Why Japanese Behave Better

t its robust social order will endure, and ultimately thrive.

But why is this? He offers some basic points, the first of which is that Japanese life is settled. Recalling a conversation with a Japanese business executive, Lifson recalls:

“Japanese people,” he told me, “are like passengers on a cruise ship. They know that they are stuck with the same people around them for the foreseeable future, so they are polite, and behave in ways that don’t make enemies, and keep everything on a friendly and gracious basis.”

“Americans,” he said, “are like ferryboat passengers. They know that at the end of a short voyage they will get off and may never see each other again. So if they push ahead of others to get off first, there are no real consequences to face. It is every man for himself.”

The Japanese, in other words, are more rooted and socially connected, and even when they move around, they make an effort to get to know each other. This builds social capital which, as Robert Putnam found in Bowling Alone, eventually builds economic capital. What people in Britain generally call “the broken society” is in fact a collapse in social capital, from disconnected neighbourhoods to desocialised children.