Juxtaposing Everyday Conveniences and Reality Escapism in Japan

So, as I was continuing my graduate school applications (seriously this time, for my career beyond Rakuten and Japan), I was looking for a scanner around my neighborhood to turn some documents into PDF. Asking around no less than a dozen internet cafes (they are supposed to be convenient, no?), convenience stores, photo shops, bookstores...basically anywhere that I can imagine having a scanner of some sort for business use. In the end, I had to give up and wait for discreetly using the one in my company....

I suppose this is another episode of convenient Japan being inconvenient. It is these times that I miss the underground economy in China where services and products of every sort can be found literally anywhere. But probably the key difference between the Chinese shop owners and the Japanese ones I visited today may be that the Chinese ones would do anything to come up something (whether be to buy a scanner, think of alternative ways of getting the PDF, introduce the nearby shop of a friend, etc), while the Japanese ones would simply say thanks as the disappointed customer walks out the door.

The point I am making here is NOT that Chinese shop owners are more entrepreneurial than Japanese ones. After all, by all means, Japan continues to offer many more conveniences than China does and may ever do, but the self-comfort the Japanese takes in realizing such a gap is still huge may eventually become deadly in terms of Japan's future development. The shops from my on-the-ground sales yesterday offer good examples. Many seem to reject enlarging their businesses on the ground that they are completely satisfied with getting a designated local clientele.

Even better examples are the differences in the mentalities of restaurants and buses at peak hours. In Japan, the new customers are simply turned away by the owners, while in China, new seats and empty spaces are somehow found so that a few more are squeezed in. On one hand, it is apparent bad service on the part of the shops in question, but on the other hand, I cannot count how many heart-warming stories of common suffering I went through as I traveled in such fashion across China.

Many people in Japan, for obvious reasons, will be excluded by these shops and situations. And as they are excluded from profiles of welcomed clients, among many other exclusions in society, they become more and more isolated from Japan as a whole, incapable of communicating with others while having no way to get out of their seclusive negative environment. Indeed, occasionally I feel such exclusions as well, but being who I am, I will eventually escape physically and regain my emotional and mental independence.

For the regular Japanese, there is only the possibility of "escapism," the creation of alternate identities in alternate societies that can give them feelings of grandeur and achievements without the social restrictions and personal inabilities. A close examination of Japanese anime in comparison to Western cartoons is sufficient to illustrated the point. A Western cartoon, exemplified by popular ones like South Park, Simpsons, and even to some degrees, Disney ones, tend to point out and laugh at social ills.

The Japanese anime, in contrast, avoid all talks of what Japan is really like (in fact, some of the most popular ones do not even include Japan or Japanese people). Superhuman forces (magic, "aliens," extremely destructive power, etc) are omnipresent, and viewers are encouraged to imagine themselves within the anime. The purpose of the anime (as opposed to cartoons), is not to draw cynical laughter from dark humor, but to create illusions of a shiny, optimistic, heroic "other world" that everyone can become someone important.

The fact that such anime can become widely popular point out one thing about the Japanese psyche: even as Japan continue to lead the world in livability (as defined by convenience, good service, etc), the Japanese citizens are not satisfied. Rather, they are fed up with a structured society where they are forced to conform, not stand out, and suppress their sometimes wild inner personalities. But at the same time, most simply feel dismayed that nothing can be changed to reverse such forced conformity...so much for those great conveniences in life.