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One thing that's struck me about Japan is that you never see aggression on
the streets. By that, I don't just mean violence but also people yelling
at each other, hurling abuse at each other or generally being nasty to
each other. Everyone is so....passive. Relaxed. Cool.
And I'm wondering...why? How? Where I live, I see violence on the street
every Friday and Saturday night, right outside the shop where I live (I
used to work there on Saturdays, and one morning I had to sweep a big pool
of blood away from the entrance where people had been fighting the night
before.) And I probably see people yelling at each other all the time. Ok,
I suppose I live in a bit of a rough area compared to a lot of England (I
live near Chatham), but it's by no means even near the roughest cities in
Britain. And all the samurai swords we sell, despite being live bladed,
are sold blunt because we can't trust people to treat them responsibly.
So why are Japanese people so passive? Especially considering how
stressful Japanese life is, and how much they repress their feelings.
Is it media? No; the Japanese media is full of violence (watch any anime
or Battle Royale). Japanese anime like Dragonball Z and even Pokemon gets
criticised in the West all the time for being too violent. And of course
the computer games are violent.
Is it biological? I've read that Asian men have slightly lower
testosterone levels than white or black men, which one would think would
give them less violent tendencies. But then, plenty of the violent and
aggressive people in the UK are women (women can be REALLY nasty), who of
course have far less testosterone than any Japanese man!
I can only put it down to upbringing and society. It seems to me that the
Japanese are taught far more on the correct way to behave as children.
And, in Japanese thinking, losing your temper or expressing excessive
emotion or resorting to violence is very childish. As adults, you are
expected to behave in a calm, patient and passive manner. Anyone who
doesn't act like this will be shunned by the community.
In this respect, I can see how gaijin might sometimes be regarded as
"foreign barbarians." By Japanese standards, we can certainly be very
immature when dealing with emotions.
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