Thanks to all for this fascinating exchange about the role of culture in Japanese politics. In a shameless self-promotion, I feel compelled to mention that my new book, which was published by Cambridge this year, Building Democracy in Japan, deals with these issues as its core theme: How does a country democratize not just its institutions, but also its political culture?
The book introduces a theoretical approach that enables us to incorporate culture into our studies of democratization in a rigorous and not-so-squishy way.

To the discussion at hand, I find myself in heated agreement with both Meg and Dave, and most others writing, in thinking that culture is an important context that fundamentally influences what people believe, what they want, and how they behave. That said, figuring out what that culture is is quite
tricky: "American culture" is likely to exert very different influences over an inner-city African American youth growing up in Atlanta than it will over a composting, organic-farming, middle-class, white Seattlite. There is at least as much variation in values and behavior within a cultural grouping as there is between them. Therefore, figuring out what the salient cultural value or behavior ("habit" in Jeff's terms), that is relevant to the question at hand is no mean task. Similarly, rational choice analysis can be a very useful way to examine behavior, but only if one can figure out, a priori to the analysis, what preferences exist among the group being studied, and therefore how choices are influencing outcomes.

To digress slightly to the thread about Arab wishes for democracy, I would be very hesitant to ascribe that motivation to the behaviors that we are witnessing in horror over Youtube. My family and I spent the fall of
2010 in Syria (where my husband is from), not realizing that the country would erupt into a civil war/revolution mere months after our departure. I was not hanging out with soon-to-be rebels, or with political leaders, but rather with fairly "ordinary"
Syrians from all walks of life.

Most of the people that I encountered despised the regime. Syrians had seen their relative status in the world not just stagnate but deteriorate over the past thirty years. They could watch on their satellite TVs how the world was moving forward and they were left behind. Every aspect of life was subject to the arbitrary power of the regime and its friends--you couldn't operate a business or drive a car without paying regular bribes to goons that regularly visited.
Those who were connected to people in power got fabulously wealthy doing nothing. Those who worked their tails off trying to make an honest living were regularly harassed, and sometimes thrown into jail, because of their success.

We won't know the true answer of what the Syrians and others in the region want until people feel safe enough to answer honestly and social scientists can do some systematic research. If I were to speculate, however, I would say that many may answer that what they want is "democracy", but when pressed, they would have no real idea what "democracy" entails. What they really want is a better life. They want to be able to feel safe, live with dignity, and build a good life for themselves and for their children. That is "democracy" for them.

Unfortunately for the Syrians, we don't yet have an example of a country that has made the transition from a forty-year family run dictatorship preceded by French colonialism to a democracy. Fortunately, there are other countries that have beaten the odds. Joseph Grew, US Ambassador to Japan at the time of Pearl Harbor once wrote, "the best we can hope for in Japan is the development of a constitutional monarchy, experience having shown that democracy in Japan would never work." If Syria manages to make the long and difficult journey to democracy, it will surely take a path that will be quite different than the one that Japan has traversed. However, the fact that Japan has managed to build a robust democracy, suggests that, at least in the abstract, Syria and other Arab states might also be able to craft their own versions of states that can help people to feel safe, live with dignity, and build a good life for themselves and for their children. Certainly there are millions around the world praying for exactly that outcome.

Best,

Mary Alice