And yet on TV you see “tarento” going to foreign countries and doing a worse job for international relations than this software ever could. Just yesterday I saw some creature in a school uniform and 1″ thick painted on eyebrows walking through South Africa and it just had me cringing.

Posted a follow-up piece with translations of comments from the original post, as well as bloggers with differing views on Street View. Have a look when you have a chance.

I really like living here, but hope for the day when everything is out in the open, people are talking about things (as we are here and in other comments), and figuring out ways to be happy, secure, productive… openly.

One of the comments is from a Julian Stoev, who suggests that the Japanese need to get over their uber-uniqueness, and I would echo that thought.

The Japanese way of life is arguably “unique”, mainly because Japanese society is relatively insular and stuck in an archaic social paradigm (including vestiges of Shintoism and emperor-worship), having never really gone through the baptism of fire of the Reformation and into an Age of Enlightenment. Japan rests rather on its “customs”, which must not – of course – be offended.

As for the original post by Chris Salzberg, I would suggest that he should rely less on what he says in a comment – that he thinks Japan’s uniqueness “is a good thing” (based on no logical argument that I could find in the thread), and should instead take a rational look around himself. For example, why should Japanese people be afraid of social scrutiny?

If he did take that approach, he might observe that, as a general rule, wherever one finds that custom must be obeyed – and especially philosophical/religious custom – one will tend to find fascism in disguise, usually as political/religious ideology/dogma. For example, the “female circumcision” (a euphemism for the horrifically barbaric practice of female genital mutilation) of 12 year old girls in the non-secular Muslim-dominated Egypt, and some other Muslim societies in Africa.

“Hey – it’s our custom. We’re doing no harm. Leave us alone if you don’t share our beliefs.”

Yeah, right.

If anyone thinks that this doesn’t apply in Japan, then they should consider this: The peace with Japan and the rest of the world might not have been so effective and long-lasting if the Americans had not identified and addressed two systemic causal problems in Japanese society – the Shinto religion and the emperor’s state rites, both being embedded in the Japanese paradigm, along with “patriotism”. The politicisation of Shinto was typified by a Japanese Ministry of Education ruling of 1932 which acknowledged that Shinto shrines were non-religious establishments for fostering patriotism. State Shinto became a mouthpiece for the militarist regime of the 1930s. After Japan’s defeat in 1945 the American Occupation authorities decreed Shinto’s disestablishment, ending State Shinto. The emperor’s state rites were recategorised as the private rites of the imperial family. End of problem – apparently.

That does not mean that the pardaigms of Japanese society should not evolve into something more civilised in terms of individual and collective responsibility, freedom and liberty.

I wonder though if privacy concerns are going to make Google have to quit doing Streetview, or make the world look like a ghost town.

Thanks for taking up this story in such detail. Just wanted to respond to the comment that: “I wish the translator had also looked at the comments section as well.” Actually I have looked at them (mentioned that in a comment to the post), and I have considered adding translations of those as well, but the original post itself was already quite long and there are other stories to cover (you’re welcome to do add translations of those in the comments section if you like, would be very interesting).

But in any case the point of the translation was to get people talking about this, since the original had been such a conversation-starter in the Japanese blogs. Conveying the full depth of debate on this issue right now in Japan would require a lot more work. Maybe in a follow-up post sometime…