In response to Ellis Krauss,

I have never said that broad cultural explanation in the form of 'Japanese do what they do because they are Japanese' is valid. For example, statements made by right-wing Nihonjinron authors are often nonsensical.
When I write academic articles, I analyse factors such as institutions, incentives to and power struggles among relevant actors and so on to explain political, economic and social phenomena without relying on any cultural argument.

However, what I am saying is that dismissing culture and national difference completely is problematic. For example, 'dango' such as price rigging prevalent in the Japanese construction industry can be explained mostly by factors of agency and structure. However, I wonder if this kind of corrupt relationship as a result of these factors cannot be considered as part of Japanese 'corporate culture'. Japanese corporate decision-making system such as 'ringi' can also be considered as part of Japanese corporate culture (also as institution or
structure) in contrast to more top-down decision making often seen in American companies.

And how about 'social norms'? I wonder if they can also be considered part of national culture or characteristics (such as more solidaristic norms seen in Scandinavian social welfare and more individualistic norms seen in American social welfare in particular). I am also interested in how anthropologists perceive culture (I conduct research on comparative/international political economy myself).

Culture may be a product of the combination of many factors mentioned above but it also affects agency and institutions. I understand that it is not easy to define culture in a specific manner and have culture as an explanatory variable in academic research but 'social norms' approach may be related to cultural aspects.

In the case of Fukushima, I think most things can be explained by institutional and agency factors such as the close relationship between the government and TEPCO (regulatory capture, amakudari, incentives to relevant actors and so on). But I wonder if this kind of 'corrupt' relationship has nothing to with 'culture'
that was created by many factors such as public policy, politics, economic incentives, education and so on. The case of the 'convoy system' of the Japanese financial crisis in the late 1990s, where bureaucrats tried to hide or downplay the existence of a huge amount of non-performing loans, is also similar.

I think we can acknowledge, instead of dismissing completely, the existence of national and regional culture, difference and characteristics as well as common global phenomena at least, if not necessarily as
an explanatory variable in academic research.

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Dr. Hiroaki Richard Watanabe, D.Phil. Oxford, MA Yale Lecturer, School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield

http://www.shef.ac.uk/seas/staff/japanese/watanabe.html
http://www.wreac.org/people/WREAC-People/Core-Researchers/Watanabe%2C-Hiroaki-Richard/details