[/floatr]Yomiuri: Have today's Japanese lost their empathy?
There is widespread concern today that traditional Japanese modes of behavior and thought are breaking down...Pianist Izumi Tateno, 70, had lived in Finland for years. But he returned to Japan for the first time in 40 years after suffering a stroke in 2002. He came back to Tokyo for rehabilitation, but was shocked by the changes to the megalopolis. When he walks along a crowded Tokyo street, the pianist finds that he is never offered help, despite his obvious difficulty moving his right leg, which was partially paralyzed due to the stroke..."Tokyo has become a society where emotional ties between people are very weak," Tateno said. At a New York policy research institute in 1997, Seiko Yamazaki, a chief researcher of Dentsu Communication Institute, lectured on why irreligious Japanese were able to keep high moral standards. "[For instance,] Japanese people believe that you will certainly feel a backlash if you spit or throw a stone at something," she told the audience there...Ten years have passed since that speech. In 2005-07, Yamazaki and her colleagues conducted an international survey on values and found that the percentage of Japanese who said it was important to help one another was the second lowest among the 18 countries surveyed. "What kind of people are we Japanese becoming?" Yamazaki lamented...more...
See also FG Thread: Tokyo not even ranked as "courteous city".
(Masamania pic originally spotted by AK)
