Speaking as a Japanese national and immigrant, I have to say that I find discussions such as this one both amusing and tiresome because a large fraction of what is being said involves non-Japanese trying to carve out a niche in which they can assert cultural/institutional superiority vis a vis Japan and the Japanese.

In the course of teaching "Japan in the Foreign Imagination" at Keio and other universities, I came to the conclusion that the bulk of foreign writing on Japan is really intended to make foreign writers/readers feel good about not being Japanese.

It is particularly tiresome to read prescriptions for Japan by foreign nationals who have no proven track record of achieving reform in their own countries.

It is even more tiresome to read generalizations about Japanese universities by people who do not have my twenty years of teaching experience from Todai down to off the radar private colleges.

In both Japanese and English articles, I have suggested that for some this is sublimation. People incapable of achieving significant or any reform in their own countries sublimate their frustration into telling the Japanese how to run Japan.

Others write like secular missionaries or people who wish they had been born earlier so they could have participated in the American Occupation of Japan.

As someone who has two decades of teaching in Japan primarily in Japanese on top of comparable experience in the US and the UK plus two teenage sons who are in or who have gone through generic Tokyo public schools, I find some of the statements about Japanese education cartoonish at best and as I said racist at worst.

Racism as I use the term is cultural racism or what might be called Racism 2.0 where assertions of cultural/institutional superiority have replaced claims about physiology, the kind of racism John Dower took up in his War Without Mercy.

"Cultural racism" does not seem to be particularly well known among Anglophones although there are some seminal essays on the subject in English.

To understand what I am getting on about, compare Anglophone writing about corporate corruption or bullying in Japan with writing about the same subjects for the US/UK. It is a rare article about Japan that does not cite Japanese culture. In contrast, it is a rare article about the US/UK that cites US/UK culture.

This has led me to the conclusion that "Americans [and Brits] ain't got no culture."

Same for Germany. I've compared English language treatment of German corporate corruption with treatment of Japanese corporate corruption. Few references to German culture, many references to Japanese culture.

Again, "German's ain't got no culture."

I see more than a little of the culturalizing or othering of Japan in some of the postings here.

Japan has its problems and warts but overall it functions rather well especially compared to the US and more recently Britain.

Before this Japanese accepts foreign criticism and prescriptions, I want to see our self-appointed pro bono advisors sort out their own countries. Once you've done that, you will doubtless get many lucrative consulting contracts in Japan.

EHK