What do you mean by "Westernize" in this context? Are you sure that Japan hasn't westernized (assuming no goalpost moving) perhaps just expressed differently?
I am using this to mean an adoption of Western social and political values: universalist democracy, secularism, individualism, the unimportance of public space being sacred or imposing restrictions upon behavior, “the workplace is more important than the home,” and a million other things. Japan has some degree of these things, but there is a pretty huge difference between the average Japanese city and the average Western one.
But based off of what you said, and I of course have never lived in Japan, is there really much difference in practical, day-to-day activities in terms of being westernized? For example, you mentioned "the workplace is more important than the home" and I genuinely wasn't sure if you were talking about America or Japan.
Of course there are differences in government, but are the differences more pronounced with England's style of government versus Switzerland, or are there more differences between France and Japan? Nevermind the Big Tent approach of the American 2-party state.
Genuinely curious to hear your thoughts. I know what you're getting at, I guess I wonder if it's a meaningful distinction w.r.t at what point does one country become roughly westernized? Is Brasil westernized? Mexico?
As my original comment was saying, the reason Western people get so confused by Japan is that it is technologically “ahead” in many ways while apparently “behind” culturally, from the Western perspective. This cognitive dissonance is a result of the Progress ideal which merged culture and technology into one entity. This isn’t the case with other countries that are just perceived as being “behind” entirely, technologically and culturally.
I have a hard time reconciling the general nature of your comments w.r.t Japan isn't westernized with the specifics as well. If westernization is mainly about philosophical traditions (secularism, individualism, etc.) I think Japan is certainly less westernized in some ways (think like many attributes that skew in different directions), but if you look at other things, maybe it's not? You could examine attributes such as the tight alliances with the west to how anime characters are represented.
I'm still wondering if what we're talking about here is just a different expression of being "westernized" versus a meaningful difference.
Personally I actually have a view that's moreso that the Anglosphere (US, Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand) + Japan and perhaps to a lesser extent South Korea are more "westernized" together than say the Anglosphere and Germany and France.
Wait, are you saying that this is a western value?
It’s definitely complicated though, as the salaryman phenomenon shows. No simple and straightforward answers.
I do noodle around this thought in my head though that socially accepting women to work ended up just making family lives harder. If take the assumption that corporations aren't generally giving in how they raise salaries and such, it seems like women were onboarded into the workplace but men and women just share the same slice of pie that men had before the change took place. So instead of a man making X$s a year to raise a family, it's just the same 2 * (X$ / 2) and now the kid has to be raised in daycare which I believe is less beneficial than being raised their parents, dad or mom. This is definitely a showerthought and not something I feel strongly for. It's just more of a what-if question.
In fact, I’d posit that the reason why the “West” views Japan with such fascination is because it’s looking into an alternate history. “What if the hippies and postmodernists lost in the 1960s?” A lot of the cultural values Japan exhibits can be found in old PSA videos and newsreel footage of 1950s and early 1960s USA. Then they skipped straight into 1980s yuppie consumerism, spedrun straight into a financial crisis and then skipped straight into the smartphone era.
It truly is a different place but not for reasons of deep history (bushido is a 19th century invention, Sushi as we consume it is only as old as modern refrigeration, Tokyo metro used to be a dirty noisy place).