As mentioned in the class PowerPoint slides, there is a very famous saying in Japan, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down”. The phrase is used to explain how Japanese society traditionally prefers conformity and social harmony to independence and individual expression. I found it very interesting to see the comparison between Japan and the US in terms of individualism. Japan at 46 and the US at a whopping 91! Huge difference there.
In Japan they believe that the group is more important. They believe that society is and should be made up of groups and that people as individuals are less important than groups as a whole. Some advantages of a collective society, like Japan, are that it reduces the amount of psychological pressure people feel. They do this by lowering the amount of individual stress people feel, because society spreads out the stress rather than loading it up. It also allows for more consensus and achievement which is needed by a community. Each one takes care and helps one another to fulfill a certain goal. It takes better care of society. As different people have different strengths and points of view, more people
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Some disadvantages of Individualism are that the more individualist the people are, the colder it gets. It also does not allow for other people to experience that person’s talents and creativity. Learning to cooperate with others is what builds character, friendship and important life skills. This also results in people having more problems with finding good friends, because they don’t care about other’ opinions. It can lead to difficulties with social life. This is something we talked about in our first class. How here in the US, we barely see people have really good friends for a long time as opposed to Japan, people stay friends since kindergarten and are very close to one