The last section on why is the highlight for me. I'd come to a similar, less well articulated conclusion on a recent episode of SNL. Somehow, Japan has maintained its identity while every other western country has melted into one.

Instead, I think it’s more useful to realize what Japanese culture represents to foreigners, in a more general sense. And what I think it represents is alternative modernity.

Politically and economically speaking, Japan is part of the West. It’s a democratic, capitalist, developed country, with a notion of human rights similar to what prevails in the U.S. or Europe. It trades extensively with the U.S. and the EU, and it has strong scientific and intellectual links with both. It is neither a repressive one-party state like China or Russia, nor a theocracy like Iran, nor an aristocracy like UAE.

And yet in a million small ways, Japan is culturally distinct from the U.S. or Europe — or from anywhere else. It has different mannerisms, different social customs, and different aesthetic sensibilities. People relate to their coworkers and their friends and their families in different ways. Japanese institutions — companies, schools, bureaucracies — all do things a bit differently than their peers elsewhere. Even tiny aspects of Japanese culture, like preferences for brand goods, or the way people read the manual when they buy a new camera, feel different in ways that are difficult to describe but easy to recognize.