Foolishman1776 said:
Japan is a sick society. I mean sick as in is infected with damaging ideas and values. Of course, the world at large is, as well; Japan is simply a more advanced case. I hate to say it, but this is kind of where "liberal values" lead.
I would more say that this is the other way around.
Big parts of Japans Cultur and Rituals in everydays live are really, REALLY restrictive!
That leads to many problems.
That reaches from the workplace (like workling for a big company over there leads to kinda self-sacrifice for said company and so creates enourmous problems with many marriaged couples) over the school and student life (japan hast still one of the most high numbers of suicides under students and lerning there is more of a case of senses deafening learning every sentence in the book then to really understand the meaning of it and getting into one of the higher schools is so important that existences and sanitys regularely break at this point) everyday life scenes (arranged marriages are still very big in Japan wich mustn't actually be that bad thing and than there is the same self-sacrifice that people offer to the companys that is often expectet from the children to their parents, a thing that i can imagine as beeing difficult for modern children with acces to the internet and so to examples of other ways of life).
It seems that it is often in regard to this sometimes narrow rituals (wich are shurely not lifed from every japanese citizen) of this way of life that causes many to flee in one of the more or less easier to accomplish parts of the cultur (like the extrem otakus of various kinds, Hikkikomoris to mention just some of the most well known).
Also Japan has a very high pressure of belonging to the masses, MUCH higher than in other parts of the world.
Then there is the not very seldom mentioned case that many japanese females just look for the wealth of a man wich also causes major cases of depression and, when this goes on for more than one generation, wich can set quite some prefabricated veiws of males having anyway no chance.
At last there is often the mentioning of people feeling overburdened when it comes to this.
To pull it all together, when i think of what i have read up on this thematic and althougth it most likely paints only an partial picture of the whole thing going on in Japan, i would say that, as ironic as this sounds, the Japanese has quite some Problems in getting their way of lives into a healthy balance, seeing as everything seems to immidiately border in to the extremes.