Posted on 03/12/2011 6:10:21 PM PST by BenLurkin
The layer of human turmoil - looting and scuffles for food or services - that often comes in the wake of disaster seems noticeably absent in Japan.
“Looting simply does not take place in Japan. I’m not even sure if there’s a word for it that is as clear in its implications as when we hear ‘looting,’" said Gregory Pflugfelder, director of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University.
Japanese have “a sense of being first and foremost responsible to the community,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.blogs.cnn.com ...
Guess we won’t have a Japanese version of Katrina’s Beer Man...Hey, does anyone know if Sean Penn is over there yet with a boat that has not been plugged...
I would love to see him over there bailing water out of his boat with a paper cup like he did in New Orleans.
Something to be said for having a homogenous society.
I thought of the contrast as I watched a video of the inside of a grocery store as the EQ (or aftershock) was happening. Employees and customers helped to keep things from falling and then helped to reshelve clean up afterwards.
ZERO looting factor
Good thing Van Jones isn’t there.
Its not the difference in cultures so much as the difference in OUR culture in the last 40 years!!
Whoa! CNN treads the line of being totally non-PC. Admitting that maybe in certain cultures you don’t have to automatically start robbing liquer stores the minute the power goes out? Whoa. Not that I’m saying that one culture is better than another mind you! /s
One of the big differences between post WWII America and today is that we didn’t rebuild for our enemies. Personally I think its best for a nation to rebuild themselves. Because of that Germany and Japan are among our best allies.
I heard a recording of a speech broadcast to the Germans after WWII and it was very clear that we weren’t there to be friendly or rebuild their society.
Their cultural notions of order and authority are impressive, especially in light of the disaster they face...of course, until relatively recently they also has an emperor whom they worshipped as a living god, so it can go a little far, eh?
I saw that, too. Pretty interesting aspect of their society. Thank goodness we still have a degree of that in the South. It’s slowly fading away, tho.
No stories of animal like behavior in the Super Dome.
No welfare dependent class behavior either.
and have your Mom take you looting
Hmmmm....wonder if they have “welfare” in Japan?
Not just the south. Pretty much anywhere outside the urban areas.
Yes, someone has to clean up all the kiddie porn and U-15 gravure of the “polite society”
Good point. I’m aware of the ‘72 hour rule’ when a city is struck. Get out of a major city after a disaster within that time frame. Society starts to break down.
They don’t shoot at the rescuers?
How odd.
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