Hi Meg
Thank you for your explanation of the rational choice position on the
habit-following society. I would like to probe this
issue a bit
further. You describe acquiescing to institutional routines as a choice because that yields higher utility or satisfaction to the person. Certainly one could describe that behavior as a choice, but does it really result from a conscious choice? I guess I am asking, what level of conscious cognition and decision is necessary to justify calling an action a choice? One of the famous sociological concepts is Boudieu's habitus, so named because the daily routines and the engaged mind of the doer are pretty seamlessly integrated, without much awareness of other possibilities. If a person grows up in a certain habitus and takes it for granted, can we really say that the resultant behavior is due to a rational choice? Do you see what I mean? It seems to me inadequate to explain a lack of choice as a choice.
True, someone could decide to sacrifice their job and status and quit. A Japanese friend of mine quite his salary-man job to become a Buddhist monk, and never looked back. But I think that for most people, the idea of choice is very distant from their minds. To my perspective, in most Japanese life courses compared to the US, there seems to be relatively little personal, conscious, momentous choosing by the individual. In their broad trends, the US institutions are premised on and work to force individuals to make choices all the time. But Japanese institutions work to discourage the emergence of individual choosing units. This has its parallels at the level of identity. Not to fall back on simple Nihonjinron, but still, as broad trends, I think the evidence shows that the typical Japanese identity is more embedded in the collective notion of "we Japanese" (wareware nihonjin), and the typical US identity is more preoccupied with Number One ("me").
The core element of rational-choice theory is the individual self seeking its own satisfactions. But in Japan, this individual self, while still very much present, is moderated by a stronger identification (compared with the US) with the collective "self" and behaving so that the collective good is attained even at the cost of personal sacrifice. Given all this, I have my doubts that the actual levels of non-choice can be fully explained by even your very flexible version of rational choice theory without imposing a construct that does not fit.

This lack of choosing might help us explain Fukushima.
Here's my
hypothesis: The 1955 ruling triad system, with the nuclear village as one example, includes deeply engrained habit in its roles and relationships that dampens the effect of individual rational choice; it makes group think even stronger at the top in Japan than in the US.
That groupism remains true of most elite ruling circles in Japan, such as university faculty governance councils and company boards of directors. But this habit pattern is breaking down in the political system, for instance with the election of the DPJ and the activism of the local governments in sponsoring alternative energy.
Perhaps all
this indicates a sea change in Japanese culture.

Thanks
Jeff