Is Japan a perfect society? No, despite what Western tourists might think

We’ve all heard of tourists moving through the world with rose-coloured glasses, but come on, this is ridiculous.

A user on X (formerly Twitter, formerly a reasonably good social media platform) recently clicked “post” on a series of observations made during his first, month-long trip to Japan. The general conclusion being that Japanese society is far superior to that of the US (which is shorthand, really, for the entire Western world). The post has been viewed more than 9 million times.

Japan is a wonderful holiday destination, but it’s not a perfect society.Credit: iStock

I’m a huge fan of Japan – I’ve visited more than 20 times – as are so many Australian travellers, whose obsession with the country seems unending. But even I was reading some of these claims and thinking … seriously?

“No one [in Japan] walks around wearing AirPods or headphones,” the user, Raad, wrote. “People are fully present.

“Not only do they not wear AirPods, but they don’t even use their phones. On public transport, people aren’t glued to their screens. They read books or sit in quiet contemplation.

“Walk signals [at traffic lights] have countdowns, and jaywalking is almost non-existent.

“Trains arrive precisely on time, down to the second. If a train is even one minute late, the staff apologise profusely.”

Raad goes on in this vein for a fair while, so I won’t repeat all of his post. And ordinarily, one tourist’s observations published on a social media site wouldn’t be worth repeating, and certainly not building a whole column around.

But I think these observations reflect a general trend among travellers, to not only interpret what we see in just a short holiday as being reflective and true of an entire society, but to also view these observations in the most positive way possible. The rose-coloured glasses of travel.

If you’ve spent any time at all on commuter trains in major cities in Japan you would surely understand that almost every single passenger will be staring at their phone. This isn’t a criticism, it’s just an observation. The Japanese obsession with screens, in my experience at least, is very much the same as everyone else’s in the developed world.

Japanese commuters are no more mindful during their train journeys than anyone else.Credit: iStock

Also, very few Japanese pedestrian-crossing lights have countdowns – probably the same percentage as in Australia. Trains are very punctual, it’s true, but I’ve been on several services that have run late by 10 minutes or more, and though there’s a pre-recorded announcement apologising for the delay, there’s certainly no staff on hand to genuflect or beg forgiveness.

So what’s going on here? Partly, there’s probably some unintentional orientalism. Those of us from the colonialist Western world tend to subconsciously assign certain attributes to Asian countries and their citizens.

The poverty-stricken people of South-East Asia are just so happy and content. The citizens of Buddhist nations are so mindful and peaceful. Those who hail from certain Communist powerhouses are downtrodden and subservient.

The idea of Japanese commuters sitting on trains “in quiet contemplation” to me has a ring of orientalism. There’s no way you would see someone just sitting there, raw-dogging their commute in Australia and assign them that same explanation. You would probably think there was something wrong with them.

The other thing going on here is the world that travellers move in tends to be very different to that inhabited by the citizens of a nation, by the non-travellers just getting on with their lives.

Again, this isn’t a criticism. The whole idea of travel is to take yourself out of normal life and enjoy the experience of being somewhere else – so of course you are going to see things in a superficial and overly positive way.

You get to miss all the downsides of a society when you’re just visiting to enjoy it. You can just fail to see things like, say, the garbage never being picked up in Rome, the absolute grind of poverty in Laos, the shocking gender equality imbalance in Japan, the sky-high youth unemployment rate in southern Spain.

No country is perfect, even those that are favourites among travellers. And that includes Australia.

Interestingly though, for visitors to Australia, one of the key downsides of our society would be glaringly obvious. And that is that this country is just so expensive to exist in. Tourists here would be very much aware of the cost of living in Australia, if not the cost – and the lack of – necessities such as housing.

But anyway, it is not that X user’s fault that he believes all Japanese people are slim, mindful, sincerely dedicated souls who just want to buy their hot dinner from a vending machine after riding the train home in quiet contemplation.

Travel does this to a person. You lose sight of reality for a while, and instead allow yourself to indulge in the dream.

The trick, however, is to acknowledge that when you get home, and understand that the world is far more complex than a quick holiday will ever show you. And know that most people, even in Japan, don’t get their dinner from a vending machine.