this is to say that everything that is good in life can be reduced to purchasing power, let alone raw GDP per capita — what, for instance, is the value of personal safety, or of a clean and orderly environment, and can it ever truly be measured in such terms? — but this fact is still always worth bearing in mind in discussions of Japan by those on the Right.
National debt has exploded, stabilising for now at around 250% of GDP — significantly higher than any other developed economy. Elsewhere, numbers like these would cause crisis. However, Japanese government debt is overwhelmingly held domestically on behalf of an elderly penny-pinching population facing long lives. This makes government debt service very affordable, subsidised by the poor performance of Japanese pensions. Japanese savers are, in effect, sacrificing investment returns in exchange for stability and the continuance of a low inflation, low growth, and low consumption status quo. The story of Japanese government debt is ultimately, like many things Japan, the story of a risk-averse population trading the potential of a vibrant future for the safety of a peaceful decline.
You don’t have to go too far from the glitzy city centres to feel it. Hospitality staff are noticeably old, grey hair is everywhere, and the stooped figure sweeping the pavement in the morning sun is ubiquitous. Houses are well-kept but tired, and there are seemingly few new businesses. The culture of high investment and low consumption that drove the economic miracle for forty years has been lost in the long shadow of the ’90s crash. Fearful of their retirement plans, most of Japan is resigned to this quiet equilibrium. Abenomics — Prime Minister Abe’s policy attempts to boost investment and shift the economy closer to other advanced economies — despite some promising signs, has made little difference to the national financial mindset. The reappearance of inflation over the past three years may yet force a change, if savers pivot away from negative-yielding government debt (as ever, no one beats the bond market), but this alone won’t be enough to get back to the good times. A culture of investment and consumption is a self-fulfilling bet on the future that’s hard to justify when deflation and depopulation rule.
Japanese labour productivity — the average amount of value created per hour worked, and arguably the best single-number proxy for quality of life — paints a depressing picture. Japan ranked thirtieth globally in 2022, 35% behind the not-particularly-productive Britain, and a massive 70% behind the United States. To achieve their nonetheless relatively (though not exceptionally) high level of per capita income, Japanese workers therefore have to work on average ten hours a week more than their British counterparts (who themselves, at least by Western European standards, actually work relatively long hours to maintain output, thanks to our own productivity being poor). Identically suited and exhausted ‘salarymen’ (and yes, they’re mainly men) will flood public transport at rush hour. But in fact, much of the copious overtime of ‘salarymen’ is, as Patrick McKenzie observes, ‘…for appearance’s sake rather than because it actually accomplishes more productive work.’ Even as a tourist, from the human resource practices of many hotels and restaurants it should be obvious that labour is being used extremely wastefully, despite this not being a country where there is an abundance of labour: people are often just standing around, almost for show, nominally working long hours but not actually doing much at all.
Anecdotally, Japanese companies have a reputation for stuffiness, tradition, and risk-aversion — basically everything you don’t want in order to compete with the hyper-agile, high-growth businesses found elsewhere in the world. It’s little surprise that Japan has struggled to produce a unicorn technology company since the ’90s. It is possible to exaggerate the scale of the problem, given that they remain strong in some areas of advanced manufacturing, but for the past twenty years explosive growth in the rest of the world has come from the software, service, and semiconductor industries. For example, Taiwan’s TSMC is now the global semiconductor manufacturing superpower, overtaking the Japanese behemoths (NEC, Hitatchi, Toshiba, etc.) that lacked the confidence and capital to stay relevant after the crisis.
Japan still has a reputation for futurism. Blade Runner cities with sci-fi architecture, gadgets, anthropomorphic robots and — of course — space-age multi-function lavatories with heated seats are everywhere, but while fun, this is mostly gimmickry, rarely representing serious, cutting-edge innovation. Indeed, that reputation has looked increasingly tired as Silicon Valley and China have ripped ahead to take the lead in almost all areas of technology. This might be the nation that brought the Walkman to the world, but it’s jarring to arrive at a gleaming station on the fastest train in the world, only to spend a minute gently uncrumpling a banknote to feed a picky vending machine to buy some lunch.
My experience of Japan these days is that when you look beyond the neon and consider how things actually work, it’s actually pretty dated. My friend describes government bureaucracy that makes you grateful for gov.uk (no mean feat), and market interactions — everything from something as basic as renting a flat or workspace to something as complex as an M&A transaction — are a maze of process and paperwork. Even fax machines are still in widespread use. As a tourist, you get a sense of this as your pockets overflow with analogue detritus, the small change, tickets, and paper receipts that inevitably pile up over a day out. The overwhelming impression I get of Japanese professional life is that of hierarchy, busywork, and tradition. In this respect, this is nothing new, but it all seemingly lacks the purpose and optimism of the post-war decades. Catching up to Western prosperity is one thing; pushing the envelope is another, and for all our problems, it is the latter that Britain is interested in.
The view from the Shinkansen gives a rather different impression this time. I’m in the same quiet, spotless carriages, but rather than to the train itself, I’m drawn to the view of the endless (if very neat) suburbia as we zip northbound along the Taiheiyō Belt. The man-made dominates. Ugly pylons crown each ridge line, and the rivers are concrete-cased, brought to order by ubiquitous cast slab embankments. In general, the houses are small and connected by a mess of overhead cabling (contrary to the common explanation, not because it holds up better than underground cabling to regular earthquakes, but merely because it was cheaper to build in the post-war development frenzy). Underneath the clean and well-kept exterior, it’s actually all a little ramshackle. You soon realise that if transported to Western Europe, most of Japan’s architecture would be considered outright unpleasant. Indeed, certain elements, such as the overhead cabling, are sometimes curiously reminiscent of the unattractive outskirts of many ex-Communist cities in Eastern Europe, as well as more obviously to the notoriously ugly Seoul. People have tiny families, live in tiny homes, and drive tiny cars to their stifling jobs. Outside of the cities you get the sense that most people live small, quiet lives among the concrete with little energy dedicated to producing and raising the next generation.
Rural Japan is depopulating fast (at about 1.5% a year) and young people tend to move to the big cities to work and study. This in itself isn’t a huge issue — and there is an interesting scheme allowing city-dwellers to opt to send some of their local taxes to a region of their choosing, redistributing tax revenues — but rural schools are closing at the fastest ever rate and there’s often just not enough space in urban areas to raise a family. For example, a 1LDK apartment in a major city (a size categorisation that includes a living, dining, and kitchen area) will run between 25-35m2 and has barely enough space for two people. While Japanese house prices and rents are not exorbitant by international standards, they still aren’t cheap in comparison to the average wage, and there’s little room to fit a changing table. It’s hard to see the appeal of kids for urban Japanese. Britain’s housing story is very different, but it rhymes. The situation in Japan should make us reflect on the high costs, falling size, and the lack of aesthetic quality of our own newbuilds.
Before a family, though, must come sex. In Japan, it’s sort of everywhere and nowhere — but mainly nowhere. Japan has a reputation as a nation of closed-door perverts. Japanese pornography (both animated and live action) is renowned for its well-lubricated imaginations. Japanese bondage has gone global and the (probably apocryphal) used underwear vending machines are the stuff of legend. Racy anime magazines top the racks in the shops, and the selection of adult paraphernalia available in the Akihabara district of Tokyo is indeed substantial.
Despite all this, Japan has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, even if it is no longer an outlier in the region, with South Korean, Taiwanese, and (unofficial) Chinese fertility rates also all already at or approaching 1.0. Every year, young people report falling interest in sexual relationships. A historic low fertility rate was recorded in 2022, only for the number to shrink again in 2024. It’s probable that Britain is heading in a similar direction — our feeble fertility rates, partially propped up by recent migrants, are also falling fast — but you can at least still get a taste of the procreative spirit in most British towns and cities on a Saturday night. It’s possible that I’m looking in the wrong places, but I just don’t feel it in Japan. The young people wandering the trendy Ōkubo district are hot, lean and well-dressed but it’s not sexy. You don’t get the sense (and the statistics agree) that the delicately presented young men and their cutesy female companions are going to be tearing each others’ clothes off any time soon. Certain trends among the youngest demographics in Britain should raise concerns that we may be going down a not wholly dissimilar path.
Despite a landmark 2023 announcement that $25bn would be spent on pro-natalist policies, it’s not clear that anything’s changed. Prime Minister Ishida is leaning heavily into the (somewhat odd) theory that revitalising the regions will somehow make things better. This may or may not be desirable in itself, but it isn’t obvious how that’s going to get people back to bonking.
Japan’s ‘macro’ problems are fairly well-known — an aging, shrinking population, stagnant economic growth, et cetera — but in my view, these all actually have their origins in the ‘micro’. This is much less well understood. But it’s fair to say that Japanese society really is oppressive for many, and the statistics suggest that people are increasingly unhappy, overworked, underpaid, and undersexed. All this politeness and orderliness and cleanliness may actually come at a price.
Before my first visit, I read Sayaka Murata’s 2016 novel Convenience Store Woman. The book was a global success and tells the story of Keiko, a 36-year-old konbini (convenience store) employee who embraces a sexless life of dead-end work as she attempts to fit into a rigid society that doesn’t have a place for her. Murata’s book is a perfectly executed vignette of the difficulties of a fringe existence in a culture that prizes conformity over everything — even the things necessary for its own survival. The book was praised for the beauty of its prose and the fluorescent depiction of Keiko’s existence. I enjoyed it very much. Nearly ten years on, I think it’s a great rendering (albeit an extreme one) of the day-to-day personal, familial, and professional struggles that power Japan’s problems.
Undeniably, the benefits of Japanese civic culture are vast. In the past two months, my partner and I have come across public urinators on our London street on three separate occasions; had the flowers on our road cut and stolen within days of blooming; seen an attempted phone snatching; and witnessed countless minor offences and irritations perpetrated by those who either don’t know better or simply don’t care. It’s to say nothing new that, for all the above, Japan is still in some ways a much nicer place to live, and we can dream of better for ourselves.
But having said that, we should take care. I don’t worry about about Brits replicating Keiko’s story en masse, but there’s lots we can learn from Japan on what doesn’t work. After all, the principal foundations of a nation remain its ability to create wealth and citizens. Japan can’t offer us any solutions for either.
This article was written by an anonymous Pimlico Journal contributor. Have a pitch? Send it to pimlicojournal@substack.com.
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This is pretty astute. I lived in Japan from 2003-2011, and still visit each year to see relatives. I love the bones of the place. But it has serious problems, which you rightly identify. The big difference between Japan and Britain, though, is that at least Japanese politicians have a sense that there is such a thing as the ‘national interest’ and at least ordinary Japanese people feel a sense of patriotic belonging to a national project of some kind. This matters.
Fascinating, but Japan is still a tremendous success compared to the vast majority of Earth's nations.