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Comment by astrobe_ | Hacker News Reader

Oh, really. Like, for instance, the Japanese polytheism is a "superficial difference" with the European monotheism?

I don't think so. If it was all superficial, it wouldn't be called "culture" and we would not a make such a big deal out of it. I will certainly disagree with you on some things because our cultures are different.

You yourself fall into "forests are just trees" trap, and it doesn't matters if some kind of mushroom can grow in my forest and some other in your forest. Worse, you seem to give up to the idea that "modern capitalistic world" will make all the forests the same anyway - hopefully you don't believe it is for the better (or rather, hopefully you do!).

I think you underestimate the role of culture because you misunderstand the culture of others. Perhaps because a culture is made of thousands of big and little differences, and its difficult to see how they affects people's daily choices or behavior.

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Not quite sure what you’re getting at, I never said there were no differences between cultures.

However the differences are often overstated, and with regards to Japanese culture some people seem to harbor strange preconceptions that make them blind to rather obvious falsehoods, leading to debacles like the New Yorker article described in OP. It goes both ways of course; a lot of Japanese people seem to have bizarre ideas about the US for example, perhaps I would too if I hadn’t lived there for a decade. It’s easy to form a skewed image of Americans if your knowledge only came from Hollywood films.

I’d say that in general, the more years you spend immersed in cultures outside of your own, the more you’ll be able to see beneath the surface and appreciate how similar we all are — for better or worse. Just look at the number of comments in this thread from (presumably) Western expats pointing out how "ordinary" Japan is in reality. That realization comes from actually living here and being directly exposed to the culture. Not from watching anime.

I have this book written by a sociologist in 2019 that has been living over thirty years in Japan. The title is (translated) "Chronicle of an ordinary Japan".

With this book you understand better how NYT could fall for the "weird Japan" thing, because she reports that a company offers indeed weird services, like hiring people for marriages (as guests, not staff).

Maybe she independently fell for the same scam (unlike the rest of the book, this particular anecdote has no source, it might be just a short-lived company), but the rest of the book is actually quite depressing.

And more to the point, it seems to me that the combination of an unfavorable economic context and certain conservative ways of thinking is what is driving Japan into aging (at least faster than the other rich countries).

How can you distinguish a superficial difference from a significant difference?

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