Japan paying the price for a ‘lack of moral fiber’?

The Japan Times has an article that claims that the harmony and morality of Japan is suffering do to a degeneration of social sturctures and core values. Here are a couple problems the author(a foreigner citing material from the Shunkan Post) mentions:

“For the Japanese,” says Seishin Women’s College sociologist Kensuke Sugawara, “the center of moral authority was always the neighborhood. Neighbors got together for the ceremonial occasions of life, supported each other, helped each other out. And people were aware of their neighbors’ eyes on them, and of the need to take the judgment of others into consideration.

“But neighborhood society broke down” — a victim of urbanization and the blind rush to economic superpower status. New moral imperatives arose, mandating impersonal conformity and self-sacrifice to the corporate interest. When the corporate interest itself foundered with the bursting of the economic bubble, the new challenge became to live simultaneously as individuals and as responsible members of society. This challenge, in Shukan Post’s view, is not being successfully met.

Unfortunately, it seems that Japan’s old social system, which had used social pressure as a means of forcing people to be good, is failing. The old system, in which fear of having your family and neighbors shun you from the community was supposedly the main reason people were good, cannot function in the anonymous modern city.

Here’s another example from the editorial:

There is a generation gap. Older employees find their young colleagues cavalier, insubordinate and undisciplined. New recruits shrug this off rather lightly. They will work, but not submit to a corporate harness. For 80 percent of them, Shukan Post reports, personal life is more important than work; 60 percent say work is nothing but a means to a salary. They think nothing of refusing to work overtime, and as for after-hours corporate barroom bonding, they have better things to do with what they insist on considering their free time. There’s not much their bosses can do, it seems, except fret about the passing of the good old days when “free time” was a universally recognized oxymoron.

Holy crap, how could a worker care more about his private life than his job? What the hell? Why would anyone want to go home at 5:00pm and see their family instead of sitting at their desk doing ‘overwork’ or drinking with the boss. If this is how the new generation thinks, how can Japan’s fantastic culture of overworking and inefficiency survive! Help!

At least the author admits that the ‘good ol’ days’ probably weren’t as good as people claim. It would be pretty hard to find a sane westerner who agrees that caring more about your private life than work is a sign of ‘lack of character’.