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Comment by Red_Tarsius | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you. There's a tendency of exaggerating the downsides of Asian culture. Some people can't accept uncomfortable truths. I lived in Japan for one year. I felt like a medieval peasant stepping into a time machine. Everything was clean, safe and fully operational. Rome looks like a ghetto compared to Tokyo. Not one graffiti in sight – a byproduct of respect for public spaces. Critics always bring up their work culture, as if that invalidates the whole picture.

> Work hard, keep your head down, raise kids, provide for your family, respect your parents, etc.

Have you noticed how American media is always set on undermining those qualities?

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In case you haven't heard, there's "Paris syndrome" for Japanese, which is:

"a condition exhibited by some individuals when visiting or going on vacation to Paris, as a result of extreme shock at discovering that Paris is different from their expectations."

per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

Basically, Paris is so dirty that it is a shock to many Japanese. And it's not surprising that's the case, given how clean and tidy Japanese cities are.

Expectations about Paris are created by fantasy driven marketing about foreign places by the tourism industry as well as local representatives of said countries. Note that mass media is also guilty in Japan for propagating the illusion of a perfect Paris.

Not only Japanese. I had a rude awakening as a younger backpacker walking through one of those underground sidewalks in Paris. The strongest and foulest smell of urine imaginable.

The joke is that you are not in a true Parisian coffee if the waiter is not rude.

With that said there are a lot of nice and clean places in Paris. But the tourists area are mostly in the worst neighborhoods. To compare with American cities Moulin Rouge would be a strip club in Skid Row. It’s madness sending tourists in the north/ north center of Paris, travel agencies don’t do their jobs.

Japan is fantastic, but I think there are some absurdly rigid social standards that would keep me from spending long periods of time there. I think it's easy to downplay these standards if you're someone who is generally "average," but the socially conservative attitudes are somewhat offputting to a westerner like me. The attitudes towards things like LGBTQ rights and tattoos are a good example.

Collectivism can produce incredible things, but a dose of individualism wouldn't hurt either.

I'm pretty sure that there's a strong correlation with Japan's attitude and Japan being a fantastic place.

>Japan being a fantastic place for a certain type of person

There's a heavy implicit qualifier on that, which is what your parent commenter is trying to get across.

Well, sure. You can't please everyone. Just move to a country that is better suited for you, then.

That's just Japan. In South Korea and China things look vastly different. Trash bags on streets, very few cans, some litter.

Though still no graffiti.

> Not one graffiti in sight – a byproduct of respect for public spaces.

I, for one, enjoy the occasional graffiti. Especially if it's poetic or clever. I enjoy the rebelliousness.

Japan has lots of artistic expression that doesn't degrade someone else's property. They have a strong tradition of craftsmanship, and there are handmade things all over that are just oozing with skill. Their manhole covers are even artistic.

I suppose that if you really wanted a rebellious display in public then the Japanese culture isn't for you. But if you want poetic and clever art then you just need to look.

Would you like your home to be ravaged by the random graffiti that you did not ask for?

It had been once. I laughed. But I can agree that it’s less enjoyable on residential property.

Depends

If it is a monocolored tag made by random kid? I wouldn't.

If it was something that took skill to do, even a tag? why not, if i found that person i would pay them to make something awesome on my wall.

And then some random person spray-paints that wall...

HN is funny. There is always a response to questions posed in this manner explaining why some extraordinary circumstance is true rather than just agreeing with the premise raised by your question.

There was a question posed the other day "What car could you possibly be driving that would mean 10% of your driving tickets is a number greater than 1?" Instead of saying the figure may have been an exaggeration the answer was basically, "I drive a racecar."

While I can appreciate more confrontational art it should be noted that they are signs of a profoundly sick society

Disagree, even Ancient Rome had graffiti. As did caves. Are you trying to say that humans in caves had “profoundly sick societies?”

Graffiti is a natural instinct. REPRESSING that instinct signals a sick society.

I don't believe Rome is a great example of a healthy society, and the presence of some graffiti isn't the same as it being widespread. Caves are an entirely different context entirely, I wouldn't consider all wall art to be graffiti. All good societies repress certain inclinations because they understand they cause harm to others. A sick society inclines people towards damaging the structures built around them because they see those structures as symbolising their own oppression in some capacity.

>Caves are an entirely different context

Respectfully disagree.

>A sick society inclines people towards damaging the structures built around them because they see those structures as symbolising their own oppression in some capacity.

If you don’t think oppression exists, and that it can be symbolized by structures, I don’t know what to tell you. Are you against the toppling of sculptures of Saddam Hussein?

What do you think of advertising? Do you not consider billboards “damaging to structures”? How do you think advertising differs from graffiti and do you really find advertising non-oppressive? No ad agencies ask my permission to assault my visual field with a billboard, and neither do graffiti artists. All’s fair in art and war.

>If you don’t think oppression exists, and that it can be symbolized by structures, I don’t know what to tell you.

I said the exact opposite. The advertising industry shouldn't exist and neither should statues of anyone let alone tyrants like Saddam.

You don’t think statues of anyone should exist? What about Michelangelo’s David?

It shouldn't exist and if displayed on public property should be torn down, albeit this is an unrelated issue to that of rebellious art.

Why do you think Michelangelo’s David shouldn’t exist? That is one of the oddest opinions I’ve ever encountered in my life.

As time progresses statues have a nasty tendancy to become objects of worship as their original stories are lost and replaced with new ones or greatly exaggerated. Once something is raised to the point of worship people will begin doing what they think the idol wants and as a theocrat this is concerning, as it splinters and corrupts society's morals.

Please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to Hacker News. We've had to ask you this before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't see how this is flamebait.

> A sick society inclines people towards damaging the structures built around them because they see those structures as symbolising their own oppression in some capacity.

Or simply the force of youthful rebellion that seeks to always create something new as a reaction against the old.

'Youthful rebellion' needn't always exist. I reject the notion that young people rebel because they are young rather than because they live in a society that has not raised and supported people correctly.

>Youthful rebellion needn’t always exist.

Respectfully disagree. Youthful rebellion appears to be driven by hormone-related factors (elevated risk tolerance) rather than being driven by reactions to anything in particular about a society.

Source: https://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/17135

Disagree, such studies are extremely western oriented, cross cultural studies indicate otherwise https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-t...

That study talks about teen brains. I’m talking about teen hormones. And that study fails to account for the facts that:

Mao’s rise was driven by youthful rebellion in China

Many Islamic suicide bombers are teenagers

The Amish have rumspringa

And yes some western teens are graffiti artists.

Teen rebellion cuts across cultures, that study just doesn’t show it because it is solely attempting to refute the univariate “brain” factor. I’m not talking about brains. I’m talking about hormones and risk tolerance. Teen rebellion cuts across cultures. And no single-variable “cross cultural study” can prove otherwise

I'd advise reading the article prior to responding.

I did

Counter point - I walked past an artist putting up a new mural today because I live in a place with a lot of graffiti and people generally tolerate the bad stuff and enjoy the good stuff. A lot of the art bring in middle age tourists that pay young broke college students to talk to them about the different styles.

Japan has its own share of problems that you just don't see because you are not part of their culture, which is one of the most insular in the world (for better and worse). People in Japan are often no happier than anywhere else they just find their unhappiness in different ways. They have a lot of elderly dying alone in 70s era decrepit apartment blocks, and a lot of young people who have chronic agoraphobia (hikkomori). These are generally not Western/US problems.

What? Americans dump their parents in retirement homes and loads of aging Americans live in dumpy apartments and trailer parks as well. And not a day goes by without articles about the rise of social anxiety/NEETs/“incels” withdrawing from the world.

They’re not unique problems. Countries just frame other countries as having foreign problems by using different words for the same stuff.

people dying alone is nothing specific to Japan. This is the standard of most of the developed world. 引きこもり is also not something you face in Japan unless you look for it. You could say there is also a lot of mental health problems in other countries and this is just a different manifestation of it.

As i am getting older, i started to understand joint family structures from asian countries like India, China or even Italy. When we're young, we are full of ourselves. Everyone wants to freedom and nuclear family. But when your joints stop working with nothing left except loneliness, then the importance of family become clear. Sadly in states too much importance is given to individualism while asian countries are dropping traditions without understanding reasons behind them.

Whenever I've been to places that are perfectly clean with no graffiti they just feel sterile. It might not be for everyone but I prefer places that are somewhat grungy, they also tend to be the places were good music and art flourish.

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